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Brian Kruger
Welcome to The Common Bridge. I'm your producer, Brian Kruger, and we get to do this about four times a year, and I love it. Rich, welcome to your own show. We've got a viewer mailbag today. Are you ready to go again?
Richard Helppie
We're both going to find out together.
Brian Kruger
Somebody wrote in after the last one that we did and says you guys calling it a mailbag cracks me up because it makes you both Boomers, nobody does mail anymore. (Richard Helppie: Ha, ha, ha, ha.) And I will say this...
Richard Helppie
I mean, call it an inbox, I guess, right.
Brian Kruger
That's right, because nothing really does come in the mail. But this time too, we're going to leave out a few things. I'm going to take this from our Substack, from our podcast, I've got a few from Facebook, I've got a few from X. I'm not going to say where they came from, because I think it'll isolate the person too much. But I am going to give names, because they put their names on the questions.
Richard Helppie
We've got a lot of email too, Brian. (Brian Kruger: Oh yeah, yeah.) We get a lot of emails and DMS and that type of thing too.
Brian Kruger
The last the last six of these are all email. So all right, well, this will be final. How about we get started? This is Emma Hartley. Emma Hartley says that it looks like we're coming to the end of the of the fifth season, she's loved all of them. She picked us up in the second season and went back and reviewed the first season. Loves the show. She just wants to know, what are your reflections after doing about 252, 253 episodes over the last five years, and what have you seen and such?
Richard Helppie
Well, first of all, there are a lot of good people doing a lot of good things in the country. If we didn't have this established media infrastructure, and people weren't on their phones and computers and shows like this so often, they'd probably know that as well. When I was starting this, I said, well, if we get policy out there, then people will talk about policy, and then we'll have discussions around policy, and some of that occurred, but also the discovery - or maybe the illumination - of three villains. It's the Republican Party, it's the Democratic Party, and it is also that established legacy news media, that really is the linchpin. Because when you think about it, if you're a political party and you're fighting for power or survival it kind of explains some of the underhanded stuff. I'm not condoning it; that you see both the Republicans and Democrats doing [it] but if you left in the check of an honest media, they couldn't do it. And now we know that they've effectively become stenographers for the party in power and they react as if they're afraid of the party in power. Maybe we'll get to be talking a little bit about Mark Zuckerberg. I've always been a bit of a contrarian, I'm a problem solver. I'm fiercely independent and I try not to regurgitate the stuff from the media complex. It's kind of weird, because the people on the Left assume I'm pro-Trump. I'm not. But the thing is, the established media has so much negative on Trump, and they're relentless and they've been at it...Sharyl Attkisson is a great writer, [she] really highlighted that in a piece today. But the contrarian is going to sound positive. Similarly, there's so much cheerleading and cover up, frankly, around the Democrats and the Left, that it's going to sound like you're hypercritical of them. I wish they both could do a good job, and if we had a better media infrastructure then I think they would. What was the question? I lost where I was going...[laughter]
Brian Kruger
That's the trick with these, Rich. All right, Noah didn't give a last name, asks simply, do you think democracy is at risk?
Richard Helppie
I think that's a talking point, frankly, I do think it's at risk, but probably not in the way it was been portrayed. As you know, I'm an avid reader and I am a pattern recognizer, and I know that the insurrectionist thing has dropped. You don't hear that word very often. My guess - I don't know, this is speculation - that it's just not polling well. Fact of the matter is, no matter what happened at the end of the first Trump term - or the only Trump term, however it turns out to be - we did have a transfer of power. The observable fact is that Trump did nothing for 187 minutes, an observable fact is that Trump did not welcome the incoming president to the White House, and an observable fact is that Donald Trump has never actually conceded the election. So is that a danger to democracy, or is that just Trump being Trump? I mean, you make the call. On the other hand, the Democrats have waged law-fare vigorously. Andrew Cuomo called them out, he said, look, these cases would not be brought if they weren't against Donald Trump, and wouldn't have been brought against Trump if he wasn't running for office. I don't know how you define it any more clearly. Yesterday the New York Times, as of last night, had not covered this story; Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook said the Biden administration told us to censor stories they didn't like about covid and about Hunter Biden's laptop and where it might lead, and he expressed remorse for that. Censorship is a bad thing. The Biden administration has been having air marshals trail Tulsi Gabbard around as [if she's] somehow a threat. I'm more concerned about the people doing that. But they've got a candidate now - they claim - about democracy, a candidate that has not received a single vote for a single delegate by a single member of the public. RFK Jr comes out - maybe we'll get to talk about that a little bit today - and I took note nobody's slamming the content of what he had to say about the party that he literally grew up in. The Republicans have a loose cannon they can't control at the top of their ticket, and it looks like the Democrats have this organized program of trying to thwart democracy. Now, can one counterbalance the other? We don't know, but if we had a better media, like what we're seeing on Substack, then I think we have a fighting chance. Who knows? People are pretty brainwashed at this point.
