National Divorce: A Bad Idea, or Inevitable? | Elijah Haahr
Welcome to Middle Outcast episode three. In this episode, we're diving into a candid and thought provoking conversation with Elijah Hart. You may know him as the former speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives, an attorney, and a voice in conservative media. Today, we're talking about the evolving landscape of politics, the impact of social media on discourse, and whether America is more divided than ever. Let's jump in.
INTRO MUSIC:In a time where echo chambers are the norm and polarization feels inevitable, isn't it time a podcast take a different path? Going beyond the noise, beyond the headlines, into the ideas, values, and perspectives that shape our lives. Welcome to Middle Outcast, real conversations for a fractured world. From the social to the political, the philosophical to the personal, Middle Out Podcast is about bridging divides and finding common ground. It's not about combat.
INTRO MUSIC:It's about connection. Not about sound bites. It's about substance. So whether you're here to challenge your assumptions, hear new stories, or simply search for that elusive middle ground, you've come to the right place. This is Middle Outcast.
INTRO MUSIC:Now here are your hosts, Mike Bates and Tom Rankin.
Tom Rankin:I'm hoping to be a little bit more controversial in some of the questions and expecting maybe some real some real answers. But, obviously, if you have political aspirations, then it may be risky, to say some things that might be counter to your communities.
Elijah Haahr:I think it I think it used to be. I think we saw you know, most of our lives, we've seen these tightly controlled scripted political, whether it's a debate or a interview or whatever it is. I think that's changed
Myke Bates:Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:Pretty significantly over the past ten years. I think two things have done that. One is obviously Donald Trump. There's nothing scripted about him.
Myke Bates:You can do that.
Elijah Haahr:Even his advisers will say you can't script him. And then and and somehow, it has not impacted him negatively like a lot of politicians before him.
Myke Bates:That's a longed on.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. Exactly. And some people try to be like Trump, and it does ruin them. He's a very unique political the second part is is just this, long form podcasting has become very popular. I don't know if it's because people need something to listen to while they drive or run or what, but the idea of a two or three hour conversation is more normalized now.
Elijah Haahr:The Trump went on Rogan and did, you know, two or three hours. Vance went on there. Like, that's a normal thing.
Myke Bates:Vance one.
Elijah Haahr:The Vance one is really interesting. I actually thought it was it was more interesting to listen to than Trump Nice. Primarily because even though if you know who JD Vance is, you got I got a side of him I didn't know at all.
Myke Bates:Through long form.
Elijah Haahr:Through long form. Yeah. I mean, conversations and pathways you wouldn't normally expect, he talked about how he's got, like, a really vulgar mouth. And it's he J.
Tom Rankin:D. Vance?
Elijah Haahr:He attributes it to his
Tom Rankin:his very
Elijah Haahr:poor upbringing, the military thing. We're talking about his his his, like, five year old swear. And he's like, you know, it's embarrassing in public. It's he's like, it's the number one thing my wife is embarrassed by, but he's like, that's just me. And so he swore repeatedly.
Elijah Haahr:And I was like, that we've never seen, you know, LBJ at a filthy mouth, but you would never see that in a public interview because that was unheard of. Now it's it's more common. I think long form podcasts and then Trump have changed the idea that a a stray word or an awkward phraseology will ruin you.
Myke Bates:Yeah. No problem. Oh, well, I can appreciate that, because that's sorely needed. And, yeah, that that's good.
Tom Rankin:It goes a long way toward feeling more normal. Right? He he normalizes Very much. Politics a little bit to allow other people to feel engaged, in the process. He makes it not taboo.
Tom Rankin:There's not so much pearl clutching. Right? So Exactly. All of the apologetics were, his locker room talk and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.
Tom Rankin:It's okay. Yeah. Right.
Elijah Haahr:And it's it's much more real, which is, again, after a lifetime for all of us, if politicians that look the same and talk the same, and you if they ever sort of banded out of there, they were skewed from political office. Now we have a much more I don't wanna say lower class, but we have a much more informal political class and things like podcasts. They're happy to come on and talk about anything, whether it's personal or or politically unpalatable, they don't have a problem talking about it.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. Sure.
Myke Bates:It actually sucks that I think the the left actually still really sucks at this. Like, even now, like, now it's still, like, have you not seen how okay it is to be human? Just drop this over tight persona. Well, I think that's
Elijah Haahr:one of the things if you look at, you know, Trump winning in '16 and '24, very close in 2020. He argues he won. The left what what was happening in America at the time, the left did seem to capture take COVID out of it, but even, like, the podcast, all the biggest podcasters in America, primarily, the majority are I wouldn't even say Republicans, but they're certainly right facing.
Myke Bates:Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. And whether, you know, whether it's Rogan or Tucker or whoever it might be, Yvonne, all the all the podcast bros, the democrats were missing that happening. Yeah. So they were focused on your traditional news media sources, press conferences, Sunday morning shows. And the Republicans were showing it in the podcast, and the Democrats will go after the election and said, oh my gosh.
Elijah Haahr:We've missed it. No. They haven't. This is cyclical. It'll swing back at some point.
Elijah Haahr:Gavin Newsom's gonna start his own podcast. I'm not sure he's the guy that will make it happen, but they've woken up to the fact that they missed an entire they were not speaking to all of America during the campaign.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. Clearly.
Myke Bates:Yep. Clearly. Yeah. Yeah. And like, many of us, I think we're in our, I don't want to say bubbles because at least speaking for like myself and, you know, present company, it was a real rude awakening, you know, thinking that like, Hey, everyone gets everyone gets
Elijah Haahr:it right.
Myke Bates:Everyone gets that you can drop, you can be real, right? Cause Trump captured a realness, you know, MAGA captured a realness, even though I don't get it. I get that it was a realness that needed to be captured. And I thought the left got it too. Clearly not like the world, came to a different result, and I think that's a lot of why our conversations are becoming different now, because it was very evident that nothing was effective over the past, you know, eight years of the way that, you know, we're trying to communicate as, as the left or, or whatever.
Myke Bates:Our party sucks at it. So we're hitting a reset button and this is us trying to engage in. And, the name of the show, you know, rightly indicates that as much as the media and everyone would have you believe otherwise, we're not far apart at all. And, you know, MAGA was kind of, lashing out of this. Right?
Myke Bates:And now, like, let's just bump that stuff on the right and the left back to the center. Stop being so crazy and, like, learn from our mistakes and get back on path. At least in my estimation, things are pretty wild. I mean, if we look at, you know, today's overwhelming daily actions, we'll get into that stuff later, I suppose. But, like, we are now in the instant result of this explosion, and I don't know.
Myke Bates:Something has happened at
Elijah Haahr:the Debates about this. Obviously, I host a radio show. It's it's more traditional, radio show in the afternoon, four to 6PM every day. And so the the segments are, like, fifteen or sixteen minutes. So we don't do do the really long form meandering conversations, but we've had some debates on whether or not there's a debate we've had several times in the past two years whether or not we are headed towards a national divorce.
Elijah Haahr:And I have at least one semi regular guest on the show that says we're past that. We just haven't papered the file. Like, clearly, we're living in separate houses. We're no longer a part, a part of each other, and we just need to, like, define where the boundaries are and and start over. And the argument he makes is, you know, people who live here, people that live in San Francisco or New York, what commonalities do we have?
Elijah Haahr:Aside from the fact that we live in the boundaries of United States Of America. Often, we don't speak the same language. We don't dress the same. We don't have the same value system. There's really no tie that binds.
Elijah Haahr:And so his argument is, no. We are totally separate. We're balkanized, and we should just go ahead and and and paper the file and and start over. I disagree. I still think that there's a a value system that that we can have, but I would, in some ways, agree that The United States Of America now represents two or three culturally very different, maybe more than that, very different ideals.
Elijah Haahr:And a Midwestern culturally in the Midwest, they can barely recognize what might be a West Coast person or an East Coast person. Southern culture also very different. And so I think we've existed like that in the past. Certainly, you look at the civil war Mhmm. When we've had these big fights, but but there are some people that are like, no.
Elijah Haahr:There's there's no more tie that binds, and it'd be better if we just went our different directions. Yeah. That's good.
Tom Rankin:I I think that's I think that's interesting, but you you said you disagree with that
Elijah Haahr:I do.
Tom Rankin:To a degree. But I
Elijah Haahr:guess Maybe it's maybe it's me just wanting to believe that, no, this thing is still this great experiment still works. I mean, our two hundred and fiftieth anniversary is next year. Like, it's pretty cool that we're coming up on that. So I guess the question is do we go into it? It's like, well, it's been a good run, and let's start figuring out the differences.
Elijah Haahr:Or it's like, no. This is a good chance to renew the American ideal and find those things that keep us as one.
Tom Rankin:Exactly. That's what I'm hoping for. But I guess one of the questions that I have is what differences in value systems do you perceive? Right? So what are those differences that that your friend would say are unreconcilable that that you think maybe not the case.
Tom Rankin:But what to identify that there are different value systems, I'm just not certain. I think that there are topics and issues that each side has potentially grasped to say these are my these are my battles. You've got, you know, got woke on the on the left or or social justice issues, and you've got abortion on the right. Those are some of the big ones, but I'm not certain that the value systems are actually different. Those are more just talking points or more political political topics, that are currently headlines.
Tom Rankin:But Yeah. Do you think the value systems themselves are actually different about what people do value?
Elijah Haahr:I mean, obviously and listen. I I I think by and large, most Americans and I don't wanna say normal Americans because that's that's a strange thing. But most Americans who get up every day, they take their kids to school, and they go to work, they have the same things that they want. They want safer neighborhoods, and they want good schools. Like, that's they wanna be able to make enough money to take on vacations and and whatever.
Elijah Haahr:We have such wildly different opinions on how to get to those spaces. But I also think if you look at the history of America, you look at elections, we've always been pretty wildly disparate on that. I mean, the the most what any presidential candidate's got is maybe 60 some percent, 61, something like that, and at least in the last two hundred years. That means that there's always 40% that disagrees with that person, always. And most presidential elections, I mean, most of them are are fought the last few have all been within two points.
Elijah Haahr:That's that that's pretty close. And so I think the real question is, are the issues and the difference is a lot of times you said it, they're on the social issues. That's where it becomes extraordinarily stark. We have differences on economic issues. I mean, tariffs can be a debate.
Elijah Haahr:The tax issues, you know, the left thinks everything's a tax cut on the wealthy and the right thinks, oh, everybody makes an income. It kind of pays for everything. They're very different opinions, but I don't think they're as viciously personal as the social issues are. And that's where I think all the the value set because it predominantly impacts social issues. That's where I think the discussion of are we headed for divorces.
Myke Bates:So in search now, one of the biggest topics I can't stop thinking about, technology. Technology and the concept of time that I think most humans just don't really comprehend. And so here goes, if we rewind civilization back to, you know, its its earliest roots, and we look how much time has passed since then, and we see how many civilizations have come and gone, since then, how many religions have come and gone, how many worlds effectively have come and gone through that time. And then we look at our modern era. If we just look at the last hundred, two hundred years of time, and then certainly the last fifty years of time where technology has finally, like, exploded.
Myke Bates:Like, if you look at the time from when, for example, bifocals were created from the amount of time when that happened to when the first computer happened was, like, very small stretch of time. But now even in less than that, we've taken that power times, like, 4,000,000 in a matter of thirty years. And along with that came our communication. And so the ways we communicate, and I can't stop thinking about the fact of the simple thing that, you know, the phones that we hold in our hands and the way we communicate changed humans in the blink of an eye. And I can't help but think that that is one of the biggest problems.
Myke Bates:We already had problems politically speaking, and then it just ramped up to this insane situation where all of this is impossible to talk about unless you slow down. But the problem is, is that every bit of media, every bit of everything is, is breakneck. There's no time to think there's no time to parse anything. And like, I think that's one of the biggest problems in the world today is that, and when it gets to the point of like, what do we do now? Do we like just ink these papers and that's it?
Myke Bates:We're already separate. To me, that's technology. And we need to, like, just understand our relationship with it more because we're not gonna get rid of it. But I think we can perhaps start a movement of understanding, like, what the hell it did to us because this is the first time in history of humankind that this has ever happened. And the fact that it happened so fast, I feel like we kind of fucked ourselves with it because the technology is amazing.
Myke Bates:Like no one will, will deny that. But I don't think people analyze deeply what it's done to us as a species. Is very bizarre. And so anyways, that's when it comes to that idea of like, what do we do about this? Holy shit.
Myke Bates:I think we just need to slow down and talk because the technology screwed us.
Elijah Haahr:So it might be At that
Myke Bates:one of many, many things.
Elijah Haahr:I think I think social media certainly did. Yeah. I mean, when
Myke Bates:I say technology, that's what I mean.
Elijah Haahr:Okay. Yeah. Yes. I mean, if you think about dial back a hundred years, start two hundred years ago, You know, 1824, you're getting, you know, mail a month after it's been sent. You're getting newspapers weeks after any major thing happens.
Elijah Haahr:And there's only one source. And so by and large, you know, you you ride into town and you communicate with people and maybe your neighbors, but that's sort of it. Mhmm. Then you dial forward and you've got radio and TV. And so you're getting more and more news and you're having more and more sources, but you're still, like, you're really hearing what they say, and you talk to your few neighbors.
Elijah Haahr:And now move
Tom Rankin:to the modern same things.
Elijah Haahr:Right. And now move to the modern era, especially with social media, you can create a friend group that is an echo chamber.
Myke Bates:Mhmm.
Elijah Haahr:So the tribalism arrived when you could say you could pick and choose and we're all guilty of it and some more than others. And it may not even be necessarily, I I would argue in some ways, a bad thing to say. You know, there's this big, do you only date people that agree with you so on on on value or political values? You're creating subsets of friends based upon who agrees with you, and that has really dramatically increased the tribalism in The United States. Tribalism used to be much more geographical because that was the only the only people you knew were those geographically around you.
Elijah Haahr:Now your tribalism is very different.
Myke Bates:Mhmm.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. I think that's a great point.
Myke Bates:That that is that's the point.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. I think
Tom Rankin:Yeah. No. I think I think it is too because And
Elijah Haahr:you're it's amazing because
Tom Rankin:It's more of the social media. Go ahead.
Elijah Haahr:Well, you're seeing now people, I at least in my generation, they're withdrawing not totally, but, you know, the idea of social media, I think, to people of my kids' age is less interesting than it was to us.
Tom Rankin:Yes.
Elijah Haahr:We were fascinated by it.
Myke Bates:Yes. Yes.
Elijah Haahr:They're they're more so starting to withdraw from they sell their text threads, but even, like, TikTok and you it's there. But the idea of having these, like, online friend groups is less interesting to them than it was to us.
Myke Bates:That gives me some hope, honestly. That's cool.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. I think that is helpful. I hope they don't get sucked into I wonder though if they can't help but get sucked into it though because once you gain political interest is when you start seeking content And and the way the way media and content is structured these days, it's just like YouTube. Right? Their their algorithms are designed to keep you in the system.
