Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi everybody. Welcome along to this Friday freebie edition of the Dispatches podcast. My name is Brendan Malone. It is great to be back with you again. And today we have another episode of Dispatches with Dewa. Lots of stuff to talk about this month and don't forget the second episode. We always break this conversation into two parts and the second part is available exclusively to our $5 monthly patrons. So if you want to hear part two on Monday, go to patreon.com leftfootmedia and become a $5 monthly patron. The link in today's show notes a huge thank you to our patrons. It's thanks to you that we can keep producing all of this great content. So without any further ado, let's have a listen to this latest edition of Dispatches with Dewa.
Welcome to Dispatches with Dewa, the monthly episode of the Dispatches podcast where we talk with political commentator Dewa Deboer about exactly what is going on in the world of New Zealand politics. And we discuss and dissect every everything that's trending globally as well. Dewa Deboer is a political commentator who runs conservative think tank Right Minds New Zealand. He also writes a column for the BFD and he has a Friday morning radio show on Reality Check Radio. He advocates for a return to tradition, is optimistic about the future, and he lives in Auckland with his wife and their three kids. So without any further ado, let's get into this episode of of Dispatches with D.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: You ain't going to out on.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Me D. It is great to be back with you. We've had a two month absence. Well, it's been two months since you were last here. A month you left and went overseas and you went to glorious grand foreign lands with all sorts of exotic things happening. And what learnings have you brought back to us here down under and back in the village? What can you tell us about your travels?
[00:02:13] Speaker C: Well, it's good to be back on the Dispatches and yeah, I had a really good trip away. Amy and I, I mean, I think, I mean most people who listen to the show would know that Amy and I went away for our 10th wedding anniversary. Little, little sort of present to ourselves from. And she'd always wanted to go to Japan. We decided to go to Japan. I said, cool, but we need to mix Korea in there as well. I've got a friend over there, I've got a little bit of interest in the history and so, and it's kind of close, you know, they're kind of close to each other. So it's easy to do both of those and very much enjoyed the time away and I don't know how many special insights or learnings that I've had, but both of them very functional countries. You know, things work. Yeah, they have, they have nice things that we don't get to have here. And a lot of that comes from their very conservative cultures, their politics, very, very conservative people are well behaved, kind of social norms are enforced and very, very homogeneous communities. And you know, all of that kind of adds together for a very pleasant experience. And yeah, that's kind of, I guess the big, the biggest learning is that diversity is not your strength.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: We've been to Japan before as a family. My wife's younger brother married a Japanese girl and so he lives over there. He's a PhD in robotics from New Zealand. And so we went over there for the wedding and so we had some time in Tsukuba and then we went to Tokyo and holy moly, you have not seen traffic until you've been to a city like that. And we also managed to get to Hiroshima. We did an overnight bullet train. Nathaniel was a really young baby so he went with us. The rest of the family stayed with the in laws and we took a bullet train, got up early the next morning, did Hiroshima and then bullet train back that afternoon. But one thing I did notice was, and I think my brother in law said to me that this is a country of very polite racists.
They really do hold their national identity and they can be quite cruel about it to outsiders. As my brother in law, as I've said.
[00:04:22] Speaker C: Yes. And as I've said to others on other interviews that I've done, is that a lot of it is the way that our countries were and the way that our people used to behave for all of the changes that took place in the last 50, 60 years or so. And on the whole, yeah. And we didn't have any overly negative experiences there, but it was nice to kind of feel something. It was actually nice, at least from my perspective, to sometimes feel like, okay, yes, I am a foreigner and they actually do treat me like I am a foreigner. Good. Because I'm not one of them.
Which I feel like sometimes we could use a little bit more of that actually.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it's quite amazing, eh? And one thing I found was that whole Japanese commitment to excellence.
Now obviously they're a culture of flawed, fallible human beings. So they're not all, you know, perfectionists. They've got people who also are lazy and everything else, but generally the expectation is so high and normalized that there is just this sort of culture of excellence that's sort of dedicated to everything, whether it's, you know, the cleanliness of the places you go, the. The sort of quietness and politeness towards others, the way they produce things in general, you know, meals and things. It's quite interesting. Yeah. Yes, it does make a difference, hey.