Brian Kruger
I thought this was really good. This just came in this morning from Benjamin Carr, and it came in on Substack. He said - and I didn't fact check this, but I think he's right, I'm kind of doing it in my head - that if you take Biden-Harris and Walz together, their entire age is 200 years and in those 200 years of all those three together, none of them have worked in the private sector ever, none of them has signed a paycheck, and none of them been a business person. Now, what Benjamin is asking, he knows - through watching and reading and looking at your writings and everything - that you're a businessman and you've signed a lot of checks over the years. Do you think it's important for the president of the United States? He put it like, be the CEO of the largest company in the world, to be a businessman or have some sort of business person background?
Richard Helppie
So first of all, not necessarily business background, but some familiarity about how the economy actually works. We can go back to John Boehner's story about growing up in his father's bar and watching a small business person struggle. Yeah, I think it would be good if they had some private sector experience and at least not be hostile to the private sector. Let me tell you the issue that I've experienced in my own life. People that have only been in academia or only been in government, in the public sector, they look at what exists today and assume that's always been there, and they assume it's static. People are making this much money, we tax them, we get this much. They don't understand human behavior, that changes in policy change behavior. Go back to the Reagan years. Reagan indexed the tax brackets to inflation. He removed a lot of the lower tax brackets entirely. He simplified it and receipts into the federal government skyrocketed because people took that money and put it back to work. It's got to go someplace, versus being sucked into the vortex of the federal spending. The other thing I want to mention too is that more people moved from the middle class to the upper middle class under Reagan then moved from the middle class down. So when they say, oh, the rich got richer, it's like, no, no, it's different. People seized the opportunity based on the incentives. And that's what a lot of the policy work the people that have never been exposed to the private sector seem to miss. Anyway, my two cents on it.
Brian Kruger
Okay, Evelyn Granger asks, what do you think about a Kamala Harris presidency? What do you think about that?
Richard Helppie
Well, first, I think you should learn how to pronounce Kamala. [Laughter.] So look, I actually wrote a column called “Kamala Harris for President.” It really spoke more to the campaign strategy, if people want to talk about that, than it did to the presidency. But you've got two [of] Kamala Harris; you've got her track record from decades in the public sector, and you've got a 42 minute speech at the convention. I tend to think the DEI-Left-coast-liberalism-soft-on-crime calamities that really were the hallmark of what she's done and the ineptness around the border and such, probably that would be the thing to expect going forward. Her speech that she gave at the convention, really, it was George Bush's acceptance speech in content, and no one batted an eye that she had gone completely 180 degrees. But that's pandering to get elected. So what do I think an administration would look like? I think there would be a fairly abrupt shift to the left, particularly if the Congress coming in is Democratic, controlled in both houses, that would be my guess. That's who she owes, and that's who's going to get rewarded.
Brian Kruger
Okay, Grace Bishop, she comes out of Substack, and to me - nothing wrong with this but she seems to be a Harris supporter - she says Harris is now up in the polls. What are your thoughts about that swing and how she is now up in the polls, according to Grace?
Richard Helppie
Okay, so first of all, it's not surprising, we came into this with 70% of the voters consistently saying we do not want Donald Trump, we don't want Joe Biden. And Harris is not Biden and is not Trump. I'd encourage people to go back and read the column I wrote on the Fourth of July called "Kamala Harris for President" that followed the one I wrote the week before that [which] said a throat lozenge is what was between Joe Biden and a great debate performance. But Harris...what I recommended is she keep the focus entirely on Trump and entirely on observable facts. She started off in that speech with the things, the lies, that have been debunked, so that was the first time she'd gone off course. Then trying to recreate her as the second coming of FDR and Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King all at the same time is idiotic on the part of the Democrats. They should just be on message saying you wanted someone other than Trump or Biden, we've got that, take a chance on us. She's saying the right things about I want to be everybody's president...but I mean, she could win the presidency, but I think it'll be a dog fight. They have, clearly, the media on their side. There are some allegations that the polling is over-sampling Democrats. We don't know. We don't know the status of some of the voting laws that require ID versus just let the ballots get shot out there. So there are a lot of moving parts here.