Tom Rankin:So once you start to get kind of extreme content that that confirms your bias, you get more of it. Yeah. And you get deeper into it, and then you start getting into the fringes of it. And you're thinking, oh, well, I've already accepted all of this down the path, and you self radicalize, right, when you start to gain interest in in politics. And I wonder I wonder if the kids these days may get into that because I didn't really get into politics or wasn't really interested, until my thirties, maybe even my forties.
Tom Rankin:Right? Politics are boring. Life is good. I'm paying my taxes. I'm raising my kids.
Tom Rankin:I'm going on my vacation. Things are good. It wasn't until it started to feel more tumultuous that I realized I've been pretty naive in ignoring some of this, and I wonder, surely that will happen to this younger generation at some point too. They'll gain a feeling of responsibility, in their community and and want to have facts and lead them, and they'll start seeking that stuff too and will fall prey to the same thing that we've done to ourselves.
Elijah Haahr:Well, and it's I I always say I think conservatives by and large don't wanna be political. We conservatives just generally don't like the government. They don't wanna deal with the government. They want to, like, go out. They wanna make money and have kids, and that's that's what they wanna do.
Elijah Haahr:And so that's why conservatives generally get involved when they're older is because in some way, government is messing with their ability to create a business or to have children. Liberals, on the other hand, generally get involved younger. Part of it is, you know, the term progressive, you want to change things. And so they get involved at a younger age because they see the government as a change agent, and so they get involved in politics a lot younger. Now, obviously, you see some younger people get involved in the conservative side, but I think by and large, the old adage about if you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart.
Elijah Haahr:You're not a conservative at 40, you have no brain. I think that actually is born out in a lot of the age that people get involved in politics.
Tom Rankin:That makes sense, and it certainly makes sense to me too that people on the left would get involved more early, specifically as you're saying, because I just wanted to kind of cherry on top of that point, is that they're advocating for social issues. Right? It's identity politics too. They can see, the social inequalities pretty easily and then also see the government as that change organization. It makes sense to me that they would advocate for change when they can clearly see it.
Tom Rankin:Right? It's not until, say, as you say on a conservative side, you're not seeing those issues necessarily until you're getting older, because you're not involved in some of the more social justice or identity politics, issues.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. You start bumping into the government when and and you're like, why is the government here? I just wanna do this. And then you start to bump into it.
Myke Bates:Yeah. Yeah. That's what and and that's it's always fascinating to me when, like, along you can play those lines out and then see it's often seemingly more often from a conservative mindset. You'll see like people go, oh, wait, you want to do what with what? And then it's when it affects me.
Myke Bates:Right? Like, it's because you're right. When you're focused on family job, you know, your your world view is is pretty narrow. I mean, because you're focused on your family. And and you don't even you're not even afforded really the opportunity or you know?
Myke Bates:How can you focus on the greater thing when when your your needs are are so close to home? Right. Yeah. It kinda makes sense. And then and then later, yeah, you you the kids are out.
Myke Bates:You have more time. You have more whatever. And then, wait. Now you're getting in the way of what? This is not right.
Tom Rankin:I mean, that's
Myke Bates:realizing finally.
Elijah Haahr:I would my early exposure to politics, I was born in Iowa, and my parents decided, my dad had been he had an education degree, but he did construction. My mom had a social work degree. So they both had worked with the school systems, and they decided they want to home school us partially for religious reasons. Partially, they just thought they could do a better job. So they start homeschooling my older sister and then me and then my younger brother.
Elijah Haahr:Well, at some point, they realized that homeschooling in Iowa was not a recognized there's all kinds of problems. The schools could come in. They could audit you. They could make you take tests. They could take your kids away for truancy.
Elijah Haahr:There was it it was not recognized in Iowa. And that was my first exposure to the government. And so my parents decided we're we're gone. So they looked at a few states. My dad was doing construction.
Elijah Haahr:This was around 1990. They had heard, oh, there's there's a lot of home building going on in Springfield, so we'll move there. And so we moved here, and then every year, we would go up to the capital in Jefferson City, and they would introduce us to they would go talk to the reps and be like, hey. We moved here from homeschooling. We wanna keep the homeschooling laws here that are really good.
Elijah Haahr:And that was my first exposure to politics and government aside from just learning it. But essentially, that's the the conservative that's how every conservative starts to you do something until the government gets in the way, and they're like, woah, woah, woah. Who is this group telling me what I can and can't do? That's how I end up sort of in interest in government. That's how my parents first got interested in
Tom Rankin:government. Mhmm. Yeah. I've got to admit I'm I'm pretty libertarian at heart, really. I think more than I'm left or even conservative.
Tom Rankin:I'm Yeah.
Myke Bates:I don't even know. And that's it's always the worst that I are, you know, Republican and Democrat. I think I god, I hate labels so much. I I really do. I I guess my voting actions would always, you know, tend to manifest democrat because but that's how the ballots are.
Myke Bates:But yeah, I hate labels. I hate all that stuff, because there are ideals on both sides that whatever. So stupid. But no. Yeah.
Myke Bates:That, that, that all makes sense. I never really thought about it from, from that point. Like it goes that way because that's your worldview. No wonder that's how it
Tom Rankin:Of course. Yeah.
Myke Bates:Yeah. Oh, so great. I'm curious about one thing you got into politics at a young age. What the hell is it like in there? Oh, yeah.
Myke Bates:So What what like, from from from the curious on the outside, you know, because because everyone just thinks it's just like Wizard of Oz.
Elijah Haahr:You know?
Myke Bates:Like, what's what's going on?
Elijah Haahr:Behind the curtain.
Myke Bates:Right? Exactly. Yeah. And and we we've been, in an interesting spot as a as the company that that we started that we're kind of, adjacent to policy because the payers, of our system, is Medicaid. And so, like, we've we've seen just a little bit, you know, of how how some of the stuff works in there, and I've been involved in it.
Myke Bates:And it's just made me so curious. Like, I have a profound respect for the amount of work that goes into all of this, and I think that's probably lost on a majority of peep I mean, like, speak to this.
Elijah Haahr:So I tell everybody I know. I'm like, everybody should run for office at some point. I think it's a great, personal experience. And the only thing better for you than the run is if you get elected. Two things.
Elijah Haahr:One, the run, you meet your neighbors and neighborhoods in a different way than you ever expected. A lot of that is social media. You have preconceived notions about what everybody thinks, then you go out there and you realize the the nuance and depth of that.
Myke Bates:When we
Elijah Haahr:go back to the last election, I think that's one of the reasons that we could get into the the real political realignments, but mega and Trump became the working class party. The Democrats were the party of the rich elites and the Republicans, even though Donald Trump is a Wall Street Billionaire is the party of Middle America, which is pretty crazy to think about. But a lot of that was the podcast. People in in Springfield, Missouri driving around, listening to Theo Vonn or or whoever might be talk to Donald Trump. They're like, oh, that's pretty good.
Elijah Haahr:They're not watching the news. No. They don't hate the news. They hate the news.
Tom Rankin:That's right.
Elijah Haahr:Right. And so, regardless is I think when you go out and you go campaign, especially when it's not a tightly scripted, tightly controlled campaign So for instance, this is a fun thought experiment. The reason I think that Donald Trump has an intuitive understanding of people. Oh, yes. When Ron DeSantis ran for president against Donald Trump, Ron lost for two major reasons.
Elijah Haahr:One is because there was the raid on Mar A Lago, and the whole Republican party coalesce around Trump is like, they can't do that to us.
Myke Bates:Mhmm.
Elijah Haahr:The second reason is because when Ron DeSantis ran for this the governor in Florida Florida's a big state, bunch of expensive markets. Ron figured out, I gotta go on Fox News, and I gotta own the airwaves. And so he became a fundraising juggernaut. Running for president is totally different than that. Your your initial states, Iowa, New Hampshire, they're small states.
Elijah Haahr:Those people expect to meet you and get an understanding of you. And DeSantis did not thrive in that format. And it's primary you think about a lot of people who got elected president, whether it's it's, Bill Clinton or Jimmy a lot of them, they came. They were really good retail politicians. And so going to Iowa, going to New Hampshire, they can walk into a diner and buy in ten minutes, they're friends with everybody and they have some, and they're really good at that.
Elijah Haahr:And so they would win these early states, and it propelled them to the White House. Trump, even though he doesn't seem on paper, like, he booed go to that, he understands people very well, and he figured out how to connect with people like that. The mega agenda does that. And so I think it's the same that was my experience when I left my house and just I literally had palm cards and started knocking on doors. I had such a different understanding of what my neighborhoods and community cared about, wanted, what motivated people than I did from what I thought I knew.
Elijah Haahr:Mhmm. And so that's why I always tell everybody, running for office incredibly personally rewarding, very thought provoking changes the way you look at everything. And the only thing better is if you get elected because then you go to Jefferson City or Washington or City Hall, wherever you go. And I think from the inside, it totally changes how you look at the process. By and large, I would say two thirds of the people that are in elective office are good, decent people trying to do the best they can.
Tom Rankin:Two thirds. Okay.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. There's a the other third is a combination of people that either, you know, they're out there for the wrong reasons or they're trying to make money or they they got the spot, but they don't really care. Like, there's a third of them that aren't as great. Now, but two thirds of people, even, like, left, right, whatever, if you get elected to office, if you get elected to the state legislature, you get elected November in usually, like, the November, early December, the right before, the right after Thanksgiving, they do a freshman legislative bus tour.
Myke Bates:Mhmm.
Elijah Haahr:So all the brand new people, say 30 or 40, you jump on a couple buses and you spend a week just going around the state. And you sit next to democrat like, you know, you meet you'll meet an octogenarian from Saint Joseph and a and an urban democrat from inner city Saint Louis. And you and you, like, see these parts of the state with people you didn't know, all ages, genders, nationalities, totally different backgrounds. And it again, it's like you see this, oh my gosh. I never thought of about an issue from this perspective.
Elijah Haahr:I remember the first year I was on the legislative tour and a preconceived notion. Okay. We have really bad poverty in Saint Louis and Kansas City, and it's getting worse in Springfield. And then I found out on the tour, oh, no. The worst poverty in Missouri is actually down in the Boot Hill.
Elijah Haahr:It's like Haytai Heights is just this incredibly repressed community. Unemployment was, like, 40%. Like, crazy. But you don't know that because you just perceive, oh, our really depressed areas are gonna be urban decay, middle
Tom Rankin:Inner city. Yep.
Elijah Haahr:Right. And so you just I feel like you develop an incredible understanding in the state that you didn't have before, perspectives you didn't have before. Now I've got really strong opinions on political things. You talked about controversy earlier. I I don't like the idea of term limits.
Elijah Haahr:I think term limits is a bad concept. Missouri is one of 13 states that have term limits for their legislature. I think that's the number. And I was the beneficiary of that. I would have never gotten elected as young as I did with
Tom Rankin:respect them. Some redistricting happened here in the area. Right?
Elijah Haahr:Right. But I also you know, I always say now, unless you are going to term limit the bureaucracy and the lobbying core, you are setting the legislators in at a disadvantage. You spend your first really your first year and sometimes two sort of understanding how the process works. It's like walking into a, an old popcorn popper where everything's flying around and trying to figure it out. And then once you get it, then it's like, well, we've got a limited amount of time.
Elijah Haahr:So I've gotta figure out if I wanna try to be a chairman or if I wanna run for a leadership position, but there's no long term systemic change you can effectuate because your time's so limited there. Whereas bureaucrat can be there for forty years. A lobbyist can be there for forty years. And it was not a company. I'm like, okay.
Elijah Haahr:You hate my bill. That's fine. I'll wait a few years. You'll be out of the way. I'll take the next guy to do it.
Elijah Haahr:Like, that's it's very normalized up there.
Myke Bates:The lobbyists effectively get to run things.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. And I don't know. I wouldn't say they run things.
Myke Bates:But they run things, but they maintain a over influence of power because Of course. They get to project well, I get eight years of people to work with because
Elijah Haahr:And and, also, you know, we will probably never do remote voting
Myke Bates:Mhmm.
Elijah Haahr:In Missouri. You're always gonna go there and vote together. But if you diffuse the power from Jefferson City and said, hey, everybody, just stay in your districts. Get on your little Zooms every day, listen to debate, and then vote. The lobbyists would have no influence at all because the most of their influence is just they just they're in the capital all the time.
Elijah Haahr:They're hired to just sit in your office and hang out and be like, hey. What's up? Like and so you just you kinda develop a a friendship and some you trust and some you don't. Some are good and some are bad. Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:But by and large, they're just they're the people you're around. And so I think, you know, while you're in there, that pressure cooker of of the capital, they have they're like your neighbors at the time. Yeah. And so if the neighbors are all saying one thing, you're like, oh, I I get that point. And so I think the lack of I think term limits puts legislators at some disadvantage there in from an inability to really affect long term change in Missouri.
Elijah Haahr:Now I know a lot of Republicans that think it's a good tool, and and I I would suggest that I don't think term limits has ever I don't think we've had better presidents than we've had congressmen because we've had term limited presidents and not term limited congressman. I think you could find good and bad on both sides, and I don't necessarily think there's been one way or the other.
Myke Bates:What about longer terms for that?
Elijah Haahr:You know, you can do that. I
Tom Rankin:It's it's four terms in in the in the house and in the state anyway. Right?
Elijah Haahr:Right. It's so it's eight years in the house, eight years in the senate. The house is two year terms. The senate is four year terms. They're staggered.
Myke Bates:And Even doubling feels like
Elijah Haahr:it would give you, like
Myke Bates:because I agree that's not a lot of time. I mean, we've been doing our business for, like, six years, and it felt like we spent six years learning things.
Elijah Haahr:Like Well, and in what industry would anybody say, hey. If you go into my industry, you can only do that job for eight years. Right. And you get it done. Exactly.
Elijah Haahr:I mean, you would never be able to hire teachers. If you're like, hey. You can do it for eight years, but then you're you gotta move on to something else. Yeah. You would just never be able to do that.
Elijah Haahr:And, I think term limits grew out of a frustration, particularly in, like, the nineteen nineties of of corruption in congress. And Right. It absolutely existed. Yeah. And but the corruption, a lot of it, to the extent that there was, you know, the house bank scandal in the early nineteen nineties, that got fixed without term limits.
Elijah Haahr:Now corruption has changed. Now you got today, you've got this issue of, you know, you got Nancy Pelosi trading accounts where if you put your money into a certain thing, it trades it like Nancy Pelosi, and that stock account beats the market every year. Well, clearly something it's clearly what she has access to.
Tom Rankin:I need to get out the Nancy Pelosi.
Elijah Haahr:I mean, it's crazy. There's I was looking stock ticker. It's so there's a if you listen to the most recent Tucker Carlson podcast
Tom Rankin:That'll be hard.
Elijah Haahr:Interviews
Myke Bates:I get my Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:This is one, though. It's it's very nonpartisan. He interviews a guy. He's 29 years old, and he basically started watching Pelosi and but, like, investing like her. And he's like, man, other people should do this.