[00:05:30] Speaker C: Yeah. They go over above and beyond what is expected. They make sure that everything is as good as it can be. And they're very apologetic when it's not in. And this is in addition to all, you know, them expecting you to follow their cultural norms and expectations as well. They still, you know, they will give you the best experience that you can have. And that is, yeah, just very, very pleasant.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: I don't know if you noticed this, but one thing that really did stick out to me was you could see the post World War II American Influence and the way it tended to manifest was not, as you might expect, like McDonald's is there, obviously, but it's just these interesting restaurant chains you get that are named after American things, but they're not really American. They've seen an American thing and then they have a restaurant chain sort of named after it, but the food is not necessarily particularly American, but that influences there. And the other big thing, of course, was like, whiskey bars are a really big thing over there, you know, so it's quite interesting to see that. That post World War II influence in various ways.
[00:06:36] Speaker C: Yes. And the way that they've integrated all of that into their culture as well. It's not necessarily that everything is static all the time. They have things like, I think in particular the tempura bar. That was something that we went and did. It felt a little bit like a fish and chip shop, but a Japanese version of it in that you'd go and sit down at a bar, basically, but you'd be served the deep fried food, and they would deep fry it in front, like they'd make it fresh in front of you and deep fried. And all that came from America. They didn't really do deep fried food until after the war, but it's become a very Japanese thing. So they've taken these American things, they've taken German things, as you might expect, and Italian things as well. And they've integrated them into their society, especially when it comes to food, like you say, and they've made it their own. And that's very nice to kind of see that how. Because obviously cultures. Cultures build up like that over time as well, over hundreds and hundreds of years, if they have interactions with the outside world, even some things you could see, croquettes is a very common thing. They like to eat. And obviously that's a big thing in the Netherlands as well. So you can tell there's some kind of exchange there centuries ago.
And yes, it's. It's cool to have that. And I really enjoy the history and some of it actually felt, like I said, very similar. I've said this in other places, very similar. Their feudal society and so on actually feels quite similar to Europe, looking back.
And a lot of their customs in, you know, would, I think, seem more familiar to me now if I were to compare ancient, you know, ancient older European customs and Japanese customs that at the time they would have seemed very foreign to each other. But now they seem more familiar to me, both of them, than I, than. Than they would have to our current time. So we have undergone a really big change.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's quite an interesting observation. The other thing I noticed, of course too was baseball. Really?
[00:08:34] Speaker C: Oh, yes.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: That was quite amazing. Possibly even bigger than America. Actually.
[00:08:38] Speaker C: It's. It's the biggest sport there, their national sport, baseball. And again, that, that comes from the Americans and all the kids, they love their baseball and all the. We went through the TV channels on like, Amy was keen to kind of go through the TV channels once or twice when you were staying in a hotel. And a lot of the, like, their sports, it's all baseball and they love their baseball. There's nothing, nothing bigger there than baseball.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Speaking of the American influence, and this seems like a really good segue. It wasn't planned, folks, I assure you. But the US election and what we going to do in these two episodes, remember, if you're a patron, you get access to the full conversation. If you're not a patron, go to patreon.com left foot media and become a $5 monthly patron. And you will get access to Monday's patrons only episode, plus every other Monday through Friday episode of the Dispatchers podcast that we produce each month.
[00:09:30] Speaker C: But it's a great deal. It's a great deal, guys. You can take it. It's the best deal. Huge deal.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: The best, great deal.
So, yeah, and speaking of appropriate bit of Trump mimicry there, because we're going to talk about the US elections and so in this episode, we're just going to dedicate the rest of this episode to dissecting what has been unburdened from what was. And then in the next episode, we're going to talk about the implications of the US election, like Trump's election moving forward. So this one is just going to be talking about the actual election and the lead up and everything else, and then we're going to talk about the implications. What does it mean moving forward? We're also going to talk about the US Missile systems that are now being fired into Russia. This is a very serious development. And so we're going to have a conversation about that. And of course, we've got to talk about the Hikoi and the treaty principles bill as well. That's all in the next episode. So patrons only behind the paywall for that one. In the meantime, Dewa, what did you think of the race? I guess the first question that I'm going to ask you here is did you expect the red wave that came?
[00:10:33] Speaker C: I'd have to say that I did not expect the win to be that big. I didn't really expect the full red wave. I did expect a win. I did expect Trump to get the House and the Senate and to win the presidency, but I didn't expect it to be, as people would call it, a red wave. And I do feel maybe like in the week or two since the election, because they keep counting votes in the US the margin in the House, for instance, is quite small. But in the Senate, things are very, very positive on the presidency. We are very positive as well.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: Well, I noticed too, though, that one of the states, gosh, I can't remember for the life of me where it is. They've been told by the judges, you ought to stop counting. And they are still counting in.
[00:11:18] Speaker C: This is Pennsylvania.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Pennsylvania, isn't it? Yeah.