Brian Kruger
Lucas Ramsey asks, if Richard Helppie got to be the chairman of the Harris campaign what would he advise her and that campaign to do from here until election day to assure that they win this going on the momentum that they have right now?
Richard Helppie
I would strongly suggest humility. I would say, look, we're not perfect. We want to guide the country out of the generational conundrum of a Trump-Biden. We're halfway there. Our geriatric, cognitively deficient president is not going to be in this; you've got another one over there. We're not going to get into what he says. We're not going to get into what he does. We're not going to react to his name calling and all that. All we're saying is that we're going to be an alternative, and we welcome everybody, and we're going to try to listen. Where they're screwing up is this false, joy this, joy that. I mean, come on. And I haven't looked in a few days, but they still have put no policies on their website - zero.
Brian Kruger
I guess maybe that changes tomorrow with that first kind of a softball interview, it looks like, but I'm going to set this up so we have some parallel structure with this. What about a Donald Trump presidency, can you finish that off? And actually, James Porter said this - kind of what Lucas was saying - what does Donald Trump do from here until election day to win this? So I guess that's a combined question. I'm kind of throwing my own out there, but ending up with this other.
Richard Helppie
Look, in a normal world, Trump should be down 20 points all right, because people don't like lawfare, they don't like inflation, they don't like the open borders, they don't like censorship, they don't like war. So that's what's keeping Trump in the game. It wouldn't really matter what you advise the Trump campaign to do, because Trump's not controllable, and his greatest weakness is that he does things by the seat of his pants; this juvenile, name-calling-self-centered-Mctweeter. He had a better track record and more popular policies than the party in power but the exaggerations, distortions, the idiotic statements, are just exhausting, and the stuff that he has to deal with from the media makes him sympathetic. If Trump would listen, I would say, look, I went from an A-list celebrity at the Clinton weddings, on Oprah, people came to see me, to somehow, I'm a pariah. Okay, hey, I'm not. I'm not the caricature that you've made me out to be, and Kamala Harris isn't the avatar that she's made out to be. And all kidding aside, here are the policies that we're going to put forward that we think Americans like: better border, control inflation by getting the price of energy down - which energy shows up every place in the economy - and so forth. That's where I'd leave it.
Brian Kruger
Okay, I think you're going to like this question. I think he's being tongue in cheek, but I kind of get it. It's from Daniel Monroe, and it's got to be tongue in cheek, but it's fun. He says, in my club we laugh about the money that we got during covid. Everybody got it, we all didn't spend it. We invested it. Do you think that had an impact on where the stock market has gone since then?
Richard Helppie
Maybe. But the short answer is this, when you flood that much liquidity into the economy, it goes someplace, right? It's too many dollars chasing too few goods. That's why you have inflation for the essentials - shelter, food, fuel - but it also sloshes into assets: real estate, stock market, etc. It's not that the companies are worth more, it's just the dollars are worth less.
Brian Kruger
This kind of matches into what Julian Marsh says - and this is from email that...sometimes people type with numbers instead of...okay, all right - the stock market is up. Do you think this is Bidenomics? I guess it feeds into your last answer. Why do you think the stock market is up so high?
Richard Helppie
Couple of things. First of all, we're at the forefront of a technological change. You can go back to the history of capitalism. Every time there's a technological change, there is a furious amount of investment before it settles down to a handful of companies. Think about automotive companies in the early 1900s, there were dozens of them, and now we're down to a handful. More recent times, we had lots of companies doing search engines, Ask Jeeves and so forth, and now we're down to a couple. So now we're at the threshold of AI. A lot of money is flowing into AI, and it's going to come down to a few winners. And by the way, the other interesting place I've been doing some back-grounding [sic] on is the legal marijuana business - it's the same thing. There are going to be a few really big winners and there's going to be a lot of money lost, and so that money's fueling the stock market right now, and it'll settle out. This is one of the beauties of capitalism, is that creative destruction.
Brian Kruger
Let's see what do we have next here...from Olivia Jennings, who lives in Pennsylvania, she wants to know what are your thoughts about the assassination attempt? And her question, do you think it left the media's story mill too quickly? I guess she calls it the media story mill. I think she's asking, why we don't talk about it anymore?