Elijah Haahr:So you
Myke Bates:keep invest like Pelosi?
Elijah Haahr:So all congressmen have to disclose their traits publicly.
Myke Bates:Oh, okay.
Elijah Haahr:And so in in 2020, there was a guy who has a podcast called Unusual Whales, and he would just start noting.
Tom Rankin:Oh, yeah. That's interesting.
Elijah Haahr:Look at these big trades that are being made. So he'd, like, note them. Well, if you dial back, there was a senator from North Carolina who on February he was the head of the senate intelligence committee. So this is 02/07/2020.
Tom Rankin:This is ringing a bell. I'm trying to remember
Elijah Haahr:the chair. You're starting to hear rumors about, like, this the sickness in China. So he writes an op ed on February 7 and says, guys, this this COVID thing is not that bad. And he's the senate intelligence chair, so he knows everything. On February 13, '6 days later, he liquidates his entire retirement account, sells $1,650,000, sells it off.
Elijah Haahr:Then we only know this because there's an investigation. Then he calls his brother-in-law.
Tom Rankin:That's right. So he's
Elijah Haahr:thirty minutes on the phone with him. His brother-in-law calls calls us Ellen Financial Guy and sells his retirement account. Then Burr starts calling his donors and saying, you should sell your retirement account. With within three weeks within three weeks, the market drops 30%. Well, he knew it was bet.
Elijah Haahr:He knew this was coming. And so And
Tom Rankin:was in in a position to Right. Influence the market.
Elijah Haahr:Right. So the DOJ and the SEC, they all investigate him. Eventually, they essentially, they, you know, they don't have recordings of what he said on the calls. They just made some calls and he sold his stock, but they couldn't prove anything, and so nothing happened. So corruption exists no matter what.
Elijah Haahr:It just changes forms. But a guy in 2022 started account because he noticed that every time Pelosi bought stock, within two weeks, there's some great news and the stock shot up. And if she sold stock or shorted stock, it was collapsing. So he set up an account to track her trade.
Tom Rankin:To track her trade?
Elijah Haahr:And now he's got something. It's it's called, like, auto something where you put your money in, and it just when she buys something, it buys something. When she sells something, it sells something. And he's like, we we're crushing the market. We're crushing it.
Elijah Haahr:He's like, we beat every yeah. It's insane. But he's like, we'll be Wells Fargo Edward Jones easily because he's like, they don't even have the information she's got. So he's like, if you wanna invest, don't hire somebody. Just put your money in our thing, and we'll crush the market.
Tom Rankin:Get in the Nancy Fund. Yeah.
Myke Bates:I've gotta get in on this because my Kellogg stock is just not not cutting it for me.
Tom Rankin:Also, with her leaving public office, though, so she'll have, less requirement or no requirement to to publicize that anymore.
Elijah Haahr:Right. And I got you. And so you can literally set it up to match
Myke Bates:any books, though. Right?
Elijah Haahr:You can set it up to match anybody you want. Anybody in DC, any, like, how whatever you want. You can just set it up like that. And it's it's and they're you know, it's very hard inside of trading. It's very difficult to prove.
Elijah Haahr:Unless you got somebody that'll testify. You listen. I sat across the table from Nancy Pelosi, and she's like, please sell your stock because they're gonna announce in two days that they they're recalling everything. Absent that, you just look at the stock trades and be like, maybe they're just just really lucky.
Myke Bates:Right.
Elijah Haahr:Maybe just luckiest person alive.
Tom Rankin:It's easy to see. Hard to prove.
Elijah Haahr:%. Yeah.
Tom Rankin:Oh, man. That's so good. You you know the corruption is there. Well, it boy, there's so many topics to talk about. Right?
Tom Rankin:Because it's like, fraud, waste, and abuse.
Myke Bates:And and and we're gonna off a short one.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. Okay.
Myke Bates:It's that's modern, like,
Tom Rankin:Sure.
Myke Bates:So the I I picked up on this. You said, you know, two thirds are, like, legitimately there to, you know, do good and and do and do their jobs.
Elijah Haahr:Total rough estimate. But I'll say Yeah.
Myke Bates:No. I've always wondered, of the same because that seems to be I I'm always very charitable. And and when I'm, you know, as frustrated as politics can be, I do believe that most people are there to to do good. So I'm curious. How do you work with the the rough percent there that is just clearly there to whatever enrich, just sponge up, be a pain in the ass, like, you know, just that is there by definition to be a thorn in the side.
Myke Bates:How do you work with that?
Elijah Haahr:You know, so the the the best people in politics and really in life is the ability to meet somebody to understand what it is that they want and be able to say, okay. I need something from them, and I can help provide what they want in order to get and so if you get to a place, even the one third listen. If if of that one third and maybe it's quarter, maybe it's 20, whatever it is. Some of them are there, and they're just contrarians.
Tom Rankin:Yes.
Elijah Haahr:And so if you can be like, hey. I'll help you be a contrarian in this other issue if you can help me work on this issue. Or I can show you why you helping me Yeah. Allows you to be a contrarian to everybody else. Some people, it is.
Elijah Haahr:It's a grift. And you're like, listen. Like, there's value in this long term if you support my bill. I don't know. Like, I'm not giving you the value, but I'm sure you could figure out the value if you there's a lot of you just have to figure out what those people are there for and how to how to find out to get get get them to a yes so that it benefits them and it benefits you.
Elijah Haahr:And, you know, not only, like, I ran for office here in Southwest Springfield. It was the Hundred And 30 Fourth District. But then it's a it's like a chess game within the chess game because then you get elected here, and then you go to Jefferson City. And then I ran for leadership there. So now your vote is within the caucus on the floor.
Elijah Haahr:So it's a whole group new group of voters, and they have very different opinions and very different needs and wants and issue sets than your folks back home, and now you have to go campaign amongst them. And you're also you're campaigning against against a bunch of people that are very talented that figured out how to get, you know, 30,000 people from their home district to send them to Jeff City. And so then you develop this game within a game aspect, and it's it's a fascinating, the life of politics and the life of government. And I was just I was gonna say government. And I think some people think that federal government is is like state government on steroids.
Elijah Haahr:I actually think it's the opposite.
Myke Bates:Oh, I
Elijah Haahr:hear you. I think the what you can do in state government is way faster because the scrutiny is different, but it's also the ability to effectuate change happens so much quicker. Yep. I mean, our house of representatives is a 63 people, which is the fourth largest body in the country.
Tom Rankin:That's right.
Elijah Haahr:I don't know why in Missouri it is. But the ability to effectuate change in Missouri is way quicker than it is in a 435 member US house of representatives. And so I think it's you know, Jeff City is like life at a thousand miles an hour. And I think one of the hardest things I did I I'm a lawyer. I don't practice a lot, but I still practice a little bit.
Elijah Haahr:But when I left the legislature, I was working at a large firm, did a lot of corporate work, mergers and acquisitions, and things like that. And I felt like I had gone from this, like, bullet train into jello, and life just ground to it felt like a groundhog. Now really what it was is I basically was eating Snickers every day, and then I went back to eating oranges, and I'm like, this isn't the same. And then after a while, you're like, oh, actually, this is really good. It's just a you just have to understand it in a different matter.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. Right. How do you go ahead.
Myke Bates:I I was just gonna say that I think even we've experienced that just with our little taste in in, you know, being adjacent to policy and such in Jeff City, is yeah. It is kinda just the same. You just have to shift your brain to to apply different labels. It's the same psychology. It's the same whatever.
Myke Bates:It's just, yeah, public service.
Tom Rankin:One of the things that I think may be interesting and and and correct me if I'm wrong because I really don't know. I I have this, inclination or this gut feeling that, as you're suggesting state politics, I think, can be less controversial in in the topics that you're that you're taking forward to your constituents. I don't know, but I assume that because you're focused on state issues and objectives that that you don't necessarily have to get into all the social justice stuff or even go full MAGA. But maybe I'm wrong. You're wrong.
Tom Rankin:But it seems to me that, that there's more performative politics at the federal level than at the state level.
Elijah Haahr:There are more performative politics at the federal level, but that's because you almost never vote on the issues like these big super conservative, You know, like, you might take one vote on abortion every five years in congress. Maybe it's in the budget on whether or not we're to fund, you know, but you almost never take a big vote like that. In the state, you're taking votes like that multiple times as a a session. And so you actually take a ton of votes on very controversial issues all the time. And a lot of the issues that get debated at the national level, they never get to a vote on the national.
Elijah Haahr:Mhmm. But they get to a vote on the state levels all the time. Look at the, like, save women's sports. The idea that people should participate in the sport and the gender that they were born. Ton of conversation about that at the national level.
Elijah Haahr:But, I mean, they almost never I mean, maybe one time has our congressman ever vote on it twice. I don't know. But at the same level, that bill has been it passed a couple years ago, and it passed with the sunset. It's already back up. It was added to a senate substitute a couple weeks ago in our state senate.
Elijah Haahr:So everybody's voted on that issue multiple times a year. And so although it occupies a lion's share of debate at federal level Yep. It actually you vote on a lot at the state level.
Tom Rankin:That's fascinating, actually. And I get that because it seems to me then because you're in front of your constituents more, they're looking for some note of progress.
Elijah Haahr:What How many
Tom Rankin:of the votes are That's not not the word performative, but certainly at the federal level. I don't follow the state politics as much. But certainly, there are votes that occur in at the federal level that are there that are just optics alone. Right? They're entirely optics.
Elijah Haahr:Press releases.
Tom Rankin:All the Democrats are gonna vote against it. All the Republicans for it, and now we have a talking point we can go out to the public with. So it seems to me that that that that is the same thing that's happening a little bit at the state level where you have to actually show, though, your constituents, I made this vote. We we passed this thing.
Elijah Haahr:So you but the thing is at the state level, you actually pass the bills.
Myke Bates:They're right.
Elijah Haahr:At the federal level, I mean, they pass so few bills. They vote on stuff, but almost nothing passes. State level. I mean, even last year, I think last year, we it was like the lowest numbers we bills we passed in, thirty years, and we still passed, like, thirty, forty bills. When I was there, I think the high watermark was probably 2018.
Elijah Haahr:We were past, like, a 50, hundred and 60 bills a year. So it's a lot of bills. And then each some of those bills are omnibus bills. So it might be 30 different different little pieces of legislation put together in one large package, and you can get it done that way, but you couldn't get enough time to get the other ones done. So you're actually moving a ton of legislation and making significant changes in the state every year at the federal level.
Elijah Haahr:It's like you're trying to turn a battleship, and it takes forever. This is like a speedboat just zipping it out of issues and moving around.
Tom Rankin:It's interesting just to talk about at the federal level that you're trying to move a battleship, and I agree that it's probably slow. I guess, but the question is is is how much interest do people actually have in change? So, for example, when when Republicans had access to to the house, right, you had opportunity to to vote on migration issues and did not. And especially when the Democrats obviously brought up the the the immigration bill that they did that was very, much a contrition to Republicans to say, hey. Now is your opportunity to come to the table clearly in order to get Biden an opportunity to win because they've they held the vote that long.
Tom Rankin:Right? And and Republicans rejected it at that point. Right? But I guess that's the question is how much is actually about, trying to get things done versus just trying to get reelected or get US mindset shift. Does that make sense?
Tom Rankin:Yeah. In order to gain because I don't think you're gonna get you're not gonna get supermajorities. I don't think So that's Now maybe you will, but I don't think it's gonna happen.
Elijah Haahr:Kid. My dream like, when I really got interested in politics, my dream was to go to Washington, DC. And then at some point when I was in Missouri and I was watching what happened, I I realized you can't effectuate that much change in DC. You gotta be president or a judge. Congressmen and senators, again, they they give a lot of speeches.
Elijah Haahr:Every once in a while, you might manage to push something through, but you almost never. Most most big changes to federal level are now executive orders and judicial decisions. They just but in the state, in Missouri, legislature does a ton. And so if you want to actually change the conversation, move the policy ball, do it at the state level. And I, I remember, I don't know when it was that I realized I didn't have an interest in going to DC, But at some point, I mean, the congressional race came open in 2022, and all these people called, like, oh, you're gonna run, you know.
Elijah Haahr:And I was like, no. I have like, I've seen what DC is. I love to visit. I love the people that go up there. But it's like, the best day of your life is the day you get elected, and every day after that's worse.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. It's just it's just not the same as you know, in I think there was a time long time ago where big changes happened at in the US House representatives in the senate. That time is gone.
Tom Rankin:Is it is it because the times don't really actually demand them?
Elijah Haahr:I think a part of it is the rules in in congress make it very difficult to make changes, whether it's, you know, the the filibuster in the senate, cloture in the senate. They don't even really debate each other. You know, they have their one minute little scripted C SPAN talking moments, but there's not long long form debate. You know, the days of of Daniel Webster standing on the senate floor, debating, about keeping our union together with his Southern college. That's gone.
Elijah Haahr:You don't, you don't stand there and debate on the us Senate floor. You give a speech, you leave the floor and then they're like, Hey, we're gonna call a vote and you come in and give them a thumbs up, thumbs down. But that stuff happens in Missouri. In fact, I, this is one of my favorite things that the house of representatives I'm biased to love them. The house of representatives has a laptop on every table.
Elijah Haahr:They have a C SPAN. They have like five C SPAN cameras. So when you're on the floor, you're talking and it's it's it's pretty cool. The Senate, there's no there, there are no computers in the floor. They don't allow them on the floor.
Elijah Haahr:There's no cameras in the state Senate. So there's there's audio. There's no video. Senators are just like, we're just never gonna change this. But they actually have long conversations with each other.
Elijah Haahr:And it's fascinating, because I think it's it's I think it's actually good. The last couple of years, there's been some some pretty bad gridlock. It's way better this year. But I think those long conversations with each other, no techno or less technology, long debates with each other is dramatically better than what we see at the federal level where, again, it's all tribalism. We all stay in your own corners.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. You try to change the national's opinions, but you're not actually passing bills and moving the ball forward. Maybe a little bit in the budget process and maybe via executive order.
Tom Rankin:Two two questions then. Well, how would you change it then? Do you have a desire to change it at the federal level, and and what would you change? What is the contributing factor? Right?
Tom Rankin:So, there are some issues about corporate money and politics. Right? It seems to me that you do have corporate interests that are largely, controlling the media. Right? We all know that the media is the mechanism in order to to control the masses.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. Although the media is very different than it used to be. Yeah. I mean, it's, like, if you're a corporation, it's very difficult now to control media because, like, what are you gonna go? Like, x
Tom Rankin:You buy Twitter. Right?
Elijah Haahr:I was gonna say, yeah, you could
Tom Rankin:You buy the wall Wall
Myke Bates:Street or
Tom Rankin:the whole post. But but
Elijah Haahr:if you look at what Elon's done to to x, which is now probably the most popular social media site to discuss politics on. Yeah. Blue Sky is a horrific alternative on the left just like Truth Social is on the right. Neither one of them ever is getting the interest. And Elon has essentially turned Twitter into a no holds barred, anything goes free market space.