And like, when you're doing that, the irony is probably these are the same people who are endorsing this kind of behavior who just four years ago were saying, oh, no, you're an election denialist and you can't do that. And it' and here they are just very publicly flaunting the rules to suit their own end.
[00:11:40] Speaker C: And in some places they're still counting votes. I saw today Lake, Laken county In California, after two weeks. I think it's been two weeks. Yeah, it's been two weeks.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: It is.
[00:11:52] Speaker C: And they've counted 30% of the vote.
Now, how?
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Just come on.
[00:11:59] Speaker C: I mean, those people, I don't know what you would call it, but basically the stoners, at the very least, they should be fired. Fired. At the worst, they should just go to jail, like if it takes you. Because at this rate, it would take them, what, six or seven weeks to Count the votes. I mean, yeah, like it should be, there should be some very, very harsh punishments there for the people who are in charge of that, because that's completely insane. It will be unacceptable in any country except for America.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Do you have an explanation for or thoughts on the magnitude of the victory? Like, do you think there was something in particular that drove it? Were there things that, I mean, obviously the pollsters missed it because they didn't want.
[00:12:36] Speaker C: I mean, the, the popular vote, winning the popular vote was completely unexpected to me and I thought it was going to be quite a bit closer. I mean, I'm very, very glad that he won it. And part of it seems to be the missing votes. So he didn't get a huge number more vote. I mean, when I say huge numbers, like 2 million, 2, 3 million more votes than he got last time, that's pretty nice.
But the main thing seemed to be the lower turnout among the Democrats. That really pushed him over the edge in terms of giving, giving him basically an outright majority, basically exactly 50%.
And the reason for that, I would say, might be something along the lines of the coalition that he put together. I think that was, was key. And also the fact that the electorate really turned on the media and against the pollsters and the Department of Justice that had been weaponized against Trump and they like that underdog, they saw that Trump was being unfairly persecuted and they saw themselves in that.
And then as part of that broad coalition, they could see, oh yes, RFK Jr. Is part of this coalition. Tulsi Gabbard, she's part of this coalition. And the, you know, the, some of the Silicon Valley elite, you know, Elon Musk, he's part of the coalition. I like that all the winners, all the winners are getting behind Trump and that seems to help as well. Like, voters love winners, they like to vote for winners. And Trump really does give off that winning energy and he managed to do a lot of really good work. And then I would have to give a shout out as well, probably to Charlie Kirk and I would have been critical of him years ago. You know, things saying he's, he's, he's a bit soft and he's pushing, you know, some opening the doors to social liberalism and so on. But he, but all of his energy, all of his focus into get out the vote campaigns, turning out voters. And together with Elon Musk as well, they ran a number of campaigns to register new voters, to get apathetic voters to actually turn out on the day. And that's what made the Big win.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Yeah, the low propensity voters, they call them, don't they? And it's quite amazing to me how that works over there, how you can have this massive groundswell of support that does not actually turn into an election winning because people just don't show up despite the fact that they love you and they're raving about you. It's, it's very, it's a very odd phenomena to me, you know, and there.
[00:15:03] Speaker C: Was this big risk they were running as well, with a stolen election, kind of. Okay, well, yeah, they, I saw people warning, oh, this is dangerous to say the election's been stolen, because then people, they won't turn up because what's the point in voting if the election is going to be stolen.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:15] Speaker C: And that didn't seem, it seemed to just be a case of people were maybe angry at the election or stolen and didn't really care. I'll, you know, I'll go and vote anyway. Just.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Well, surely, surely too big to rig was quite a strategic campaign and that's that.
[00:15:29] Speaker C: That's what I was kind of suggesting needed to happen. And if he didn't win by a big enough margin, then it would be cast into doubt. And then, as we're seeing now, they would just keep counting votes. Oh, look, more votes turned up and they would just keep going. And this was just so big that there was no way they could ever just, you know, count dodgy votes until they won.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it, because they, in typical Trump fashion, he gave the voters something to rally behind. And I think you're right. Like, it's. The coalition was part of that. It gave them something to rally behind. Wasn't just one man and all of his glaring imperfections on public display on a regular basis and of course, being amplified by a hostile media while his opponents have been downplayed. And then also, you know, make America great again is a something we can do together. You know, get behind me and we'll do this thing. And then on top of that, when it came to the election, it wasn't like, oh, well, let's just vote and hope for the best. It was like, too big to rig. Let's make it too big to rig. And it gave people something to do. Yeah, let's get out there and take it back. And it was. Yeah, I mean, it worked. It just. Clearly the rallying cries worked.