Richard Helppie
That's a great question. Why don't we talk about it? I had the TV on with the sound off last night, and there was JD Vance giving a talk, and he was surrounded by six feet tall bulletproof glass. I thought, oh, that separates him from the people he's trying to speak with, which was a little disturbing. Let me start at the end. I think that the assassination follow-up cost Joe Biden the presidency, because up until that time, the negative ads and the viciousness and the vile things being said, that was the whole DNC playbook. Then after the attempted assassination, Biden said, stop all that. And then he gets on national television and he calls Donald Trump "Donald" when he called him on the phone, and I'm like, well, oh, he just humanized him and within days, Joe's gone. I think we need to listen to investigative reporters. It's interesting to me, as you know I'm a data driven person, and what are the odds? All these things had to happen; a 20 year old with virtually no social media footprint figures out where to shoot from, hey, that's the optimum roof, and that just happens to be the one that doesn't have any security on it. What are the odds that he could get a ladder and a rifle into the situation without being stopped? What are the odds that no law enforcement reacted to the sightings of the guy on the roof and the calls from the crowd to apprehend him? And what are the odds at the site of the shooter's death was cleaned up faster than the Lincoln limousine that John Kennedy wrote in? And what are the odds that a shifting story of a too steep roof or local law enforcement didn't cover or a guy was locked out of the building who was supposed to cover it at just the critical time? I look at this and go, statistically, that is just really amazing. And if you really want to get into the weeds on this, CNN is there filming live, they just...they're the same group that happened to be there when Roger Stone was getting arrested. And there's a guy from The New York Times shooting at a shutter speed that is designed to capture things moving at a very high rate of speed. I talked a number of photographer friends; when would you set your shutter to 8000 feet per second? And the answer, one guy who regularly photographs NASCAR and other car races, says he's at 220-500 frames per second. So you look at all that, and you go, okay, what went on here? It's a mystery. And the last thing I'll say is, like, about the shot itself, I think I may have said this at an earlier time, we talked about this, that's not that hard of a shot. You could make that shot with iron sights. It's just amazing.
Brian Kruger
You think there's something else there? The reason I follow up on this, Rich, is you've gotten over 130 different emails and messages and Substack comments about this particular thing, and one of them said something I thought was really interesting. We had a president who was actually shot in the head only a couple of months ago, and we're not talking about it anymore. We've been talking about the Kennedy assassination for 60 some years, and breaking it down so far, and we had cameras all over that thing, and the media is not talking about it anymore.
Richard Helppie
From a media standpoint, it's very, very curious. And again, that comes back to my opening remarks if we had an honest legacy media. Notice that I am not drawing conclusions. I'm looking at observable facts that nobody disputes as of this point; where that roof was, it wasn't covered, a 20 year old guy with no military background figures out how to get in there, and so forth. You'd think people would be mildly curious about how all that came to be. To me, that's the biggest thing. But I tell you what, I talked to a person, a good friend of mine known for many years who's very emotional, said she hates Trump, hates him. She goes, I don't hate anybody, but I hate him and she says, did he actually ever get hit in the ear with a bullet or was it a fragment? Like, what difference does it really make? I explained to her what the size of that actual round could be. Now, they haven't said if it's a .223 or a .556 type of AR, but a .223 hitting something like ear cartilage wouldn't leave a big gap, it would pass through or clip it. That bullet is designed to go slow, impact, and then move around inside the body to create wound channels. That's probably more than people want to hear about on this but in answer to your question, I don't know why the media is not more curious. Had Joe Biden been shot at, he'd be a near martyr at this point so who knows?
Brian Kruger
Yeah. Okay, this is from Ava Caldwell. She says, from a production standpoint, or just pure television - I love that - what are your thoughts about both the DNC and RNC conventions? Rich, I'll add on to this; you and I, without telling our ages, we can remember the Chicago televised 1968 convention and what they all looked like prior to this. What are your thoughts about what you saw in the last couple of months with RNC and DNC?