Tom Rankin:I'll I'll disagree a little bit, and I'll show you why I'm
Elijah Haahr:I assume going to, like, community notes or algorithms or whatever. And I I I understand that. But there's nowhere else that you could have such an unfettered debate with people anywhere right now in America. Sure. Sure.
Elijah Haahr:And the second part of that is the people that you listen to, you choose them. It used to be thirty years ago, it was NBC, CBS, ABC. Then maybe you had, like, Fox and MSNBC. And now you got LANN and and, you know, Newsmax and whatever else. But now you're on x.
Elijah Haahr:You're just like, let me find the person that I agree with and amplify their stuff. What's really difficult to say, we're gonna control all these voices. So, yeah, corporations each try to get their own people saying what they wanna say, but it's it's you don't just say, oh, we go by NBC and we control the news now that most of America. It's not like that anymore.
Myke Bates:Yeah. No. It definitely is not like that anymore. No.
Tom Rankin:It's not like that anymore. Let me let me dig in there just a hair, and I don't Mike, I know that you've got questions too.
Myke Bates:So let
Tom Rankin:me know if I'm bogarting a hair.
Myke Bates:Well, before you go, 10, and then I've kinda got an idea for a structure you're
Tom Rankin:gonna Okay. Yep. So so one of the things that I did with x when I was deeply disappointed with with what Elon Musk did with x. He he basically, you know, a multibillionaire who clearly showed that he was interested in influencing politics, purchased a mechanism to do so, and intentionally modified the algorithms and the content there were or personally boosted things in order to gain an outcome that he had. And it it it goes against all my principle that some somebody can literally buy that much influence, right out of their pocket.
Tom Rankin:And here's what I noticed. So so as a protest vote, I canceled my account, killed it off, and said, hey. I don't wanna support this, and I wanna show hopefully, it'll show the world that there's a drop in people interested next. You showed them. I showed them.
Tom Rankin:However, I quickly found that there were some content on there that I needed an account to see, so I recreated the account. It haven't followed anybody. All of the recommended content is really right wing. I mean, it's all right wing. I can scroll for a page and a half before I get any, dissenting comments if that makes sense.
Tom Rankin:That tells me that the platform is not just this battleground of ideas. It's really it's really becoming a right wing propaganda machine.
Myke Bates:Which is also say just not to say that it isn't either. Mhmm. It's just densely populated with right wing users.
Tom Rankin:Maybe. I may have a hard time thinking. It may be because certainly you've got some people who've gone to Blue Sky. But the fact that all of the recommended content follow these people Recommend.
Myke Bates:Okay. Yeah.
Tom Rankin:When I look at the follow these people and all these people, the list is a mile long on the right before you ever get to anybody on the left.
Elijah Haahr:I would posit the theory that all media forever has been this way. Mhmm. And so I don't think we'll ever have a truly I mean, people say, oh, well, this is neutral. That's nothing's neutral. Everybody starts with a predilection one way or the other.
Elijah Haahr:And I think that we are now seeing, obviously, Elon, who ten years ago was a massive liberal. And now he's going he's a conservative libertarian. I'm not sure what the right word is.
Myke Bates:Yeah. Good luck coming up with the definition.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. Very, very sort of off but but he certainly is favor of the right in its current form. Yeah. But it's also the first time we've seen somebody, or at least in the modern era, say I'm gonna set up a right right wing network. It is not a and and, obviously, I'm a conservative.
Elijah Haahr:I love it because I, you know, I remember during 2020, and I think this is if you listen to Elon, you believe him, this is what really turned him from left to right is a lot of the social media sites saying, oh, you can't share an opinion about the vaccine or about COVID because the medical community, primarily the Biden administration, the DOJ, were threatening them saying, oh, misinformation gets shut down. And Elon just was like, woah. I thought I was, you know, I thought it was liberal. I thought we were the free speech party, so I'm gonna go start like, I'm gonna go change this. And so for me as a conservative, I can it's not hard for me to find liberal opinions.
Elijah Haahr:I would agree Twitter has moved dramatically to the right since Elon bought it. Obviously, from my perspective, that's a good thing because it's the only only platform that I can really go to and feel the way. Now Facebook, frankly, is trash. It's it's not really worth utilizing this one. And I'm not on
Tom Rankin:I think Zuckerberg fucked us. So my issue with Facebook entirely is that he allowed political speech, through the 2016 and up to the twenty twenty election. Obviously, we had I'm gonna call it the the insurrection, and Facebook and Twitter both cracked down on on Trump and anti anti American speech kinda thing, basically, the riot stuff. The problem is is that Zuckerberg kept that up. Right?
Tom Rankin:He they downplayed all political speech. So those people who are only in Facebook are only getting their cat feeds and the other things and really not seeing some of the political influence that other people are trying to show there. And certainly now, as of the twenty twenty four election, he's like, yeah. No. We're good.
Tom Rankin:We'll go ahead and turn political speech back on. And he's got a right right word lean too.
Elijah Haahr:Well and I don't think Zuckerberg's actually conservative. I think Zuckerberg's just a capitalist.
Tom Rankin:Playing it?
Elijah Haahr:Well, yeah. And I think think stock. Biden was he's a skeptic. Biden was in charge, and so I gotta do whatever they want. And now Trump's in charge, so I'll do whatever, like, is it I think he's just a a straight capitalist.
Elijah Haahr:I think Elon I think he got radicalized. I frankly think it had a lot to do with what some things that happened with some of his many children.
Tom Rankin:Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:And I think he blames the California the the medical community, whatever it was, for a lot of that. And so I think that pushed him a direction, and he said, okay. I'm going to engage. And if you watch, you know, he did spend a lot of money on the election, probably not as much as Soros, but in a different way. But I remember he got interviewed by Joe Rogan, like, two weeks out.
Elijah Haahr:And he was very he was like, if we lose, I'm probably getting arrested, and you're probably next. And, like, he you know, it's it's sort of funny to listen to, but he just was like, listen. We've invaded the home of a president, and we indicted him or former president. We indicted him. And so, listen, this is just the new like, the tactics are rougher than they've ever been before.
Elijah Haahr:And so, like, just be prepared for that. And I think, you know, a lot of whether it's free speech, what happened with his his children, or his visualization of what happened at the federal level made him much more conservative than he was. And so he's like, we're gonna create a I'm gonna go find a social media site that will be that. Facebook was never gonna be it. I'm not on TikTok because I think it's I don't like ByteDance, and I I I don't wanna sell my data, or whatever.
Elijah Haahr:And I've never been on Instagram. So x is really all I've got, and I love it for that. I don't post nearly as much as a lot of people, but I read content there. That's where I go for almost all my content.
Myke Bates:Do you do you have a and we so we've actually talked about social media, endlessly. And I'm curious. Do you have a desire at all for a different experience in social media? Like like like, kind of just pause and think about social media as it exists right now. Somebody posts something, there's a comment thread.
Myke Bates:You can engage in that content comment thread with short form. Like, it's it's hard to, like, engage. Like, just kind of fully rethink this idea. Like, I would love the idea of something that was actually joyful to use again and not necessarily something that's like, I'm hopping in the cockpit to, like, you know, go on a mission, to
Tom Rankin:Get my rage on.
Myke Bates:Right. Or or whatever. Like, I missed that. Do you desire that at all, or or do you like where we're at? I mean, I
Elijah Haahr:don't necessarily like where we're at, but I think a lot of people it's the same thing we started with. Most of the times, you get interested in the government because you either wanna change something or the government is impeding something you're doing. And so most times, your reaction to government is generally negative.
Myke Bates:Mhmm.
Elijah Haahr:And when you have a social media site that allows you to say that publicly, we take in the the the middle school bathroom wall, and it's now what we log into every day. And so it's rage. It's like, oh my gosh. I hate this person. Yeah.
Myke Bates:No. We've we've that's what that's why I come back to the simple idea we fucked ourselves with technology.
Elijah Haahr:Well, there's there's a local
Myke Bates:no other choice to engage in these things that because I heard you say just a moment. X is all I have. Like, the x is what I have. I get it. X is the best yet, but x fucking blows.
Myke Bates:And, like, all these things suck. I wish there was something new.
Tom Rankin:It all here's it all blows for for getting pushback. I'm I'm convinced that certainty is the killer of of really all cooperative work. Right? Anybody who feels like they are certain and absolute in anything that they believe is not going to entertain other ideas. But when you're not even presented with other ideas, then you get confidence that says, hey.
Tom Rankin:I'm right. I've not been pushed back on yet. So
Myke Bates:I know you're going back on the mechanics of how social media works currently.
Elijah Haahr:Well and I mean, how often do you see the the post? If you don't agree with me, I unfriend me.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. I saw one just the other day. Yeah.
Myke Bates:I can't stand it like that. It feels like the people of the people, everyone, right, is just like they have this weird idea of what social media even is. Who on earth thinks they're actually gonna change anyone's mind by going on there and saying such a thing?
Tom Rankin:But this
Elijah Haahr:is why people wake up on election day or the day after shocked at who won because everybody they knew was all one
Tom Rankin:winner. I
Elijah Haahr:cannot believe this. And it it's like
Tom Rankin:You've not been paying attention.
Elijah Haahr:A it is a reset of your self to to to go through it now. I I mean, I'm not the first campaign I ever worked on. I was, like, 12 years old, and I we lost, but I thought we were gonna I was so convinced we were gonna win. And so now I basically just like, okay. Elections are always gonna be terrible nights.
Elijah Haahr:Nine times out of 10, they are even when, like, a few of your friends win, you have other friends that lose. But I'm so used to that. I'm just like, listen. Like, I'll have my friends, like, oh, we're Trump's gonna get 60% of call. Okay.
Elijah Haahr:He's not. He'll be like, if we can win I mean, frankly, Trump did better than I expected, but I'm like, you know, if we can if we can pull these three states, we probably can can squeeze through with, oh, you're so, like, in 2016.
Tom Rankin:Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:My friends are, oh, Trump's gonna win. I'm like, I I think Clinton's got this one. Then, of course, like, they're all like, you don't know anything about politics. You're like, yeah. No other social poll policy person in the country does either because we all thought this was Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:Everybody is. Then you realize it can't
Tom Rankin:silver's huge failing. Right?
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. And so this is one of the things over the past few years. Polling has taken a tremendous punch in the face.
Tom Rankin:Polling is not useful.
Elijah Haahr:Well, you you think that, but then you realize just like just like x, there's actually a million different polling companies. And, you know, there's one called Signal, c y g n a l. C y g
Tom Rankin:n a l. Okay.
Elijah Haahr:They're private, and they do poll polling for mostly Republican candidates. But according to Nate Silver, they were an a or a plus pollster in eighteen, twenty, twenty two, and now '24. They've, like, nailed it pretty consistently. And I was texting their pollster because I got to do them through a campaign some time ago, and I was texting their pollster about the weekend before the November election. And if you guys remember, this is digging Louise a little bit.
Elijah Haahr:Anne Selzer from Iowa had released a poll that said Biden's gonna win Iowa. And that was 20 points different than anybody else at Iowa.
Tom Rankin:If she was a respectable pollster
Elijah Haahr:The called at all the
Myke Bates:time with these
Elijah Haahr:The most respected pollster. Des Moines registered the the best news service in Iowa. And so it was like a a little mini shock wave went off and all the demos were like, we're gonna win in a landslide. And a lot of publics, including me, were like, our polling guys are missing this. So I texted my friend Brent who runs signal, and I was like, how much stock do you put in this?
Elijah Haahr:And he's like, no. He's like, I I'm telling you, he's like, we're running folks groups every day in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan. And he's like, Trump's gonna win, and it's just a matter of how many of the swing states he's gonna he's gonna get. And at the time, I sort of chalked it up to, okay. This guy is a Republican pollster, but I knew he had a great track record.
Elijah Haahr:And then on election day, everything he said was a % right, and Anne just missed it. And if you look at now, if you look at and even at the time, she didn't release the crosstabs on the poll. There's a lot of, like she just got a really terrible data sample. And, you know, some people argue she did it as a deal with the Bidens. I'm not convinced that.
Elijah Haahr:I think she just
Tom Rankin:hard time believing it.
Elijah Haahr:Missed. But it's also weird that she had never missed in Iowa in, like, thirty years, and then she missed by, like, 20 people. Exactly. Like, so far off the reservation that it was like, I don't even know how you unless you've just said, we're only gonna go to Downtown Des Moines and poll. I don't know how you missed the state that bad.
Myke Bates:Which she, yeah, obviously would not have done.
Tom Rankin:Yeah.
Myke Bates:Yeah. When that came out, I was not one of the Democrats that was excited. I'm like, no. Something is something is odd here.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. And it's tough because you'll see these these outlier liar polls, and they're either just a bad data sample or that person has figured out something else something out no one else has got to. Right. And you can never it's you never know until afterwards. But that was bad.
Elijah Haahr:I just remember talking to a single and being like, man, I this this looks bad. And he's like, totally off the reservation. And I said, I was like, but you're not pulling at Iowa. And he's like, doesn't matter. He was like, we've pulled Iowa so many times.
Elijah Haahr:He's like, I know where that state is. And he said, that state is not you know, it's I think it was a plus nine for Trump in 2020, and it was they were saying it was, like, plus three for for by or, Harris. And he's like, it's not a third it's not a state that can swing 13 points like that. It just can't do it.
Myke Bates:Yeah. Well, so, I mean, as you know, I mean, there's many, like, family divides that have happened, you know, over the past ten years, you know, just I mean, it happens. Conservative family members, kids, like, they just it it's hard to find common ground. And, I've gone through the oh, to an extent with my family, certainly not to, like, the, like, explosive and tumultuous end, that I see others, you know, going through. That really
Elijah Haahr:sucks.
Myke Bates:But I would say there is a stark divide in, like, our worldview seemingly. And and that's the thing that I can't stop coming back to is, like, I just don't think there is necessarily. I actually think, you know, if you just wanna for sake of conversation, we'll just call it MAGA. I I don't think that there is, you know, ridiculous and and evil as, you know, liberals make them out to be, whatever. And that's the whole, again, whole idea of the show.
Myke Bates:But I am actually pretty convinced that they're, won over by bad ideas that, they can't help. And we go back to media, we go back to social media. You know, there's these pressures that exist in the world that, they are just at no fault, for being burdened by, I think. And so I come back to the simple idea all the time that like it's an, I might shoot myself in the foot on this topic because it's a little broad and I like to stay pretty narrow. But I feel like Trump I will I will just say, like, MAGA.
Myke Bates:Trump at his his actions, not his soul necessarily, but overall the actions that he's showing on display. When we see Trump come out and speak every day, when we watch the, you know, the Zelensky thing when he's when he's in the office, his actions, the words, the things we can observe and see seem really malicious. And and I get that he's serving a greater good of, you know, whatever the goals are. And we can always say, like, well, what's the greater goal here? What's the ultimate action?
Myke Bates:And I think maybe that's the wrong question to be asking because it seems like there's such malice that seems to be leading where everything is going right now. And, I'm convinced that people are good. And so seemingly while there's so many evil ish actions, like we can pick any item in the news, right? We could pull up anything. Ukraine, for example, like if, if, if the what is the goal of, like, when he had Zelensky?