[00:16:42] Speaker C: And getting the voters to turn out in, like, the no hope states is very difficult. You're going to lose New York. You're Going to lose California, but that's where most people live. So if you want to get the popular vote, you've still got to get millions and millions of your own people to turn up in those states. Yeah, and they did that successfully, I think. Many books probably, I suspect, will be written about this campaign going forward. A lot of analysis will be done once the insider stories come out, how they put the victory together.
Beautifully done.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right. And I think this is. At first, I remember, like, I went out for my evening walk. I walk for an hour each day, and I thought to myself, I've got to hear the election results. And I had Charlie Kirk's live stream, actually, and I put it on, I put it in my pocket and went for my walk. And I'm out for an hour. I'm just listening and listening and listening. And then they started talking about just as the turn was happening. And it was obvious that he's not just winning, but he's looking like he's winning big here. And what was interesting was they started talking about this being historic. And I was like, oh, yeah, sure, sure. But then it became pretty apparent in the next 24 to 48 hours, this really was something quite historic. And it will be one of those elections probably that, you know, historical, political biography type texts are written about, I suspect.
[00:17:55] Speaker C: And it did help that Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate. So everything around her was fake or just a completely astroturf. They paid millions of dollars to celebrities to endorse her, even though they already supported her. The thing about this, if someone supports you, somebody wants you to win, and you still have to pay them millions of dollars to turn up and say that they endorse you inside, like, ins. You know, looking back, with hindsight, you can be, of course she was going to lose, Right? When you're in that state, you're going to lose. But the media everywhere pushed this so hard that they convinced themselves they were going to win when there was. And the pollsters, you know, they came up, would you say, clearly fake polls, that they deliberately manipulated the data to come up with these crazy polls and that was it. They were just hoping they could fake their way to victory. And in the end, that played massively to Trump's advantage because it took out any of the hope they had of kind of fighting back. Right. You can see it was total demoralization. After election night, there was no fight left in these leftists in America. They're all fleeing Elon Musk's free speech platform X. They're going to their own thing site and this is loser behavior. In the, in the past, right wingers have had to go to alternative platforms because we've been banned, because we've been forced out, we've been censored. In their case, they've got no oppression happening at all. There's nothing running against them and they just, they're quitting. And that's part of this big victory as well.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Do you think this was a worse defeat than 2016?
[00:19:35] Speaker C: Absolutely. For the Democrats, this was a massive.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: I mean, aside from the popular vote in 20.
[00:19:40] Speaker C: Because in 2016 they could say, oh, it was 30,000 votes in some swing states.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:48] Speaker C: You know, it's just 30,000 people and a country of 3,300 million people who kind of gave the election to Trump. Now it's the case of, okay, he racked up hundreds of thousands of votes in these swing states in total in terms of his lead, and he got the popular vote across the entire country. So if we had this electoral system that we were arguing for in 2016 saying, oh, the popular vote, the popular vote, well, he won that too easy. So complete, just complete victory, total victory. The biggest victory, I guess, since Ronald Reagan's, you know, historic sweep. Was it? No, wasn't Ronald Reagan had a historic sweep sweep, but there was another one who did. My favorite, I saw my favorite president. How could I forget? Richard Nixon had had an amazing sweep as well. And then of course, the deep state took him out, as everybody knows, Watergate. And but he had, he won some like 48 states or something, 47 states, like, massive victory. And of course, that was overturned by the intelligence agencies after. So this is, this is a, a massive victory. Much bigger than 2016.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Well, I think, and of course, 20.
[00:20:51] Speaker C: The victory in 2016, they basically overturned that as well. You know, they crippled him.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:55] Speaker C: And this is, this is a real victory where he's going in all guns blazing. He's ready for this.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: Well, I think too that what you've got is a situation where they have been for more than eight years basically trying to demonize him. They've told lies like at very high levels and very credible forged campaigns against the man. And he actually had a presidency and mistakes were made and all of that, despite all of that, they really got neutered, I think this time because none of it worked. And that, that must be really embarrassing for them. It wasn't even close. And that means that they are effectively impotent.
[00:21:35] Speaker C: Yeah, they, there's a lot of head scratching, I would say soul searching but there doesn't seem to be much of that going on. Also head scratching going on that the attacks, the coordinated campaign, having the media work together with the Democrat machine, with the Department of Justice, and they put everything together. They had all of their guys, all their celebrities, they had absolutely everything they could put together. They ran all the messaging from the moral failings that Trump has to the second coming of Hitler, and they did all of that. And they ran through it as, you know, the best, the best they could. They went after all of his people and still it wasn't enough.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: We'll talk about the issue of what are your campaign defining moments for both sides in just a second. Before we get there, though, you've already mentioned and alluded to this. There is an interesting statistical anomaly now that is very, very apparent with the 2020 election.