Richard Helppie
Well, I'm glad that the question was about the television, because that's really what we're talking about here, and that they're not the conventions that actually decided the candidate. You know why the Democrats wanted to do a roll call was, I mean, that's complete theater. So I would say this, neither the RNC or the DNC was for thinking people. The Republicans were doing pretty good job until they brought out Hulk Hogan. [Laughter.] I'm not...come on, I mean, these are the same people that brought an empty chair in Clint Eastwood, [inaudible] candidate like Mitt Romney and like, really, [laughter] with the country beaded in you wanted Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt to show that you're serious about leading the world for the next four years? Trump's speech: charitably good, I'll say, or comparatively good, for about 20 minutes and then it became the same old Trump, same old lamentations. The DNC, it was for the bipolar, okay, we can't wait to throw the bums out for all the problems and bring in the joy of a new candidate. It's like, hello, they're the same people, and they can't help but put in lies to feed their base. But I will say this, the Democrats rehearse their speeches and they stick to the script and Trump, of course, does neither. He does not look like a guy that prepares, and if he is preparing he's a worse executive than I have even criticized him to be.
Brian Kruger
Okay. This one sounds like it comes from a school teacher. From Ella P. - didn't put her last name - it says, compare and contrast the vice president choices of both the Republicans and the Democrats.
Richard Helppie
First of all, I don't think either one is a real bad choice. Arguably, there could have been better choices. So by way of example, had Donald Trump and Nikki Haley kissed and made up, it would have iced the election on their behalf. But again, Trump being Trump, why did he pick JD Vance? Because he likes me, is what Trump said about Vance. And I will say I didn't know anything about Vance so I listened to his book - which he did in his own voice - and frankly, I can relate. There are a lot of people that I went to school with in blue collar Detroit that came up from the south and I saw the culture firsthand. JD Vance has got a compelling personal story, no matter how you cut it. He's very excellent on his feet. I think he was brought in to give Trump a fighting chance where he needs it: Pennsylvania, possibly Virginia, possibly Michigan. So I think from a campaign perspective, Vance is probably okay, because it's going to be the Trump show over on that side. For the Democrats, look, I think Gretchen Whitmer would have been a much better choice. She's clearly getting ready to run. She's looks good. She's got less of a covid policy overhang than Walz and her cities fared far better than Minneapolis. Having two women on the ticket, and particularly, Whitmer's turned into a really good campaigner as well. Walz, of course, has got a lot of attack surface with his covid policies, with his cities burning, with his not being truthful about his military record and such. They're flawed VPs. I think I'll be watching when they get together to talk. I think they could have done better, I think they could have done worse in terms of the VP picks.
Brian Kruger
Liam Waters asks from X, what are your thoughts about mainstream media appearing to be an advantage to the... what do you say? Oh, I can't read...I can't say that on the air, okay. What do you think about Liam Waters comment about the press? He thinks that the press is leaning into the Democrats more than Republicans. There. I cleaned it up. [Laughter]
Richard Helppie
You have to send that to me, I want to see it. (Brian: Oh, yeah.) First of all, they are leaning in. I scan the news programs and “Meet the Press” this past weekend...Harris has the burden of incumbency being held accountable for things that happened during her tenure. Normally, it's the benefit of incumbency, but they were able to twist that. John Harwood - who I'd like to be really clear about - is an idiot with no real world experience. I don't think he's never been west of New Jersey in his life, and I think he was that kid in kindergarten that wore a suit too. But he said it was understandable for the Republicans to demand that Harris specify the policy details because they want to use them against her politically. You think they want to talk about policy? The Washington Post was talking about the conventions, and they want to poll people about, hey, how was the convention? They polled people that didn't watch the conventions, but watched news reports about the convention. [Laughter] Yeah, exactly. And, oh, was it...Andrew Sullivan said, I'm shocked by this new Kamala. Like it's not, she's not new. [laughter] It's all pandering. And then PBS during the coverage, they're chortling saying, hey, the Republicans only have 80 days and that makes it hard to define Harris negatively, like, ha ha. [Laughter] So, yeah, I do...I mean, it's clear that the media leans left. Now the good news is this, they're losing market, and I just want to tell my listeners, readers and viewers, there are far better reporters on Substack than me: Sasha Stone, there's a guy named Chris Bray that writes something called “Tell Me How This Ends,” there's “Racket News” led by Matt Taibbi, there's “Just the Facts” with Gerald Posner, John Solomon writes. There's some really solid journalism going on over there. Bring yourself up out of this swamp, this morass of this media. Also, observe this, that every time someone steps out of line from the DMC left talking points, all of a sudden they're a pariah, far left, and it's getting pretty crowded over there. [Laughter] Oh, it is. Mark Zuckerberg is going to go over there for the truth about what he was told to do, so there's that. And of course, now we have good old FOX, Newsmax and places like that. They clearly lean right but they make no bones about it, everybody knows that's what they do. You're not going to get a full story from there. Go elsewhere to pick up the full story. And when you see a video clip, before you start re-posting it, get online, go see the whole video clip. That's one of the favorite techniques.