Myke Bates:And the ultimate idea here is to stop a war, stop people from dying. Right? Like, that's the ultimate goal. Right? Right.
Myke Bates:Okay. Cool. What happened?
Elijah Haahr:Sure. Well, I the problem with the Ukraine's tuition is you have to go back to what started it. For thirty years, Russia had said, you can't let Ukraine join NATO. If you let them join NATO, we have a problem. And they said that primarily because they're like, we don't wanna have Russian or we don't wanna have missiles sitting on our border.
Elijah Haahr:So knowing there's more context that I probably not provided in in full, When when 2022, I think, when when Ukraine joined and and, Russia said, okay. We're going to go into the Ukraine because we don't wanna have Russia missiles on our border, whatever it is. If you if you if the problem is is that Trump came in after that had already occurred, and I think that was probably the inflection point towards towards a a bad situation. The biggest challenge we've got now and this is one thing Trump is a big believer in and has been since he first I think I think it was, like, 1989 when he first went to New Hampshire and and talked to the Republican club about running for president. Took out, like, full page ads in the Wall Street Journal.
Elijah Haahr:And he talked about, like, two or three issues, one of which was he talked about the our debt. He talked about our our borders, illegal immigration, and he talked about, tariffs. It's, like, three things he and then tariffs was, like, to the extent of, like like, why are we the world's policeman? He those are, like, the three issues that actually to Trump's core he cares about. I don't know that Trump cares about a lot of the stuff that he fights for these days.
Elijah Haahr:Those things he's cared about his whole life. And a lot of it is business related. But, anyways, so he gets to a point now where he's like, hey. What's our interest in being on the other side of the world in this war? And particularly, I whether or not Trump likes Putin, which is very hotly debated.
Elijah Haahr:We are in this uneasy position right now. As you stated earlier, we have been the world's superpower most of our lives since World War two got over.
Tom Rankin:Exactly. Yep.
Elijah Haahr:And we're we're still there, but the the the delta between us and two and three is is starting to shrink. And right now, Russia and China are two and three. And I think there's a big belief, particularly by Trump, that if we get real sideways with Russia, that they're gonna go to China and say, let's team up against America. And that in this conflict, we are pushing them towards China. And so we don't wanna do that.
Elijah Haahr:It it's in our best interest to keep them separate from China and either with us or at least, like, neutral. And so from Trump's perspective, whatever we gotta do to keep them from going to China and kicking us out as the world's biggest bad guy is worthwhile. Then on top of that, you got the situation of Ukraine as a ton of minerals, and so it's like, well, if we're going to stick our, you know, stick our fingers in the eye of Russia, We need to have these minerals. We have some valid US interest there, and you got all of this stuff sort of floating around. And then on top of that, you've got you know, we've given Ukraine, what, $350,000,000,000 or some crazy number, and the next closest country has given them.
Elijah Haahr:I mean, there's, like it's not even comparable. And so I think all of that is point. Yep. Sure. And and all of that comes together, and Trump doesn't see value in us being over there.
Elijah Haahr:And there's a lot of conversation points about what Zelensky was told prior to coming to the White House. You know, was he if I was Zelensky and I had campaigned for Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania in October, I would have come hat in hand and been like, what do what can we do? Yeah. Zelensky and he met with some Democrats prior. Klobuchar posted a picture of her with him, but he came in a little bit more abrasive.
Elijah Haahr:And it was actually not even Trump and Zelensky that really started getting into it. It was more Vance. Vance very different tactically than than, you know, Mike Pence was. And so Vance and Zelensky started getting into it, and then Trump got on it. And at that point, it was really over.
Elijah Haahr:And, again, listen, you know, you can blame whoever you want. I personally thought Zelensky came in and taught a class in how not to do international diplomacy with somebody that you know doesn't like you. He, like, looked for reasons to go them into it. And I don't you know, there's some suspicion that maybe Zelensky is trying to get other members of the world to back them, or he wanted to, like, you know, I don't know what the reasoning was, but in in my opinion, a lot of these issues with Ukraine has to do with our and certainly Trump's belief that we cannot push Russia towards China. And so if we can figure out a way to to get a peace deal done where we're no longer adverse to Russia, that is in our long term best interest.
Myke Bates:That's good. Do you do you think it would be do you think it'd be better to be transparent about that?
Elijah Haahr:I don't I mean, maybe, but also if Trump goes out and says, well, I really don't want Russia aligning themselves with China, that, you know, that then it gives Putin and China, frankly, a chance to be like, oh, they're kinda getting nervous battles. Let's go make a deal. I think a lot of people I mean, they don't need Putin
Myke Bates:They're not stupid.
Elijah Haahr:Right. I think Putin knows, hey. We want we want Russia to be with us and not China. I think he knows that, but he also knows, listen. If I go with China, we're still two and three up against one.
Elijah Haahr:The United States is still number one. Like and so that's not a thing you wanna take on unless you have to. And so we're all in this sort of state of uneasiness. It's not cold war and easiest, but it's uneasiness. And listen, if if we're gonna be over there playing world cop over there, we gotta be getting something out of the deal.
Myke Bates:Yeah. Do you think I I agree a lot of what you have to say, but but I'm I'm trying to pull a parcel part some of the tactics because, like, I get it. We we don't we don't want Russia joining up with China. Right? Like, we kinda don't want that.
Myke Bates:But then, like, god, Trump's tactic. And I know he plays chess. He's the art of the deal, this guy, you know, like, whatever. But, like Of course. His actions, it's hard to think they are, like, sticking it to Putin in any identifiable way right now.
Elijah Haahr:Perhaps what I also think if, if Trump had been in office, if he'd run one reelection in 2020, I don't think Russia ever invades Ukraine.
Myke Bates:Oh, sure.
Elijah Haahr:And, and, and frankly, and like, I don't, I don't think, I don't think much more Zelensky than I do of Putin. They're both dictators. They both don't allow elections. They both have, like, you know, challenges in their own country. They both have enriched themselves.
Elijah Haahr:So it is sort of a weird situation to be like, hey. Let's go let's go be traffic cop on the other side of the world. I the seeing the value to The United States' interest, I have a hard time seeing it. I don't like countries invading each other, but that in and of itself is not a sufficient reason for us to be involved.
Myke Bates:Yeah. Why when you watch when you watch I assume you watched I
Elijah Haahr:watched night. I I watched it. I watched clips of it, and then I went back that night and watched the whole fifty minutes from start to finish because I wanted to see where it went off the re because Right. We see just, like, a few things where they're arguing, but there's, like, twenty five minutes of, like, con good conversation. And then it starts to get a little chippy, and then it kinda comes back, and then it just goes off the edge.
Elijah Haahr:And then it was like, you need to go. And they had lunch waiting outside. They're like, nah. Don't even stay for lunch. We're just gonna eat your lunch.
Elijah Haahr:You can leave. Like, it was it was rough. And then, you know, now you've got who I think really one of the stars of the Trump administration has been Rubio as secretary of state. Rubio is is taking a pretty aggressive tack with them. But Rubio is also like, listen, there's a way we can put this back together, but some things are gonna have to change.
Elijah Haahr:And so listen, I maybe I'm an optimist. I actually think what'll come out of all of this, I think will be really, really good. And I don't know. You know, I personally I felt like Zelensky was sort of trying to goad them during the conversation. And I thought several times they did take the bait and then Vance snapped and took it.
Elijah Haahr:And then from there, it was just down the road. But again, I put the blame on Zelensky. I would have come in hat in hand. I screwed up. I shouldn't have, like, I should have been messing around in your elections.
Elijah Haahr:I should have said night, like, mean things about you. Like, I wanna work with you. I want help. My people need help. And listen, I know people don't like this, but we're sued to the white house.
Elijah Haahr:Like little things like that. I don't, I don't Elon Musk shows up at a t shirt, but Trump loves Elon Musk. He doesn't like you. So if all your advisors are saying, let's do what we can to like ingratiate ourselves, do it. How hard is that really to do?
Elijah Haahr:You have to humble yourself a little bit, but do it. It just, it seemed like an in I felt like Zelensky brought that upon himself.
Myke Bates:Why do you think that would so I was watching all of that too, and and I'm curious. The Trump cabinet and just that the people that are always in the room while this stuff is happening, do you find them childish?
Tom Rankin:I don't. Nope. No? Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:In fact, I find them significantly more adulterous than his first administration. I think his first administration was very unfocused. They did some things that I liked, but they were very unfocused and they hit he'd picked these people, but they they were not reading from the same choir book. They were all going different directions. And I attribute a lot of this to Susie Wiles, his chief of staff.
Elijah Haahr:Very tactically, most of his administration is is reading from the same page. Now we've you got, like, a little bit of conflict. You've got Pam Bondi being upset at Kash Patel about the Epstein list. You've got some small kinda, like, conflict. But by and large, I think this administration has been way more focused, and they're all moving the same direction than than his last one was.
Myke Bates:The Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend, I can't think of his name, the reporter, The one that notably shouted, why aren't you wearing a suit?
Tom Rankin:Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Myke Bates:That was childish.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. But well, that's a reporter. I mean, it's not part of his Trump's cabinet. Yeah. Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:People. Candidly don't think very much of marginally Taylor Greene.
Myke Bates:I mean I I was curious. No. I I don't third that are there
Elijah Haahr:for Yeah. Well, I don't think she's necessarily well, I don't know her at all. I don't think she is very helpful in moving the conservative ball forward. I don't think she is, you know, I don't think she's an effective congressperson, but again, I I think Congress is by and large a morass and nothing happens there. So I don't think she's also that relevant either.
Elijah Haahr:Sure.
Myke Bates:So not him, but okay. Let's say, the vice president. Okay. So when the vice president laid into him, that was childish.
Elijah Haahr:So I I I thought I thought I didn't think it was childish at all.
Tom Rankin:Let I thought
Myke Bates:Wait. Hang on.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. So
Myke Bates:and I wanna rewind back to, like, first administration Trump. Like, we know what Trump does. Right? We know how Trump acts. We know that he's commented on Zelensky's dress many times.
Myke Bates:That room knew that he was not gonna dress up. I mean, they knew, and Zelensky stated why he doesn't dress up. So there's no reason to believe that he would have come in a suit. And the way that it seemed to come out of the canon, it seemed to suggest that they knew. I mean, even when he arrived, Trump greeted him with, oh, you dressed up this like, so they knew.
Myke Bates:And so that makes me wonder, like, why would they act like that? I mean, they're leaders of the like, I get it. Like, that asshole should dress up. I I I get it. I get it.
Myke Bates:But, like, I'm just thinking, Peter, like, I'm the leader of the free world or one step down from it, and I'm parading somebody.
Elijah Haahr:So if I let's say my grandparent let's say I need $500 to make rent this month for my grandparents. Mhmm. And I know they hate my tattoos, but I still go in a tank top with the tattoos out and and ask for money, I'm probably not getting the money. So if I want that money, I should probably put on a long sleeve long sleeve dress shirt and comb my hair and go there. And maybe it I think it's stupid.
Elijah Haahr:But Zelensky, it was like he came in like you owe me the money. We don't owe them anything. In fact, from Trump's perspective, us being there is actually outside of our vestiges. So why give him an excuse to find reasons to be upset? It felt like a middle finger.
Myke Bates:It feels still to me, it feels I know that's what I'm gonna get. If I know my grandkid is not gonna cover up his tattoos, I've got plenty. I don't think my grandparents like them.
Tom Rankin:I was
Elijah Haahr:just trying to think of a situation that's Yeah.
Myke Bates:No. Yeah. And so, like, if I explained to my grandparents, like, why my tattoos were so important to me, and and and I chose to stand by that conviction, even though I know there's a chance I may not get that right money that I really need. Yeah. I mean, that's whatever.
Myke Bates:That's my thing. But as my grandparents then, I think as somebody standing outside, you could go, kind of a shitty thing. Not to still cheat.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. But, again, your grandparents don't care if people think they're shitty. They just No.
Myke Bates:I know. At the
Elijah Haahr:end of the day, it's just about I'm just
Myke Bates:talking about my grandparents' actions, though. Like, it's it's kinda childish of them to respond that way.
Elijah Haahr:I think Trump took it as an insult. He's he's said numerous times he thinks Zelensky should dress up, and he took it as an insult that that Zelensky didn't respect him. And I mean, it Big whoop. I mean but if
Myke Bates:He didn't respect you. Big whoop. Yes. You're gonna get your feelings hurt by that? That's pretty childish.
Myke Bates:I don't
Elijah Haahr:get your feelings hurt, but you also have to give them the money anyways.
Myke Bates:No. You don't have to. I mean, you can be a dick about it and not do it. And, like, that's
Elijah Haahr:Well, I I
Myke Bates:will go choosing why are we choosing these things?
Elijah Haahr:So I will I I have a pretty strong opinion that Donald Trump two point o is much more I don't wanna say dark MAGA, but much angrier than Donald Trump was.
Myke Bates:Well, he was angry.
Elijah Haahr:People don't remember. Donald Trump ran for president in '15 '16. He was the funniest dude out there.
Myke Bates:He
Elijah Haahr:he He was hilarious.
Myke Bates:He is funny.
Elijah Haahr:You know, making jokes about people on stage, talk commenting on their small hands and stuff like people never done that for hilarious. Well, like, some people think
Tom Rankin:it was funny, though.
Elijah Haahr:So I thought a lot I thought Donald Trump by and large was a funny candidate. I thought he was humorous. I thought a lot of Republicans thought he was very humorous.
Myke Bates:The disability making fun of is fucking hilarious. Right?
Elijah Haahr:Again, we talk about locker room talk. Yes. Not not funny.
Myke Bates:To be clear. To be clear.
Elijah Haahr:In the locker room, though, that's what people do. And so for so long, we had had a batch of candidates that you think about, like, Mitt Romney and John McCain. If somebody stood up and said, oh, Barack Obama's not an American, they immediately jumped to Obama's defense. Oh, you can't say it. That's rude.
Elijah Haahr:Meanwhile, the Democrats were calling them the antichrist. Yeah. And so it was a very one-sided fight. So Donald Trump came along. He was like, I'm gonna insult insult them.
Elijah Haahr:I'm gonna make fun of them. And so for Republicans who are like, oh my gosh. Finally, we're using their tactics and, like, being, like, insulting. They thought it was hilarious. Then you fast forward to 2024.
Elijah Haahr:Donald Trump is not as much a funny guy. He's pretty pissed off. And I think a lot of that came from what happened in 2020 and 2021, you know, the the raid on Mar a Lago, the indictments in New York and DC and Florida and Georgia. Arizona. Arizona.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. Yeah. The the subsequent revelations about a lot of the stuff that happened, whether it was with Fannie down in Georgia, wherever it was. I think Trump became very angry about that. And, you know, we'd never seen a a department of justice invade the home of a a former president.