And the vote share that Biden received is not just bigger, but in a way that is historically disproportionate. And quite clearly now it's dropped back down. Now, obviously, some Republic, sorry, Democrat voters didn't turn out this time and some transferred over to Trump. But even still, it's still something like.
[00:22:56] Speaker C: 10 to 12 million. Once everything's done and dusted, it'll be between 10 and 12 million.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: That's a lot of missing voters. So can we now start to say we need it seems to me more people as of last week are starting to see that and they are now starting to ask questions about, well, maybe there was a problem with that 2020 election after all.
[00:23:17] Speaker C: Yes. Because obviously if you're the Democrats, you had these people come to vote against Trump when he was president. And then after 2020, they did the whole insurrection, he tried to overthrow the government. He's going to come back and have vengeance and he's going to become Hitler 2.0 again.
And because all of this messaging they added on top once he was gone, so made him even more threatening, as it were, than it was in 2020. And then suddenly, you know, 12 million people are like, yeah, whatever. You know, we, we helped you get rid of this guy last time when he was just a normal president. And, and now that he's going to be the, the devil reincarnated, then he's, you know, then, then no, thanks. We're not, we don't feel like turning up. So big, big questions there that need to be answered. And you could give explanations like, as I've said, Kamala Harris's campaign was just so boring and that, that people legitimately just didn't feel like turning up because they hated her so much. You've got things like the mail in votes. The Republicans managed to curtail mail in votes quite a bit.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:20] Speaker C: People were sitting at home during COVID stuff. They were locked in their houses. Maybe they would decided, oh, I'll just fill in the mail in ballot because I've got nothing else to do. I'm literally just locked in my house. And so that may have helped them then just. If I'm trying to find reasonable answers.
[00:24:40] Speaker A: It certainly wasn't Joe Biden's popularity. There's just no way that you could claim that Joe Biden in 2020 was far more popular than Barack Obama in 2008.
[00:24:50] Speaker C: Yeah, no, it definitely wasn't popularity. It had to be lots of other things. There. There were some voters that Biden did well with. Like, for some reason the black voters really liked him. Catholic, Catholic voters liked him, of course, because he was one of them.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:05] Speaker C: So you had. He had some advantages there, and the ones that Kamala Harris just didn't have at all. You can see basically every single demographic shifted towards Trump and some of them very, very big, Bigly, as he would say. And I think the only ones that didn't really shift much were the evangelicals. They were kind of static, stable for him, but. But there was also a bit of an evangelical campaign against him that there wasn't in 2020, and they were running that campaign against him in 2024. Some of the big Eva, the big evangelical elite, and they, they'd gone completely off the rails after, you know, Roe v. Wade was overturned and Roe v. Wade was overturned because of Trump. And then, of course, they're running as, you know, they thank him, repay. Repay that by running anti Trump campaigns and so on. Just completely unhinged people. But it didn't make much of a difference in the end.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: No. I also hear he did really well with dead voters, so that's a great demographic to have in your pocket. But the interesting thing too is that when I guess. I mean, I guess they'll ask questions now about that, about. Because it is so glaringly obvious now that there is a big disparity here. But as I've said previously on a previous episode, you don't actually even need all of those 12 million or so votes to be forgeries. You just don't. All you need to do is add a hundred thousand here, 100,000 there in key places and that. That could be enough.
[00:26:31] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And it was, like I said, a big victory this time. But they saw from 2020, they came in. Sorry, from 2016, they thought, oh, Trump only won this one by 10,000, by 20,000. You know, that's, that's. We can overcome that. Whereas obviously you can't. You know, it's when you have a. The popular vote, then. Then it's hard. You can't overcome that. But, yeah, they, they.
This definitely is something that's going to be investigated because obviously those states run very, very corrupt elections. And. And they are well known for running corrupt elections going way back to 100 years ago. Yeah, I think. Is it Tammany Hall? It's in Pennsylvania.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: That's right. They're notorious.
