Season 12, Episode Five July 27, 2025

SPEAKER_02 0:00

This is the Listening Tube.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. Shout out to some of the new places listening, like Williamsburg, Virginia, Brineville, Oregon, and Beauharnois, Quebec. On this episode, we'll hear about what real kings and dictators do and a constitutional identity crisis. Plus, I'll have a conversation with a politician named Dan Schaefer from the Show Me State. If you want to see it, you'll have to use your imagination.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

But first, not the headlines.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

About a week ago, the Director of National Security, Tulsi Gabbard, released a hundred documents that she says support her assertion that President Obama took deliberate measures to undermine the upcoming presidency of Donald Trump. She's turned over the records to the Department of Justice recommending there be charges filed, trials held, and people be punished for the damage they did to all the agencies they serve, such as the FBI and national intelligence, as well as to our form of government and the will of the people to elect who will represent us. It all goes back to the 2016 election when Hillary Clinton was the Democratic nominee. After her defeat, it's believed that a conspiracy was hatched in the Oval Office to create false records designed to attach Donald Trump directly to Russian efforts to alter the results of the election itself. We'll see how it all shakes out. Chances are you've already made up your mind about it. That is, if you even heard about it. The big news broke on a Friday morning. On Monday, I checked the Associated Press app on my phone for any updates about the Obama conspiracy. I couldn't find anything. I follow ABC News on Facebook, so I went there. Nothing. A search of media transcripts couldn't find any coverage of the story from ABC or NBC all weekend. CBS mentioned it once on Face the Nation, but only so a Democrat congressman could claim it was just a dangerous lie. Jim Himes of Connecticut is quoted as saying, When you start throwing around language like treason, somebody will get hurt. He said, There is not a judge in the land that will treat this with anything other than laughter. I couldn't help but notice the congressmen indicate that language could lead to violence. They don't seem to notice that when they call the president a Nazi and a threat to democracy, or when they call ICE agents the Gestapo. But when the Director of National Intelligence presents evidence of a conspiracy meant to bring down a sitting president, that somehow will lead to somebody getting hurt. As for how every judge in the land might react, well, we may find out. But how can the words of Tulsi Gabbard lead to violence if the media never tells anybody it happened? There was no mention of it on NBC's Meet the Press or ABC's This Week. CNN casually mentioned it once all weekend, and then not again until Monday night, when the suddenly awake Jake Tapper saw fit to cover it a bit. MSNBC only tried to debunk the story, calling it a baseless report. The Washington Post didn't make it a story until Monday evening. These news organizations are trying to keep secrets from us. You would think that by now they would have figured out that we can still learn stuff without them. It would be great if we could trust them to share with the general public what's going on in our government. And this is something that needs to be addressed if the allegations are true. But the legacy media would still rather play political games with us than do their jobs by informing us of what's happening. You don't have to believe it if you don't want to believe it, but we still have the right to know. The media is licensed to broadcast with the understanding that they'll serve in the public interest. They're not doing that. It would be one thing if Tulsi Gabbard came out and verbally claimed something, but she also released documents to back up her allegations, and the media went silent. Could it be because the media was also a party to the coup? The legacy media took every opportunity to support anyone who claimed to know anything about Trump's connection to Russia or how they worked together to influence the 2016 election. Every top Democrat was on television every day driving the point home. Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and a host of others perpetrated this hoax with the ever-willing help from the media. Now that the whole thing might be exposed for what it was and who was behind it, the media forgets that it ever happened, or at least pretend they know nothing about it. I guess it's easier for the legacy media to pretend it didn't happen than to admit they were a willing participant in what could be another huge scandal involving the last two Democrat administrations.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Let's go back through the listening tube for this week in history.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

This week in 1540, Thomas Cromwell is executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry then gets married later that day to his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Now, I never thought it was fair to compare Donald Trump to a king, as many do. We even had a protest called No King's Day in opposition to Trump policies and practices. But Donald Trump seems to have the same enthusiasm for getting things done as King Henry VIII. King Henry managed to work in an execution and his own royal wedding on the same day. It's not like he had a term limit. He could have said, let's execute Cromwell next week. He didn't. So what did Thomas Cromwell do to deserve such haste by the king? I'm going to look that up.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

He's gonna look it up. He's really gonna do it. I want the truth!