Elijah Haahr:And I talk to my democratic friends all the time. They're like, well, Trump did stuff nobody else did. We can go down this aisle of that forever. But Trump's very angry. Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:And it people can say it's childish, but he's going to say, listen, they they invaded my home. They went in with, like, weapons and shoot to kill orders. Like, what they did to me was so egregious that I don't care if people think I'm childish because I won and the American people with me and I it's the largest Republican presidential win since 02/2004.
Myke Bates:Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:So it's like I have I have a twenty year high watermark doing this. I've got the people at my back. Yeah. And just because a minority group of people don't like the way I do things, I smash things and I break stuff, and that's what they wanted. Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:And so I don't think he necessarily cares that people think it's childish. It's like, oh, I'm Yeah.
Myke Bates:I know. He he certainly doesn't care.
Elijah Haahr:And frankly, I think by and large, the American people don't care about the war in the world.
Myke Bates:There it is. Alright. They
Elijah Haahr:don't care a bit.
Myke Bates:Yep. So that is where I keep saying I I keep coming back to it doesn't make sense because by and large, the American people are Christian. This is a religious right dominated political system that is just totally okay with this stuff. And and Well, okay with what stuff? The totality of it, that that they are ecstatic about this character that's that's running the country.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. Ecstatic. Who's Jehu from the Bible?
Myke Bates:Jehu. I'm not familiar with Jehu.
Elijah Haahr:Oh, no. No. Jehu in the Old Testament. So if you First name has heard that Well, this is try that. So in the Old Testament, Elijah, my name is nice.
Elijah Haahr:Was a prophet, and he went to battle with Ahab and Jezebel. And this was like they had this, like, long battle where they were always trying to capture him, and he would fight with their profits of bail. But it's not Elijah who actually killed Je Jezebel. It was Jehu. And Jehu was this, like, sort of like crazy king who who, like, again, smashed things, broke stuff.
Elijah Haahr:Not really that great a guy did some good things, did some bad things. He's the one that ended up having Jezebel killed. And I think a lot of Christians are like, Trump's like our Jehu. He does a lot of dumb stuff and he's kind of a jerk, But you know what? Sometimes you need a bad guy to break things and kill the bad people, and that's how they see Trump.
Elijah Haahr:They don't see him as their he's not a he's not messianic despite, you know, the the weird pictures you might see occasionally on social media. They just see him as, like, you know what? Sometimes you need an asshole to to break the break the bad bad people, and that's what Trump's doing for them.
Myke Bates:And and I can even kind of understand that too. I that's why I love Bernie Sanders. Right? Like, I not that he was an asshole, but the to the opposite side of that coin, like, somebody needs to get in there and do something different. So, like, I can understand where this feeling comes from.
Myke Bates:Absolutely. But but where I stop understanding it is when you can, now that we've had a history of of Trump and, like, we know what he has done, and we can kind of already see what he's setting up to do and and will likely succeed at and and continue to do, I think you can actually start adding up in the objective columns, from even a Christian right perspective, and start to tally them up and and ask, like, are the pluses better than the minuses?
Elijah Haahr:So if you're a Christian conservative in politics
Myke Bates:Like, hugely so. Not even just, like, oh, we're one over.
Elijah Haahr:If you're a Christian conservative in politics and you watched like, Mitt Romney is your the twenty twelve Mitt Romney who was super respectful, never with you and his wife, never drink alcohol, great family, straight out of central casting, but like was a terrible candidate just got beat up by Obama, or George w Bush who was the compassionate conservative, but in office government exploded, he did Medicare part D and he like a lot of things that conservatives like, ah, that's not really what I signed up for. They were, like, tired of it. They're like, maybe the maybe the the the nice looking and decent guy can't move the ball forward on issues we care about. And so after a while, they just, like, we're tired of that. We we want a guy who's not nice looking and not nice to to to break things, and that's what that's what they wanted.
Elijah Haahr:And so by and large, Christian conservatives, you know, if you talk to them, they may be like, oh, yeah. I don't really like, you know, when he posts this or when he says that, but they're getting the results they they haven't gotten since the early Reagan years. And they're like, okay. We'll take it.
Myke Bates:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's where we're at. And and I think in my estimation, and this is where only time can tell, we're at that kind of point in time where something could change here, like big, right?
Myke Bates:With with the next four years as as Trump as president. May maybe, maybe not. I don't know. Like, do you feel like we're on a path towards, like, pretty significant change?
Elijah Haahr:Yes. It's the biggest both biggest policy change we've ever I've never in my lifetime seen a president that's actually cutting spending. Yeah. The closest we got would have been, like, the the the mid nineties under Clinton, you know, Democratic president, Republican house. Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:They Clinton had already passed a big tax increase. Republicans wanted to cut. So that's where we got the last balanced budget, 1987 maybe. The heap wealth of reform, triangulation, all that stuff is going on. That's the only time in my lifetime we've been even close to this as far as getting our spending in order.
Elijah Haahr:There was the Bull Simpson Commission maybe fifteen years ago where they Obama put this group together, and they got close recommendations. And then the leaders in both parties were like, no. These these are terrible votes. We're not gonna make our members take it. But the fact that we're seeing spending cuts, bureaucratic regime change, bigger than we've ever seen before in my life.
Elijah Haahr:I would argue that there's a also a political realignment. I think, you know, you take sixteen twenty four dash of twenty twenty, and we have seen how the Republicans are now the party of the the working class. There's a group that's been coined. It's called ticked off working class diverse. Something rather that group of people, young people, I think is what it ends up.
Elijah Haahr:It's basically people 45. They work for a job. They're very angry, and a lot of, and they're also pretty diverse. And they moved massively towards Trump in 2024. And it's a combination of things.
Elijah Haahr:A lot of it, I think, is is, you know, watching what happened with COVID, particularly in, like, businesses shutting down and things like that. But then they also a lot of them, they viewed Biden as totally out of touch. They viewed they hate the, they hate Kamala, couldn't stand her. They thought a lot of the the the social value things, whether it's, women men and women's sports or the trans agenda, a lot of that, they have, I would say, as much traditional, but even traditional sense of, like, nineteen nineties values. They thought we're going way out on this limb on stuff.
Elijah Haahr:And so they swung real heavily to Trump. They're also very very heavily influenced by the make America healthy agenda. They love our he might be the most popular person in that group. The idea and you see it all the time. Cold plunges, saunas, red light therapy, vitamin supplement, all this stuff that people are doing.
Myke Bates:Put their wings in the thing. You see that one?
Elijah Haahr:No. I've not seen that. This is definitely not loved that one. Oh, I'm not
Tom Rankin:You pushed
Myke Bates:it on his show?
Tom Rankin:Light up in Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. Oh, well, UV light is I mean, red red light therapy is UV light. Well, I speed up. I mean, I I know a lot of people that, you know, I've even got I bought a little one on Facebook Marketplace where I buy all that stuff. Like a little brick.
Myke Bates:A little dick one? Not that one.
Elijah Haahr:I bought one that you lay under it. It's supposed to be like a red light thing. It was like $10. I tried a couple times. I was like, I don't know if this is real or not, but like, I I I purchased a sauna recently and I had to deconstruct and reconstruct.
Elijah Haahr:But I don't have a sauna in my house and I go sit up for thirty minutes a day. I, when I went to OTC, I took 24 classes. I got 23 a's and a b biology was the one area I didn't get a and I have no idea if this stuff works, but I'm into it. And I'm also, so I'm not, I, I, I'm white, but I'm under 45. I'm working class.
Elijah Haahr:I'm ticked off. And the make America healthy thing has been really appealing to me even before Kennedy was into it. Like, in the last few years, I've gotten really into weightlifting and and supplementing. And so that group of people, they move really heavily away from Democrats and towards Republicans. And the Democrats are gonna have to figure out, okay, how do we get that?
Elijah Haahr:Because that by nature, they're younger. They're very diverse. By nature, that should be Democratic votes. And so the democrats have to figure out, okay. It's we have to figure out how to get them back.
Elijah Haahr:And for some reason, the democrats, they have not figured that out. They've gotten to a point where they're like, we hate Elon Musk. They got that down, but that's not set. Like, Americans aren't like, oh my like, the the normal dude that drops his his kid off on the way to work in the morning, he doesn't care about Elon Musk. He just doesn't.
Elijah Haahr:And, like, when they're cutting USAID, nobody cares about that because it's not affecting us here in the Midwest. The silver the biggest cut that's affecting us in in in Missouri so far. The biggest thing is a bunch of grants to wash you. Ain't nobody in Missouri care about grants to wash you except a few professors that are all big progressives. And so, like, the idea that Democrats are gonna go out every day and hold a press conference and rail at Elon up, they're they're not making any progress.
Elijah Haahr:So the Democrats have to regard, okay. How do we go get these younger working class diverse people back at our party? And, I mean, you look at, like, heavily Latino counties, Cuban communities in Southern Florida, Latino districts in Southern Texas, massive swings to Republicans. And, like, those voters, the mainstream media would have said they're never Republican voters. And now they're, like, 80% Trump people.
Elijah Haahr:They love the guy. They love Kennedy. And the Democrats have to figure out how do we go get them back. They don't care about Ukraine. They don't care they they they they care about keep and again, it goes back to what I said.
Elijah Haahr:They only care about the government to the extent the government gets in their way. As of right now, they're just like, I wanna be healthy. I wanna have a job to go to. And Trump spoke their language and Harris did.
Myke Bates:You are not wrong, sir.
Elijah Haahr:And I'm not sure I would say the democrat
Myke Bates:about democrats not caring about Ukraine, but
Elijah Haahr:Well, well, but the the the voters. Voters. These these
Myke Bates:these are If
Elijah Haahr:you're 45 and you're going to work every day, you don't Yeah. Risk. In fact, if anything that you're irked that your money is going overseas, you're like, no. Reinvest it here. We got, like, you know, hurricanes and wildfires, and and our money is going abroad to some country I've never heard of and and didn't know before a year or two ago.
Elijah Haahr:Like, they just don't care. Yeah. And frankly, from a Christian perspective,
Myke Bates:Christians, the the If you don't say Christians also don't care.
Elijah Haahr:I mean, you don't care about the government sending money because that's I don't
Myke Bates:think they care about the words in their own book.
Elijah Haahr:Oh, well, I totally disagree with you there. But Jesus never instructed the government where to do charity. He instructed Christians.
Myke Bates:If we go back to the idea, like, I know this is a like, this would be a chore and a half, but but getting a a tally list, like, I totally understand that everything you said, I I don't like, I get it. Right? And I get that that that there's always gonna be two main ways of kind of viewing the world in this country. And so I always wanna grant the most amount of charity to the other side. Right?
Myke Bates:Like, I I get the frustration, and I get why they love Trump, and I get why they love, you know, the things that Trump is fighting for. Get abortion out of here. Get like, whatever. But that's where I feel like they're getting tricked. And I don't mean this, like, nefarious, where we're tricking the public or whatever.
Myke Bates:They're getting tricked just by the way that Washington is, just by the way politics is. They're getting tricked. And you can take any issue. Right? You can take abortion.
Myke Bates:Right? Oh, okay. We won the abortion battle. Really? Did we?
Myke Bates:Like, the amount of abortions that were happening that fell in that, like, sliver of happening in the third trimester or whatever the fuck, you know, that everyone actually says is the real problem. And then we end up with something way on the other end of the spectrum that nobody really wanted. Right? So, like, we're just screwing ourselves over and over. Taxes not getting dealt with properly.
Myke Bates:Education not getting dealt with properly. And it's all because the system is really hard to deal with. Right? Politics is, like you said, you spent your first year or two learning politics. Right?
Myke Bates:Learning how to
Elijah Haahr:the structure of how to yeah. Yeah. Totally.
Myke Bates:But but how that manifests outwardly is politics. Right? That's how it comes out because you have to go out and you have to convince people, do whatever. You have to basically make the engine work while trying your best to explain the stuff to people. And there's just not enough time.
Myke Bates:Right? And now we have social media exist the way it is and and communication that exists the way it is because the last thirty years forged what it's become. And so it's a really complicated thing, And that's why I think if you distill everything back to its most basic, basic, basic, basic essences, you're gonna find that, like, you're sup what's the character's name in the that you said?
Elijah Haahr:Oh, Jehu.
Myke Bates:Jehu. I mean, I I'm not familiar with Jehu's story. And, like, it's probably more, not as nefarious as as I'm trying to explain. So I wanna not knowing the story, I'm gonna say that there's value in it to end whatever. But if I were to go read the story and and and brush up on it, I'm guessing that I'd come away going, yeah, that's one thing.
Myke Bates:But what's happening right now is is woefully different. And what you're if you just watch Trump daily, read his troth central posts daily. Like, if you just look at every utterance from this guy's being, it oozes basically what your Bible, like, speaks against regularly. And and I know that I'm, like, being really strong with my words, but, like, if I could, like, I would pull up true social If you wanted me to, I would pull up truesocial.com. Right?
Elijah Haahr:You have never been on true social.
Myke Bates:I would go to twitter.com.
Elijah Haahr:And then It's really it's really interesting because I think you're you're focused Hang on.
Myke Bates:Hey. Let me finish. I'm almost done. So, like, if I were to go to any of the engine pluck one random thing out, I guarantee if we were to sit here and analyze it, we'd be like, not good. And, like, not only is it not good, but it's pervasive thousands of times a month.
Myke Bates:And, like, I can't stop thinking that that's probably that's probably reprogramming us to some extent.
Elijah Haahr:So from a a cart where
Myke Bates:it, like, people don't know it. They don't know that it's reprogramming us quite a bit. So Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:No. It's interesting because, like, from a Christian perspective, I'd I don't I've I've never I don't necessarily think Donald Trump's a Christian or anyone that certainly doesn't I've Definitely. Thank you.
Myke Bates:Two Korean fans? Yeah. He he is yeah.
Elijah Haahr:But I also don't think, you know, the the option that the Christian community was presented with in November was him or Harris. Those were the options. Sure. And I don't think either of them were Christians, and I don't think and so the options were policy changes that that con Christian conservatives believed in or policy changes they didn't. And so that was the choice they had.
Myke Bates:Can we pause there? And and I agree. I would probably pick Trump too if if that were like my my assessment and whatever. But the last thing I would do is like dress and garb, MAGA garb, and like, why the fuck? I got my crap.
Myke Bates:And, like, worship that I wouldn't.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. There certainly is a perspective of idol worship associated with this with this mega thing. Right? It's it is bizarre on the left to see. Yeah.
Tom Rankin:That visible idolatry.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. To me, first of all, I think the you're you're talking about some of the fringier elements of the right. I mean, most Republicans are not they're not flying flags on their trucks. I mean, that's that's it's sort of unusual. And a lot of the people that do first of all, you have to understand Trump enlarged the Republican base pretty dramatically.
Elijah Haahr:A lot of again, the the sort of the old Reagan Democrats with the blue collar Midwestern dude who'd lost his job, it was like, yeah. Trump's gonna get it back. That type of guy was a Democratic voter. You know, he was a big Bill Clinton voter. And that kind of guy used to have a big flag on the back of his truck.