Brian Kruger
This is a good lead in then. We're recording this on August the 28th and tomorrow, Kamala Harris and her running mate sit for the first time in which should be a very friendly interview where they get to talk about policy and whatever. Let's say I'm morphing Mia Donovan's email, but it's the same spirit. What are some questions you, Richard Helppie, would ask Kamala Harris in that interview - not CNN - but what would you ask that would be fair, but still probing?
Richard Helppie
I want to give the same thing about Trump as well. (Brian Kruger: Yeah, I figured we do both.) Sure. Yeah. Okay, good. All right. If I were going to interview Kamala Harris, frankly, the first question I would ask her is, when did you know that President Biden was not cognitively capable? Because the answer can't be, he was fine until the night of the debate. The answer can't be, I knew it, but I covered it up. What would another answer be? I wasn't aware, when it was so obvious? So I would like to hear her being held accountable for that. Another one, and it kind of goes back to the border, and the twisting and turning about were you or were you not the border czar? The contemporary record says the assignment was go find out the root causes - which is true - and go find out what's going on there so that we can stem this tide right now. But I'd also go a little further. I'd say, what could we expect of a Harris presidency? Does that mean another 12 million people, unvetted, are going to come in and be dispersed around the country? I think it's a fair question. If you want to make it an acute angle, you'd say, are you going to apologize to the border agents that you accused of whipping immigrants with their horse reins? But I do think it's a fair question to say what should we expect from you and be specific. Other things are that you want to be about law and order, help the audience understand why you fund-raised bail for people who terrorized and destroyed our cities in 2020. Now the smart ass cynical part of me said...and here you go, you watch, right now they're saying, oh, crime's down now [more] than it was under Trump. My question is, are we including the statistics for all the stuff that went down in 2020? Yeah, Trump was the president, but that was not Donald Trump doing that. There was no enforcement in Portland and Seattle, in Minneapolis, and even here to some extent in Grand Rapids. But I do think that's an important question. The other thing I would ask is this, look, I would probably preface it by saying, people are leaving California by the tens of thousands, which of California's laws should become law of the land - seeing how there's no policies on your website - should we emulate California and to what end? I think she could [inaudible] a number of cases off that, he and I would be doing a real media job, and you're not going to get that.
Brian Kruger
Before we get to Trump. Mason Griffin had a question that he put in. It's not really a question, but I'm going to paraphrase him. He said that for the last 16 years, some combination of Obama, Biden, Kamala Harris has been in the White House. Only four of those years have been Trump. How can she come in and say everything needs to be fixed. Or does she say everything's been great and stay with it and it's her, that she helped.
Richard Helppie
Well, that's the bipolar nature of the Democratic National Convention - throw the bums out/four more years - and you're talking about the same people. So, interesting, I was watching James Carville speak, and I think James Carville is brilliant when it comes to understanding elections. I've had occasion to meet with him over the years, and he is really a savant when it comes to looking at election data. His hope is that Trump loses mightily, 70 to 30. He makes the following point. He says, look, in 1964 the Republicans were crushed and they won in 1968. In 1972 the Democrats were crushed and they won in 1976. He really makes a compelling case there. The other thing that he says is that when you hear nationally, Harris is up three, he goes, it really means she's down one. She has to win the popular vote by at least four is his cut on it. Again, I think the guy's brilliant in terms of this, and he's rarely wrong, and he's got great insight. I'd like to see the question asked of James Carville, how would you run the Trump campaign?
Brian Kruger
But Trump wouldn't listen to him anyway. Well, that brings us back to the flip side. What would you ask Trump if you were sitting down with him?
Richard Helppie
My first question would be, Mr. Trump, why is it you act like a child calling other people names? How do you think that benefits you and how do you think that benefits the people the United States of America? How do you think that makes you appear in the world? And then I would shut up. Like, explain to me why you've got to come up with a nasty nickname. If I'm weary of anything, it would be that. The other thing I'd ask him is this, Brian. Mr. Trump, how old will you be on your next birthday? It's a real factor like this. The other thing I'd ask him would be this, Mr. Trump, what's more important to you, your personal ratings or the welfare of all Americans, and see what he does with that question. And if I was really feeling chippy that day, which is a real possibility, I would say, what color or what race do you think Kamala Harris is? Because this guy is his own worst enemy. He's had chance after chance to act like an adult. He's had chance after chance to act like an executive, and his ability to self-destruct is like no other.