[00:27:11] Speaker C: And that was like they were running crooked elections 100 years ago and it been fixed up. So they're still running crooked elections today, for sure. And we've seen obviously change fixes that have been made in Florida. So if anybody remembers the Bush versus Gore election. I don't remember that because I was too young, but I read about it and that came down to Florida, and there's like a few hundred votes in Florida, and they kept counting votes and finding illegal votes and admitting some in some polling places. It was a complete corrupt mess.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:40] Speaker C: And Bush wanted by a few hundred votes in the end when. When the Supreme Court just said, okay, stop counting because this is corrupt. And. But he was ahead when they stopped counting and.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Because possibly, if I like my reading of that, because I remember that and my reading of that piece of history. Is that an actual fact? Bush may not have actually even won. Like, it's. That. It's that unclear.
[00:27:59] Speaker C: Well, no, but nobody knows. But they were counting clearly illegal votes. And at that point. Okay, whatever. So. But the Republicans clean that up, and they clean that up massively. The fact that Florida counted all of its votes in two or three hours.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:13] Speaker C: And then here we are two weeks later and others are still counting votes. So it's very easy to fix elections. So when you have a side that doesn't want to fix the election, you know, they're cheating because it's easy to fix.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And there's no reason not to fix it if you care about.
[00:28:27] Speaker C: No, that's right. I mean, you want people to have faith in your democratic systems. You know, like New Zealand obviously does a good job when it comes to counting votes. And every political party has a good, you know, incentive to make sure the votes get counted properly and quickly and accurately.
But when you have one side that's interested in doing that and then the other side isn't, there's only one reason why that'll be the case.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: Folks, we're going to talk now about our campaign defining moments for both sides, the key moments that we saw. But before we do that, don't forget, if you want to hear part two of this conversation, lots of interesting stuff to talk about in the next episode that is available to patrons only who are $5 or more per month patrons. The other good news now, folks, is that thanks to some changes at Patreon, you can actually gift patron subscriptions. So if you want to and you've got that hard to buy for person or someone, you think, oh, I think they'd benefit from some of this mad, maniacal scheming and conversation and opinions that this man has, then you can purchase a guest, sorry, gift, suggest a gift subscription for someone and you could give it to them for a birthday or Christmas if you want to. So that's another thing you can do. But the link for that is patreon.com leftfootmedia it is in the show notes for today. Dewa, what are your campaign defining moments? It'll be interesting to see how many we actually have crossover in agreement on. But what are your campaign defining moments for both sides? And these are these, I think these are probably key ones here, too.
[00:29:52] Speaker C: We could start with Trump's defining moments. It was probably the most iconic campaign of all time in terms of the photographs. And if I were to go for those moments, the photographs that will go down in history from him being shot in the air, that the defiant moment with a fist, fist in the air. Fight, fight, fight. That moment will be, you know, be there forever. The moment where he got up on stage with RFK was a big one as well.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: So you've got rfk, you've got the assassination.
[00:30:21] Speaker C: I'm trying to remember, I'm trying to visualize all of these photos in my head. You know, I can close my eyes and I can see the photos and.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: That assassination attempt, one that is as far as I'm concerned. In fact, recently I went and rewatched Flags of Our Fathers again, Clint Eastwood's movie about Iwo Jima. And the flag photo there it is, that level of iconic, that's for sure.
[00:30:43] Speaker C: And if he does well this, this, you know, this presidential term and he gets stuff done.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:50] Speaker C: Then that will definitely, definitely cement that photo because that photo led to everything else, you know, and so what could.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Become statue literally cemented, you know, exactly.
[00:31:00] Speaker C: What's like the flag on Iwo Jima. Right. Well, if they had lost, then nobody would remember, even though you had the moment. No the moment only, you know, the moment is validated by what happens next.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:11] Speaker C: So you have to validate that. The other iconic photos you had were him doing his McDonald's.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I've got that one on my list.
[00:31:18] Speaker C: McDonald's. And then the other nose, the trash man one as well. When Biden called the photos garbage. This is an iconic moment for both sides, by the way. It's an iconic moment for Harris's campaign to have the sitting president call the opponent voters garbage. Iconic moments. The one at.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: So do you think on that point. Because I've got that as well, the garbage comment, the McDonald's cook up in the assassination attempt, do you think that that was deliberate by Biden? Because it seemed awfully strange. He's on zoom while she's hosting a big rally in his backyard. And. Yeah, I mean, I feel like Biden was just, you know, just saying whatever he felt like.
[00:31:54] Speaker C: I love the conspiracy. I love the conspiracies on this. I fully endorse the conspiracies. I don't believe them. I don't believe them, but I endorse them.
[00:32:02] Speaker A: So you think Biden was just being Biden?