Elijah Haahr:And then, you know, Clinton leaves, and then you got Obama, and then you got Biden, and they're like, I don't even recognize these guys. So their symbol of rebellion against the Democrats is the Trump flag. It's like, you guys love me. So this is my new guy. So I don't think I I think it's less to the extent, but I also think at the end of the day, the fringery elements always deify their leadership.
Elijah Haahr:I mean, Barack Obama was, like, you know, they were putting silhouettes around his head and Oh, it'd
Myke Bates:be charitable and and not call it the fringe too. And and what because you can even see, like, first time around Trump, there were a lot more flags even in Springfield. Right? Like, I mean, my god. I honestly couldn't drive down the road without coming into one.
Myke Bates:This election cycle, not so much. So, like, it is different first Trump versus Trump v two. But to that extent, it's pervasiveness, even though it's not visually on display as much, even though if you go to any any Trump rally, there you it's full of that for what I'm saying, the idolization of all of that. But, like, the how pervasive it is, it it's like blind faith in in Trump all the time. Like, it's it's so ingrained that there's there's really nothing you can do, and it's nope.
Myke Bates:Because he's you know, he does this for me, and, like, I'm on this track. And so there is a bit of, like, I'm just gonna do this and then ignoring of the rest. And so I kinda see that in the same vein even though it's on display loud and proud, it is. I still believe in it and, you know, whatever. And like, that bothers me.
Myke Bates:And I, and it like, I, I just try to have more conversations to understand. And if that's how people truly are acting or not. Because it seems like they are.
Elijah Haahr:But but, I don't mean like I I like to use my parents as my political barometers because they they care about politics. They don't know it like I do. I if I were like, oh, the secretary of state did this, they probably wouldn't remember who what his name was. But if I said his name, they're like, oh, yeah. I kinda remember that guy.
Elijah Haahr:You know, they've never flown a Trump flag. I'm not even I think they voted for him in '16. I'm pretty sure they did. My brother didn't, but now they're like I mean, my parents, you know, they're they're their seventies, and they're like, well, we don't necessarily like him. Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:But nobody else has ever done what he's done. And so, like, they they loved Reagan. They loved the first term of Reagan. They really liked that. And they probably liked Reagan from a from a perspective of, you know, he spoke well and he was eloquent and and sort of imbibed the American spirit, but they're like, well, we just don't have there's nobody else that's doing that now, so Trump's our guy.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. And if a you know, I thought there was a period of time where I thought DeSantis would be kind of the the new Trump, and it didn't happen. But DeSantis would be much more in the wheelhouse because he speaks well. He's, like, a little bit less, he's less bold in the China clause. He does the same things.
Elijah Haahr:Clearly wants the same outcomes, but he does it a little bit more, eloquent manner. And my parents, that would be sort of what they were looking for. So, like A
Tom Rankin:lot of people
Elijah Haahr:They're not gonna assume. Yeah. They're not gonna run around with a Trump flag, but they're like, man, he's doing what we want. That's good enough for us. We don't he's not our preacher.
Elijah Haahr:He's just our president.
Myke Bates:Yeah. Yeah. And and I totally get it. I just see big problems with it, unfortunately. And there's good there too.
Myke Bates:I'm not saying it's all it's all bad, but I think the the die is kind of in cast. Like, I I I think we're we are now witnessing exactly as, you know, result of everyone coming to that idea of, like, he ain't perfect, but, you know, he's he's gonna he's gonna get done what I want.
Elijah Haahr:And I
Myke Bates:And my fear is is that they actually don't know what's in store for, you know, what the next eight years, has to say for that that kind of action. That and that's why I'm
Elijah Haahr:They don't, but they but they know they know what it would have been like if they'd lost. You know, that from their perspective
Myke Bates:And that's what I don't think they're putting their, like, I don't think they're putting their religious hat on when they're thinking about some of these things. They're more thinking of it of their, like, local bubble, you know, them, their family, and that's not to be that's not wrong. But but it is counter to, like, I'm a Christian first. Because there's a lot of I mean, you can even, again, objectively look at the Ukraine situation and be like, no matter what the past was, no matter whatever, and none of it matters in this exact moment, JD Vance is treating this fellow human like dirt.
Elijah Haahr:Well, no. I totally disagree. He was they were arguing strenuously. But if you go back to a Christian perspective, frankly, the fact that we sent a bunch of money to Ukraine and caused a ton of people on both sides to die. If we never sent any money, that invasion's over like that, and very few people die.
Elijah Haahr:Mhmm. I mean, the Christian perspective, especially if you talk to, like, very dovish Christians, people that don't want us to be involved around the world, they're like, the worst thing that we did is send money because it prolonged a very violent war.
Myke Bates:Sure. But, like, that's the past.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah.
Myke Bates:Yeah. Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:So the the the Christian thing is to get to a peace treaty as fast as possible.
Myke Bates:Well, I've got and so I'm I'm talking about the totality of everything because the here's and here's part of the problem is that, is that you could pick any part of this stuff and and and dial down or cherry pick any of it and, like, make that case. But when it's when you drill down to it, to the essence of what's going on, that's where I I I don't think many people are spending time thinking about that. And and not that I'm saying it solves much, but I would like people to at least just talk about it. And then that's it, because it's way too easy because you say, like, I disagree. And I'm sure your disagreements come more from, like, a tactical standpoint, a more, like, this is how it is, so this is what we have to do.
Myke Bates:And that's fine. That's a totally good conversation. But the other conversation still isn't happening about, like, why are we doing this? Is this good? Like, let's let's think broader.
Myke Bates:Let's think more humanistic. Let's think, you know, like, that conversation doesn't happen. And that's that's all. That's all. That's all I got.
Tom Rankin:It it it feels like for for me, it it feels like the political rhetoric and the media are absolutely simplifying, memifying even really complex geopolitical topic.
Elijah Haahr:%. And And forty years ago, you would had James Baker out there, and they would had much more in-depth. But our current, as you mentioned, technologist or media, you're right. You are a 40
Tom Rankin:characters Buckley debates and all
Elijah Haahr:that stuff. Yeah. We do not have there's no Federalist papers. Nobody's taking the time to read that stuff anymore. And it'd be great to go back to that, and maybe our kids' generation will because they'll withdraw from social media.
Elijah Haahr:But at some point, you need a a span of you need a a an ability to think past a picture or a six second reel to get into the complexities of that. And right now, we're just not there. And I don't know. It'll take a period of time before we get there.
Tom Rankin:I I think we have lost our our sense of civic duty. I don't think that people actually feel like they have a responsibility to their communities as much anymore, which is odd to say because the numbers show, that from a volunteerism perspective, I think The US leads the world Yep. From from that perspective, but yet it feels like civic commitment from a government perspective and holding our government accountable and being, politically educated is not there.
Elijah Haahr:I would I would slightly disagree because if you look at voting numbers are higher than we've ever seen them before. It's pretty interesting. And it's very subjective to say I don't know how you phrase it, but political, like, involvement or education. It's hard to tell how educated or how involved our citizenry the only object in number you have is voting, and voting is, like, through the roof. Presidential turnout is, like, it blows the nineties and two thousands out of the water.
Elijah Haahr:We got more people voting than ever before.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. Well, I guess I guess here's here'll be kind of a point. So it's it's easy to memify and say stop the killing. The problem is not that simple. There's a country who has sovereignty.
Tom Rankin:Right? Who'd been invaded by another country. And as you said, if we hadn't funded them, it'd have been over. Yep. It would have been over because Russia would have taken Ukraine.
Elijah Haahr:Yes.
Tom Rankin:The issue is that, I think Vladimir Putin is a nefarious actor on the global stage and is not looking to bring global stability because next is going to be Balkan states. Right? And I think that that will get us into a conflict in which NATO has to then become involved. Right? Because I think if I'm if I'm right, I believe the Balkan states are born in NATO.
Elijah Haahr:I believe so. Yeah.
Tom Rankin:I think that's that's the bigger question is that, do we want to allow, an expansion of Putin ideology, in the world? And I I guess I'd my thought is I don't. I I don't want to see a return to authoritarianism.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. I I guess I just I'm not sure at this point if there's really a interest for us over there. Maybe there is. Certainly, I don't think I don't wanna see Russia invade the Ukraine, but I don't think it's The United States' job to to stop that unless we have a very specific interest and a very specific way we can reach that interest. And I don't think under Biden, it was ever clearly enunciated.
Elijah Haahr:Same problem we had with, you know, invasion of Iraq and stuff. We we sort of went to war with unclear objectives and, like, clearly faulty intelligence or maybe even made up intelligence. We did all this stuff, but we shouldn't have done that. And I think it's the same situation here. We just we didn't have if again, I don't I don't hold Zelenskyy out to be that much better than Putin.
Elijah Haahr:I think they're both, you know, they're both Why
Tom Rankin:why do you say that? Because I'm I'm hearing these talking points, but I don't I don't know much about his background. So
Elijah Haahr:I know why.
Myke Bates:I will say this.
Elijah Haahr:He's a We can I hear?
Tom Rankin:He's the most corrupt person
Myke Bates:I don't know.
Tom Rankin:In all politics.
Elijah Haahr:I mean, he's clearly enriched himself. He canceled the elections in the Ukraine. Like, he's done a lot of stuff that I think All
Tom Rankin:of those things I think have a significant and invalid counterpoint.
Elijah Haahr:I mean, I don't think canceled elections have a valid counterpoint.
Tom Rankin:I do. So it's it's it's common to happen in most wartime scenarios.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. But it shouldn't. We didn't I mean, Franklin, the down in Roosevelt didn't cancel when we were in World War two. Like but
Myke Bates:we also like, the invasion and the situation to my understanding is way different over there right now.
Elijah Haahr:And it may be, but, again, like, you for all we know, if we
Myke Bates:point where the it wouldn't even be a valid election.
Elijah Haahr:But if we had an elect well, I mean, any election a a non election is is is, in my opinion, a nonstarter. Yeah. What if five That's a shitty thing. Well, what if 95% of Ukraine wants him gone? We have no idea because they won't let him vote.
Elijah Haahr:And so to me, that gets into a really difficult position. We're like, well, how do we even know if we're helping the people of Ukraine if they're like, we want this guy gone?
Myke Bates:Can I can I offer what I think is a valid point on this is our our, election got upended by, sniffles?
Tom Rankin:I mean yeah.
Myke Bates:Yeah. I mean, could you imagine if buildings were being blown up? We couldn't leave. Martial law was was in place. Like, would you want Kamala to keep keep holding office during that?
Elijah Haahr:100% of the time disagree with you that our election was upended by sniffles. COVID, we had the
Myke Bates:Oh, no. Hang on. Regardless of no. Hang on. Regardless of what your opinion is on it, you can look at the okay.
Myke Bates:X Twitter feed, whatever, of Donald Trump and see how many times he tweeted about it and that it was problematic. I'm not saying that
Elijah Haahr:I'm talking about upended. We're the highest voting record in the history of the country in 2020. Yeah. So it's not like it was upended. We had more people turned out.
Myke Bates:Who won the 20 who won the election between
Elijah Haahr:Kamala. But it was literally, like, the highest election turnout.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. Who won the 2020?
Myke Bates:Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:It was the highest turnout
Myke Bates:in history. Hang on. Hang on. There are people that can't answer that question that will dodge the question.
Tom Rankin:That's the topic I wanna talk about.
Myke Bates:Yeah. People people will dodge it. So to me
Elijah Haahr:There's some people that won't dodge it. They'll they'll answer and they'll say no time now.
Myke Bates:But there's a measurable people who will not answer that question
Elijah Haahr:Well, yeah. 2020. They think there's a lot of fun.
Myke Bates:Ago, I think our election was upended. Like, there was huge problems in the election.
Elijah Haahr:Well, but I think losers always claim that the the the winners
Myke Bates:Sure. Talked about the one we won. Yeah. I'm saying that it was upended. I'm saying there was problems of the election that we won.
Elijah Haahr:House like, what kind of problems?
Myke Bates:It was covered nonstop on the news. Like, all of the election fraud, all of the I mean, everything. It was covered on the news for years. Yeah. And leading up to, there's gonna be fraud that, like,
Tom Rankin:Oh, sure.
Myke Bates:Mail in voting
Elijah Haahr:Trump advocate. Boxes.
Tom Rankin:Trump probably killed himself because he advocated for not doing mail in voting. Yeah.
Myke Bates:And he
Elijah Haahr:fixed that in '24. Yeah.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. Yeah.
Myke Bates:So COVID upended our shit. It pointed it pointed that we have massive problems on on how to do an election. Right? In in state emergence.
Elijah Haahr:Well, no. I I mean, Florida, Missouri,
Myke Bates:like how that election went, the Biden Trump election when you're Well,
Elijah Haahr:I'm saying that that we we tally votes state by state. A lot of states had no problems.
Myke Bates:I know. I know. But but I regardless of of how when it was utter chaos, the twenty twenty election. Was it or was it not? It was chaos.
Elijah Haahr:I don't think so.
Myke Bates:Do you think Trump was warranted in all the time he spent talking about the potential corruption?
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. I do. Because I think well, it's like Pennsylvania. There's a lot
Myke Bates:So there was a problem on the foot then.
Elijah Haahr:But it wasn't because of COVID. I think Well,
Myke Bates:I mean, because of mailman voting, because I mean, it was everything that
Elijah Haahr:Well, I mean, you could look like curing in in Pennsylvania. Curing is the idea that if somebody
Myke Bates:So there was there was you're citing nonstop problems. Like, there
Elijah Haahr:was But those weren't COVID related problems.
Myke Bates:Okay. There were problems. I'll remove
Elijah Haahr:the label.
Myke Bates:There was massive problems.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah.
Myke Bates:Now imagine if buildings were blowing up, martial law was enacted, there's, like, destruction.
Elijah Haahr:I can't even imagine what those advocate we should cancel the elections during wartime? What because that's a very un
Myke Bates:advocate. I'm I'm saying that I'm having a hard time understanding how an election could properly be carried out because because in in my situation, yes, I would want if it were Trump that were in there while this is happening, I'd really want to vote his ass out because I'd probably be putting most of that blame at his at his foot. And similarly, if Biden or Harris were in there, you would aggressively be putting that at their foot and wanting to do it. But there is a fundamental reality that there's going to be real problems trying to get out and vote. And I think the question we have to answer is, should we just let the election go on, or should we consider what the hell to do here?
Myke Bates:And and and I'm right But
Elijah Haahr:those aren't the options. The options are, do we have a poor election, or do we have no election? Okay. I mean and I don't think I will ever say no election. I'll never say
Tom Rankin:that. Okay. Alright. I'll bring I'll bring up something just maybe to to cap this just a little bit. I don't know if I haven't read the full headline, but literally when we took a small break, I saw a pop up that says Zelensky will resign and hold elections if The US will commit to security something.
Tom Rankin:I haven't read the full headline. I haven't read the piece. I literally just popped up. But I think that that's what it was getting at. I'd be really curious to see what that is.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. I would probably
Myke Bates:do the same if I were him. I would think, like, alright.