Brian Kruger
It's stunning. It really is. This is kind of a throw in on here as we wrap this up. Both candidates and Trump will tell you he came up with it first, because he did, but the other candidate has picked it up, and that is taxes on tipping.
Richard Helppie
By the way, nobody should take this terribly seriously, right? But it'd be like they got the same memo from the IRS. Hey, this notion of taxing tips: number one, we can't find them and number two, it costs more to get there. Then look, when it was a more cash economy...I've worked in a lot of restaurants. I cooked a lot of food, I bused a lot of tables, washed a lot of dishes. I saw people support their families on tips, and they were supposed to report them. I guarantee you it didn't happen. I worked graveyard in a coffee shop that was on a street with five bars. It was really busy at night. I'm a kid busing tables, washing dishes and there was one waitress. They were trying to get people to report their tips and so one woman, she says, I don't get any tips because I'm a little old lady, they only like the cute young girls. She's got a lot of bills and her apron's about falling off with all the quarters and stuff that was in there [laughter] and like she's not reporting that. So I'm looking at it as capitulation to the real world. Now, when it goes through a credit card, they've got to have some way of tracking that and so forth, and sending out a 1099, but, yeah, taxes on tips. And here's the other thing, I would encourage people that have the means to do this, tip your server in cash. It's between them and the IRS, and it takes the pressure off the restaurant operator, and it lessens the weight of bureaucracy. And you know what I will do most often? You know where the tip line comes in, I'll either draw a line through it or just put cash and I'll give them cash. And because I've watched busboys be real quick, I make sure the server knows that there's cash in there before I leave.
Brian Kruger
This has gone way longer than I thought. Let's wrap it up with this particular question. This from Charlotte Walton, who said she was going to vote for RFK. He got out of the race, supported Trump. She's not going to do that anymore. Let me just ask you a global question, does RFK help or hurt Trump?
Richard Helppie
He hurts the DNC big time, because if people listen to what he said about what the Democrats have become about war, inflation, chronic illness, censorship, the borders, masks on toddlers and so forth, not one person any place, has attacked the substance of what RFK Jr said, and I happened to watch the entire talk. It did not appear he was on a teleprompter. Now, I don't know much about his past. They've been bringing up a lot of stuff, trying to smear the guy. Who among us haven't chopped off a whale's head and driven it across state lines? Someone said, like, let's prosecute this guy. Whatever the statute of limitations is for driving a whale head on the top of your car across state lines probably expired. But no, seriously, I think that RFK Jr damages the DNC because the man has spoken the truth. Again, my advice to Harris and Governor Walz would be really simple. Have some humility, say you want to steer a better course. You realize the Inflation Reduction Act was jet fuel for inflation. You realize you misused the social media platforms. You realize that you listen to the wrong people on covid policies. You realize that they had the border in pretty good shape before you got ideological about it and promised to do better. That would clear the field. It would make people go, okay, they get it and we're going to move past the era of Trump. But you know this notion of let's - and I'm going to be repetitive - like all of a sudden, that this is divine providence that has brought us Kamala Harris with no votes. I mean, come on. I've got to end on something other than come on, Brian.
Brian Kruger
Okay, go ahead and bring us home, Rich.
Richard Helppie
All right. So listen, I just want to thank my readers, listeners and viewers of The Common Bridge. Please tell your friends. I am not nearly the best resource on Substack or on other independent media, please avail yourself of this. We have a great future if we start talking to each other, if we start staying to facts, let's get the sound bites and the smears out of our dialog. Let's try to solve real problems. My promise to you is I will try to be original. I will try to be well researched. As long as I'm going to do this program, that's where we're going. It might be futile, but together, if we quit buying what the Democrats, the Republicans and that established media ecosystem is selling, the faster we turn our backs on them, the faster we're going to get change.
Brian Kruger
Sounds perfect. Let me do your sign off, because I've never done it before. And so for The Common Bridge, this is your host, Rich Helppie and his sidekick, Brian Kruger, signing off on The Common Bridge.
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