SPEAKER_00 7:24

You can't handle the truth. Cromwell was a trusted advisor to the king, but he steered him the wrong way when it came to his love life. Henry had many wives, and it had to be a strenuous position to find fitting candidates for the King of England. Most of the trouble emanated from the difference of opinion between the King's view of Christianity and the Pope's view of Christianity. Divorces weren't allowed in the Catholic Church, so that's one reason we have a Church of England. Cromwell was able to skirt the rules enough to allow the King to annul his marriages, thus allowing him to remarry without Rome's approval. Cromwell gathered enemies for doing so and became a victim of political pressure. Although King Henry allowed the execution of his chief minister, he later regretted it, and his administration never fully recovered. Getting married on the same day as Cromwell's execution was just the king's way of moving forward and not dwelling on the past. Donald Trump probably would have invited Cromwell to the wedding, let him have a good time, and then executed him. But Donald Trump's not a king. This week in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is ratified, establishing citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law. It does a lot more than that, actually. The Fourteenth Amendment is a complicated one, unlike the more concrete Bill of Rights. The current administration is exploring the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in more detail, now that millions of people have entered the country illegally, creating a scenario our founding fathers could never have imagined. In 1868, nobody could have imagined a future administration that would swing wide open the doors of what they had built without any consideration of how it would negatively impact the entire country's very fabric, from education and economics to social issues. Our founding fathers could not have imagined such things as people coming to America to give birth to a baby so it will be an American citizen. But that's how the rule is written. Even if both parents are in the U.S. illegally, a baby born here is a citizen. We're not sure if that should remain the case. As it stands right now, I believe the Supreme Court would have to come down on the side of the babies being citizens. If that needs to be changed, it may take a change to the Constitution. In today's divisive political climate, getting a two-thirds majority on anything is practically impossible. But if the Supreme Court declares that immigration is the sole responsibility of the executive branch, then the President will be able to define the Fourteenth Amendment's intention. Is that circumventing the Constitution? Not if the Supreme Court says it isn't. The Nazis had already rompered through Poland, and now they were on their way to Moscow. Under Stalin's order, all those who retreat or otherwise leave their positions without orders to do so are to be immediately executed. If you live in New York City and you're thinking about supporting a communist for mayor, be careful what you wish for.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

The listening tube will return at the speed of sound.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

By the way, the listening tube now has its own website where you can follow and more. Go to thelisteningtube.com and click on the follow button.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

Send email to thelisteningtube at outlook.com.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

My guest today is an old white guy running for political office in Missouri. Based on that, you might be thinking, oh, a conservative. And you would be mostly wrong. Dan Schaefer spent some time with me in the listening tube. Let's talk about your newsletter, the Frontline Progressive. Do you write all of it yourself or do you have contributors?

SPEAKER_03 12:12

So far, just writing it all myself. I'm looking for some contributors, but I thought I would just lay down a foundation first. You know, just sort of let me find my voice in a way. But uh it's definitely open up for other people that want to contribute. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

And how long have you been publishing it?

SPEAKER_03 12:29

I started, ah gosh, maybe toward the beginning of the year.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

And um, how how often do you publish it?

SPEAKER_03 12:37

I've been keeping up a pace of once every one publication every weekday. My aim is to make it to 100 articles. I'm at like 93 right now, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Well, that's a lot of work. You're obviously committed to your cause.

SPEAKER_03 12:52

Yeah, it's a lot of work. You know, the whole process, you know, from beginning to end, including the research, could range anywhere from like you know, two to five hours.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Now, you recently told me you were at a Democratic candidate training camp.

SPEAKER_03 13:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

What was that like?

SPEAKER_03 13:09

It's called Camp Carnahan, and it's it's named after Mel Carnahan, who was the governor of Missouri back in the day. I forgot exactly what time frame he was governor, but his son now is a guy by the name of Russ Carnahan, uh, runs that show at this point. And they they generally do this once a year. They get everybody together, all the candidates, as well as all the people that want to run uh campaigns and people who want to advocate for a cause. And they just get them all together and put them in a class and do lots lots of presentations and answer lots of questions. And sometimes we have some exercises too, which kind of helps solidify it in our minds. It's a good thing. It it's um it was a little frustrating sometimes because I thought they were giving us some of the exercises somewhat prematurely without you know sufficiently explaining it. But uh overall, it was it was a really good experience. It's just like any sort of normal training camp. You go there, you learn about what it takes to run a campaign, how to organize your campaign, how to plan for it, how to recruit volunteers, how to create a message that goes out there and carries. And in general, what it does, it for me anyways, it keeps the chaos out of your campaign. When I ran my campaign last year, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't attend Camp Carnahan. And it was just kind of a shoot and miss sort of thing. I was putting up radio ads, I was uh putting up yard signs, knocking on doors, making phone calls. And I really learned that that's that's the way people usually start out, but it's of limited success if you're not really focused on the right things. And it uh makes you more aware of how to spend the campaign dollars that you have and um you know how to get the most bang for your buck, in other words. And also fundraising, too. That's something that um politicians hate to do. Uh maybe some of them love it, but I think most of them just hate doing that, hate asking for money. I do too. I'm no exception to that. But the reality is that uh money makes the world go around in this, you know, in this capitalist society that we live in, we have to learn how to fundraise. And that there's a lot of uh lot of instructions on how to do that.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

It sounds like a lot of that application could have could work for anybody in any party. Was a lot of it Democratic specific or not?