Elijah Haahr:Just protect
Myke Bates:us and I'll step the fuck down.
Tom Rankin:In in fact I would do it. Pretty savvy move, I would think. Yeah. Yeah.
Myke Bates:Well, I mean, it's because because when we go back to what our
Elijah Haahr:The question is the does the mineral deal get done or not? Yeah. Because I think that's Trump's he's like, listen. If we're if yeah. You know?
Elijah Haahr:This is the one thing people a lot of people don't know. The Ukraine has all this incredible mineral minerals around Kyiv and stuff.
Tom Rankin:Yep. The rare ones.
Elijah Haahr:Like, the rare yeah. The the good stuff. And so Trump's like, listen. If we can have some of that, yeah, it's worthwhile for us to stay there. I don't think he gives a rip if if Zelensky is there or not.
Elijah Haahr:He just gives stuff
Myke Bates:his easy fucking businessman.
Elijah Haahr:Well, it may be warrants also, like, well, that's actually in the interest of The United States to compare.
Myke Bates:Of course, that's a good thing for The United States, but what a sleaze Did you fucking
Tom Rankin:Have you not have you not seen Putin response, though? So Putin is on the news now saying, yes. Russian has rare earth minerals. We have the world's biggest supply of rare earth minerals.
Myke Bates:Of course.
Tom Rankin:And I think that he's advocating for we're a better partner in this in this geopolitical time if you're looking for resources.
Elijah Haahr:I I'm sure that's what he's saying. But at the end of the day, the if we're gonna make a deal, we'll make a deal with Ukraine First.
Myke Bates:We just will. Mhmm.
Elijah Haahr:From a
Myke Bates:I certainly hope.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. I mean, I think from a geopolitical perspective, we're never gonna go out and make a deal with Russia. We'll either make a deal with Ukraine, and we're, like, wink. The the We
Myke Bates:will be in
Tom Rankin:show that Putin is highly unfavorable in The US. Oh, I agree.
Elijah Haahr:It I don't like him either.
Tom Rankin:It's the weirdest thing in my mind because when people are polled, they're saying, nope. We don't believe in in Putin's ideas. Don't believe the the invasion is is good. However, I see a lot of pro Putin talking points online.
Elijah Haahr:So I, I so I disagree with you. I think Putin is very unpopular, but I think people aren't thinking we have to pick. They're thinking we don't need to be over there, and we don't need to send our money there. I mean, we borrowed last year, our deficit was 1,800,000,000,000.0. And so that means for every dollar, we we have to borrow that money from somewhere.
Elijah Haahr:So if we're spending a hundred billion dollars on Ukraine, we'll just say last year, I don't know what it was. That's a hundred billion way to borrow from somebody to send there. Well, people in Maryland are like, we shouldn't do that. I mean, there's a reason that we need to, like, tighten the bootstraps as we we we are outspending and have outspend as a country so much, so it's not worth it. There's no value.
Elijah Haahr:And if we're gonna be cutting, bureaucracy, we might as well be cutting four and eight. I mean, I think four and eight is the the most popular thing to cut in any poll you look at because it doesn't affect us here at Helm that we can see. I think long term, there's some there it it changes some of our, you know, political alliances. But in the short term, if you wanna cut, that's the easiest place to cut.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. I I disagree just a hair, that that our money is not necessarily well spent in foreign support. I think of things like Ebola and things like disease present prevention that we engage in where it's far better for us, and and this is the same argument that I have for our support in Ukraine, is far better for us to enhance external communities to be able to fight off those things so that we don't bring those things into The United States. So basically stop the spread of these viruses that are going to create issues for us in the future. But that's my point in Ukraine as well.
Tom Rankin:So I think our spending is about 60,000,000,000 a year. I think we
Elijah Haahr:On Ukraine? Yeah.
Tom Rankin:On Okay. No. Yeah. In Ukraine. Trump is pushing this 300,000,000,000.
Tom Rankin:All the data shows that it's closer to a hundred and 50,000,000,000. He keeps selling that point, but it's about 50 to 60,000,000,000 a year, which is one and a half percent of our defense budget. I mean, in my mind, it's relatively meager because if you look at, Afghanistan, we spent over $2,000,000,000,000. Right? Another place in twenty years.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. But for me, 1% of our defense budget is good to halt Russian expansion and Russian aggression.
Elijah Haahr:So if you take it from the perspective that we're I mean, our def or our interest on the national debt is now over a trillion a year. So it's it's to a point where basically, like, our country is, like, going down in flames because of our spending. So if you got a cut, I think right now, everything's on the table. And so I keep your well, this is this is the one thing I think is worthwhile. Well, nothing's worthwhile right now.
Elijah Haahr:We're we're candidly, we're just so broke. We gotta, like, shed just crazy amounts to get back where we could be healthy.
Tom Rankin:Let me push there just a little bit because it's one of the things that I have a a personal mental struggle with. You're talking about our our our taxes on our debts, like, a trillion a year,
Elijah Haahr:which is The interest on the debt.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. Interest on the debt, which is a huge number. But that doesn't mean anything to me if it's not if it's not put in a percentage relation to our GDP or our overall health. Right? To to to to pick one number and say, because this number is big, that represents, our degrading economy when it's not put in context of our
Myke Bates:It's a very easy tool to
Elijah Haahr:use to
Tom Rankin:create that.
Myke Bates:Yeah. Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah. Yeah. We think
Myke Bates:that and
Tom Rankin:that's what we never talk about.
Elijah Haahr:We never we never
Tom Rankin:use the real measures
Elijah Haahr:to say what we don't more on the interest on the national debt than we do on the defense spending.
Tom Rankin:Yes. Defense is about 852,000,000,000
Elijah Haahr:a year.
Myke Bates:I mean, insane. Yeah. They're they're incomprehensible numbers.
Elijah Haahr:Yes. Yes. Totally. Yeah. And so I think
Tom Rankin:what, 20,000,000,000,000 or something like that? Isn't it something like
Elijah Haahr:20,000,000,000,000 or so much?
Myke Bates:What do I I don't know.
Elijah Haahr:But but to me, we are and because because really since the late nineties, our spending has, like, exploded. Bush, Obama, Trump won by this is like
Tom Rankin:Oh, yeah.
Elijah Haahr:In my mind, it's probably the number one issue at the federal level is getting us financially stable again, because I think if you look at this exponential growth, it's not like, oh, we're going up, up, up, up, up, and we're gonna have to, like, step, step, step, step down. You have to, like, stop this because it's gotten to the point where within and I don't know when that time is. We are financially so upside down and broke that we fall apart as a country in default. And, I mean, they already once had the whole the whole issue of, like, our credit rating and stuff, but I think that to me is the single most important issue on a federal level, for either side is getting the spending under control because it is it's just it's been so bad for so long under both sides.
Myke Bates:And it's the conversation we've heard forever too. Like, how to get the spending? Like Mhmm. Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:Oh, what's amazing is right now, so far, the spending cuts are not that unpopular.
Myke Bates:Well, they're hard to keep track of. Are you talking about the ones over the past few weeks? Like, that
Elijah Haahr:credit that stuff. Yeah. And also the Converse. I mean, like, they started with USA primarily because that went to other places, and so it would not be unpopular here. The bureau bureaucratic cuts, very unpopular in, like, Northern Virginia where a lot of people live.
Elijah Haahr:But in the Midwest, nobody here. I mean, like I said, you ever hear you know, the Democrats have tried to tie it to, like, oh, it might be your Social Security or it might be, you know, your your veterans benefit check. But no. None of that's really been affected yet. It's only been stuff that doesn't affect 98% of Americans.
Elijah Haahr:So the cuts right now are still very popular, which is not an easy thing to do. And I think at some point, particularly when you get to some of these larger program that you have to touch, you have to touch defense and you have to touch social, safety nets, that's where the rubber meets the road. We figure out if it's it's still doable. At some point, I think it's probably the the biggest thing that either what whoever won is gonna have to deal with it. I think that it's the most important issue right now.
Elijah Haahr:And it's been for years and just always got paid lip service and nothing got done.
Myke Bates:Let that is quite true. I'm gonna say this and then a question about Doge, and then and then we'll wrap this.
Tom Rankin:I've got a I've got an area. I don't know how much time you have, but I do have I I've
Elijah Haahr:got a hard stop for that.
Myke Bates:He explained the schedule earlier. It's pretty insane.
Elijah Haahr:Yeah.
Myke Bates:I know. The first episode, goddamn. What'd you mean?
Elijah Haahr:Okay. We would've gone longer.
Myke Bates:Doge. Everyone agrees. Hey. If there's if there's fraud, abuse, waste, let let's address that. I I don't think you're gonna find anybody that doesn't share that.
Elijah Haahr:So The problem is defining because one person's waste and abuse is another person's Yep. Important project.
Myke Bates:Yep. And I'm not even here to point feet, like, me me. But so I think we'll know on the Doge thing here, you know, six months, a year. Like, give it some time, see, like, shit, whatever. It it's insane what's going on.
Myke Bates:And that's kinda my next point is, obviously, it's by design. Right? The design is to go in here and aggressively, you know, do this. It's by design and, like, hey, I respect the decision to that works in business, maybe to work in government. And that's what we're gonna find the answer to here in a while.
Myke Bates:Right? Like, did this work or did things go way off the rails? And we can't know that now.
Elijah Haahr:And a better and the better question is, is, and if it had not been done, what would have happened?
Myke Bates:Yes.
Elijah Haahr:Yes. Because I think there's a lot of people that felt like the road we were at was going to lead to a financial collapse of the United States government. And so Which which makes it a
Myke Bates:long thing going
Elijah Haahr:on with it. The whole theme of Trump. So many times, we'd be like, oh, we're gonna elect a president who will get spending under control. And then it didn't happen. And so then I was like, we need somebody to come in and smash things and break stuff because nobody else will even even mildly control spending.
Elijah Haahr:It's just through the roof.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. Admittedly, Trump's first term. I mean, he expanded the budget more than a budget.
Elijah Haahr:Particularly in his his second two years, it, like, it got crazy. And so, I mean, there's a lot of people that that have been worried about this issue for years, and they they several times would be like the best thing that could happen is a democratic president or republican congress because that's the last time we saw those numbers come together. Now now they're seeing this, and they're like, oh, thank god somebody's finally putting the cap on this because it got it just got out of control. And they're like, it's the only way we survive financially going forward.
Tom Rankin:Let me throw out a question that may may cap a lot of this because it goes back to the question that I was talking about, with the the trillions of dollars. There's political framing in in all of our conversations Sure. Right, on on both sides right and left. I mean, that's that's that's what it is. Yeah.
Tom Rankin:Right? It's it's all some narrative. And and I'm not convinced that that any of us are talking about what is actually truthful, in government spending or government, execution. We are hearing our narrative, and we're jumping on board with what we think is our tribe, because we're right. But I'll give you an example.
Tom Rankin:So let me clarify just a couple of quick questions. Did did Donald Trump win the election or lose the election? And it it In 2020? Yeah. Twenty twenty.
Elijah Haahr:I think he lost. I do like, I'll I'll caveat that. I think there's really bad fraud in Pennsylvania and Arizona. I'm not seeing enough evidence to show that it would have changed the election.
Tom Rankin:Right.
Elijah Haahr:But I think particularly, I have real problems with what happened in Pennsylvania.
Tom Rankin:Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the only one that this was weird.
Elijah Haahr:It was rough. But I you know, listen. I I think if I had to guess, I think Biden won the election tomorrow.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. And and there wasn't any significant fraud that occurred that should call it into question?
Elijah Haahr:Not enough in enough states that I I it it does it's not a question for me.
Tom Rankin:Yeah. So, I mean, early on well, so Steve Bannon indicated early on that even if Trump was losing, he was gonna say he won and call, election fraud. I mean, that was before the election occurred. There's plenty of information that came out of the j six committee, which is certainly not as bipartisan as I would like. However, pretty bipartisan and and almost all of their interviews were Republican.
Tom Rankin:You've got,
Myke Bates:who
Tom Rankin:was who was our secretary of state? Bill Barr. Bill Barr. Yeah. You had Bill Barr saying, hey.
Tom Rankin:I'm not looking into the fraud. Doesn't look like it's there. All of his advisers saying doesn't look like it's there. And he pulled in a special group of his Kraken and Giuliani and whatever and say, nope. It's there.
Tom Rankin:And they shoved that message. Shoved that message. Right? Election prod election prod Jan six. Fuck it.
Tom Rankin:What happened? Oh, I don't know. And then in the very next day, January 7, you've got Ted Cruz saying, we need to be talking about the integrity of our elections because there are a lot of people who are concerned. Sure. Those people are concerned because you've been telling them lies for three months.
Tom Rankin:There's there's nothing there. Arizona has recounted a million times. There's nothing there. All of those things have turned out to be incorrect, and he knew it. The issue that I have is just like what we're saying here is that how do we how do we form our opinions based on fact when when we're clearly being pushed narrative that is designed to divide us?
Elijah Haahr:I mean, I candidly, I think this is an age old problem in in all governments. It's the argument of I'm gonna put an impediment in your way and then say, well, because you're slower, we should do something different. I mean, it's very similar to, like,
Tom Rankin:Exactly right. Yeah.
Elijah Haahr:You know, the Democrats for a long time, and sometimes Republicans are like, let's give everybody on death row another appeal, another appeal, then it's after when they got 40 appeals, it's too expensive to execute people. We should get rid of the death penalty. But it's a democrat who put a lot of the appeals there, which is kind of an, you know, an argument that I I struggle with. But I don't think you can ever say we're not gonna do that because people will always use that on either side. And so I think the best thing that you hope for is a free flow of ideas and hopeful and then it's incumbent on people to to say, I'm actually gonna go educate myself.
Elijah Haahr:If they choose not to, you can't force them to. You can't force them to. And so as long as the opportunity is there to understand, like, listen, we can go out, we can read whatever source we want, and we can find the information. And then it's up to us to decide if we're gonna actually take it in or not. And I think that's that's a bipartisan opinion is that you're gonna have to go out there and educate yourself on everything.
Elijah Haahr:And if not, if if you're an uneducated citizenry, then then, like, you are gonna lose the government at some point.
Myke Bates:This was this was great. Mhmm. Elijah, thank you for your time.
Elijah Haahr:Thanks for having me.
Myke Bates:This is awesome.
Elijah Haahr:Happy New York.
Tom Rankin:This was fantastic.
Elijah Haahr:Good. Very good.
INTRO MUSIC:This has been the Middle Outcast, real conversations for a fractured world. With echo chambers being the norm and polarization being inevitable, we go beyond the noise, beyond the headlines. We have real, raw conversations that matter. We hope you've enjoyed the show. If you did, make sure to like, rate, and review.
INTRO MUSIC:We'll be back soon. Remember, you can find the show on all the major podcasting platforms. Plus, find even more at our website at middleoutcastcast.com. Remember, there's a lot more than what's on the surface, and that's why we're here. See you next time on the Middle Out Podcast.
Creators and Guests