[00:32:04] Speaker C: I think he was just being Biden. He had a Biden moment, and Biden is always the best. When he has a Biden moment. Yeah, he'll. He'll be waffling on and he can't remember what he's doing, and then the next moment he'll say something completely off the wall. And that's. I love those Biden moments. Those are great.
Yeah. So I'm trying to remember.
I'm trying to think if there were. It was any other iconic photographs that we had from those four, because I think there were one or two others. I just can't remember exactly what they were. But, yeah, that's. I would definitely rate those in the top.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: I think. This wasn't on my list, but you've got me thinking. I think that moment where Elon was just jumping for joy on stage and left ridiculed him and all of us normies go, yeah, but that's what. Particularly if you're a dad, you go, that's what we do when we're happy now, you know, like, it's. Yeah, it was sincere.
[00:32:51] Speaker C: Yes, exactly. I mean, having the richest man in the world come on the stage and do the I am Dark Maga and have the dark Maga hat and then jump around like an autistic kid and, you know, with his dad kind of trying to embarrass his dad and all of that. That's why they got to the point now where Elon got the nickname of first buddy, because he sort of. And, you know, even. Just. Even just this week where the sixth starship launch and Trump came and watched the launch and Elon was sitting there with him and they did the wrestling one a few days ago where they go to all of these ones, these places together, and Elon's sitting there on his phone. On his phone with the wrestling. The wrestling's going on. He looks at. And Trump looks over at him and points forward, kind of like, hey, son, pay attention, look. And he puts his phone away and he looks back at the wrestling that's going on. Just beautiful moments that you get from Elon Musk and Donald Trump together. Yeah.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: I think that the rocket. Successful rocket reentry and capture on the tower during the campaign was quite key.
[00:33:51] Speaker C: Was that during? I'm trying to remember.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it was during. It was a couple of weeks before the election where they caught the rocket.
[00:33:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I remember that. I just couldn't remember the timing. I thought it might have been just after, but. Yeah, and that helped. All of those things helped. People were sort of seeing that as.
What do you call it? A sign. You know, I want to sign. I just want to sign. You know, what do I do?
[00:34:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:34:10] Speaker C: And everything. Everything's pointing in this particular direction.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. It's like the Romans, you know, the fall of Rome and the. Everyone's looking for omens, which didn't work out well for Caesar. But, you know, it is what it is for me. So I've got. Here what. Here's what I've got. I've got assassination attempt. I've got. And it's not just that iconic photo, but it's the way he reacted. It's clear that. That really. I mean, he didn't cower. And that was quite impressive. And of course, around that, too, is all of the left's reactions to all of this stuff. They thought they were being clever, they thought they could just ridicule, but in actual fact, what they ended up doing was they just made themselves look malicious and awful. And especially when they started creating these absurd conspiracy theories about this being a fake. You know, he'd had someone shoot at him and shoot him in the air on purpose and all this kind of madness, but it just made them look like they were ridiculing ordinary, everyday sincerity. You know, if they'd ridiculed someone who's a fraud, who's a fake, who's being insincere Then, you know, you're like, oh, yeah, okay, I get that. But when it's people being genuine and sincere, it really does look malicious. Especially when it's ordinary stuff that we all do, you know, we all get excited by things we like and jump up and down for Glee, you know, so, yeah, so assassination attempt. McDonald's. Cook up the garbage comment. And I had also Harris's string of terrible media interviews after she'd hidden away in the bunker for weeks and then comes out and has a string back to back. And then I think also the selection.
[00:35:43] Speaker C: Did they put her back into the bunker at the end? Because I was obviously on holiday the last two weeks and.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: No.
[00:35:48] Speaker C: Did she do any more interviews after that?
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Kind of. She tried to. She made a real mess of Joe Rogan when he offered it to her. She tried to get her. People said, we'll do it, but you have to come to us in only one hour. And that would have probably turned into 40 minutes. And he said, that's not what I do. And then they tried to make him out to be a prima donna. And of course that was always going to get out, but as soon as that got out, it was like, gosh, these people really are trying to protect her.
Then we had the selection of Tim Waltz. I think that was a mistake, huge mistake. He is not an everyman.
And there were better candidates that she could have actually selected if she'd wanted to win. And lastly, I think Trump's Madison Square Garden rally, like that, he went right into enemy Clinton territory and sets up camp. And the feeling at that rally was like, it was like the kind of rally you'd have at the beginning of an election cycle, not at the very end where you're petering out. It was just the energy there and the momentum and it was jam packed right in enemy territory. And at that point, that was a very, very big statement.
[00:36:54] Speaker C: I think that one, it reminds me a bit of the kind of reverse Clinton of 2016, where Clinton was campaigning in states that she lost massively thinking that she was up. And this was Trump kind of playing reverse mind games with them, saying, oh, what if we flip New York? You know, Although, of course, that was never on the, on the cards.
It made people think, oh, wow, Trump, he's. He's filled up this stadium in New York. He got some big endorsements out of that, too. Now that I. Now that you mentioned, I remember seeing a clip of Megan Kelly endorsing him there.
[00:37:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:25] Speaker C: I mean, just to be able to turn enemies into friends and that was tough campaign. Yeah, yeah. And he did that with so many people during the campaign. He brought in key people and the ones that he didn't want, you know, the neocons.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:40] Speaker C: They. He kept them as his enemy. As his enemies. He got them to endorse Kamala Harris. Yeah, that's another defining moment. Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris getting up on stage with Megan McCain, I think was.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: And Liz Cheney as well.
[00:37:51] Speaker C: And Liz Cheney everywhere. With Liz and Liz, it was. Liz Cheney was a big one, right?
[00:37:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:56] Speaker C: And so you've got like the arch warmonger who, especially when people are thinking of no more war. No more wars. We don't want any more wars. We're sick of wars. You then get someone who is known for being a warmonger to go and campaign with you. That was just a.
Yeah, well, it said defining. It was a defining moment.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: It was utter madness. Right. It was like, okay, Liz, tell us about your father again and what he did.
[00:38:22] Speaker C: And like, he's such a great American. He's my favorite American.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: And he endorsed her as well, which was even more insane. And what. That's when you really knew that this was an astroturf fake campaign. When there were people claiming to be Harris supporting Democrats online saying how awesome and amazing it was that Liz Cheney and her father were endorsing Harris and they were saying how awesome this was. And you realize at that moment, no, no real Democrats, you know, who don't like faked wars.
[00:38:54] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, they hate the Chinese. They absolutely hate. They hate. They hate their guts. And they used to say that he was literally this, literally Satan before they started calling Trump Satan. Cheney was Satan. And now it's like, oh, yes, Satan's just endorsed our campaign. It's so wonderful.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: Oh, it's bizarre. On that note, diva, I think we might wrap things up there and come back for round two in the next episode. Folks, this is a patrons only behind the paywall episode. So patreon.com forward/Left Foot Media become a five dollar monthly patron. Don't forget, you can purchase gift subscriptions as well. But before we leave, Dewa, can you tell everyone where they can follow your work?
[00:39:32] Speaker C: Sure thing. You can get my regular thoughts on x.com rightmindsnz or you can type my name into the search bar. You can go on Telegram Diwadaboer. You can find me there. Go to my website, WriteMinds NZ for all of my writings that are published or republished there. I also have a weekly column on Goodoil News. I also have a weekly show on rcr, Reality Check Radio, although we are winding down for the year now. But I will still have a couple of things on RCR in the next few weeks. But yeah, that's, that's been a good year for me there in terms of content and of course, you know, enjoyed these doing, doing these dispatches with, with you and I think this year it's been. Been a very good year for media and doing interviews and I used to do only writing and now I do a lot of interviews and on both sides of these interviews and it's really changed things up this year. I'm very happy with it.
[00:40:32] Speaker A: Well, Dewa, hopefully next year we will be able to get you on as a guest in the studio here with the brand new livestream show that I'm going to be launching with Dean Muscheski as my co host. It's called Whiskey and Wisdom. And we're going to have a different guest in the studio each time once a month. And so Dewa, we're just trying to tee that up. So yeah, that'll be the next one.
[00:40:51] Speaker C: I will be there. I will be there. Whiskey and cigars and I will come to Christchurch. I've got. I'm really looking forward to it.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Yeah, that'll be awesome. In the meantime, folks, we're going to leave you now and if you're a patron, well, joy of joys, you can come back and hear the rest of this conversation. We didn't even get through the first round, so we've got a bit more to talk about, but we've got lots to talk about. In the next episode, we're going to be talking about the implications of Trump's victory, the fact that the US is now actively firing missiles into Russia, and of course, the treaty principles. Bill and the reaction to it. Everyone else, we'll see you later. Patrons, I'll see you on Monday.
[00:41:25] Speaker C: Thank you for listening, everyone. And until next time.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: Prayers. Cause if you don't run this town, they'll walk all over you.
Run out loud, Better run on. Keep on running till the sun goes down. Run out loud, better run on. Run all day till you can't be found. Run now l got to run on. Keep on running till the sun goes down.
You can outrun the devil but you ain't going to outrun me.