SPEAKER_03 15:34

No, it was it it yeah, I I I would think that, I mean, I don't know of any Republicans that signed up for it, but uh certainly, yeah, it the the campaign message would be the the techniques would be the same. They may emphasize different messages, obviously, but what surprised me about this camp is we didn't get into discussing you know politics of the day and and how you know we don't like Trump, et cetera, et cetera. We didn't get into any of that stuff. It was all just focused on, you know, how to do your campaign and how to put something together. So yeah, I mean, theoretically any party could have been there. I don't think there the Democrats would want Republicans to be there, but if one signed up for it, they probably wouldn't turn them away.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Now, you are a self-proclaimed progressive. How are progressive policies different, if at all, from Democrat policies?

SPEAKER_03 16:26

That's a good question, because you know usually when people think of Democrats, they think of left-leaning, progressive, etc. But when you really dig into the Democratic Party and their history recently, they really aren't that progressive. They they flirt with people like Bernie Sanders and AOC, but at the end of the day, they tend to be less progressive and more corporatized. And that that's a legitimate observation to make about the Democratic Party. So you're asking how my message or how my uh progressivism differs from the Democratic Party. It is simply that that I don't subscribe to the corporatization of America. And I think the Democratic Party is beginning to wake up and realize that they need to clean up their act as well and get progressive. You know, it it another, you know, this sort of a side discussion here, but Missouri, every time Missourians give an op given an opportunity to vote on an issue, they will vote progressive every single time. But when they vote for their candidates, they vote for the conservatives. And so what the conservative candidates do when they get elected is the first thing they do is reverse all the progressive issues that the Democrat that the people voted for, not just Democrats, but everybody voted for. And so it happens time and time again in Missouri. So I figured I'm gonna get ahead of the wave here because I'm naturally progressive anyways, and I'm gonna go ahead and step forward with progressive credentials so that I can appeal to most people out there.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Now you've already run for the state house in Missouri, uh a failed campaign. You plan on running again either for the House or the Senate. Have you made that decision yet? Of which it will Which one it would be?

SPEAKER_03 18:10

Uh right now I'm I'm settling for the House because it's a it's a simpler campaign. The House, at least in Missouri here, most House seats are about 30 to 35,000 people. Uh the Senate is going to be about four times that amount. So it's a lot more campaigning, a lot more territory to cover. This time I have a little bit of an advantage uh going after the House because the incumbent has decided that he wants to run for the for the Missouri Senate. So there will be no incumbent that I'll be running against, unless I run for the Senate, and then in which case I may be facing him again, depending upon whether he wins the primary. But you know, I it's kind of funny because I I talked to the uh the to the Jefferson County chair yesterday, and she asked me that question. She says, Well, are you gonna run for the House or the Senate? And I says, that's up to you. She says, What do you mean? I says, I've been telling you all along that right now we don't have anybody to run for the Missouri Senate. And, you know, if if you cannot find someone, consider me a candidate for that. But otherwise I'm gonna go forward just assuming I'm running for the House.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Is there a difference between state-level progressivism and federal level progressivism?

SPEAKER_03 19:24

I've never really thought about that. I don't think that there is. If you look at the progressive issues that Missouri deals with, uh recently we legalized marijuana for for uh recreational use. We turned back the abortion ban, so now uh abortion is legal here. I like to phrase it not as abortion, but as women's reproductive rights. You know, there's there's several other issues that align with the with nationwide issues. So I think that they're pretty much in alignment. I don't know if there's I don't know if there's that much daylight between them.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

So you you then by association would identify with progressives like uh the so-called squad in Washington, D.C., with Ocasio Cortez and Saeb and Bowman, Omar, Presley, and the rest?

SPEAKER_03 20:14

Not quite as no, because I do have a conservative streak in me. I'm more practical. I'll give you an example. Uh one of the first things AOC did when she got to the nation, the U.S. House, is she came up with, I think it was HR1 at the time, which they called the uh Green New Deal or the New Green Deal or something like that. And I read that document, and it's a simple read. You can read it in about 10 or 15 minutes. And I just I had to put it down. I I the problem is that if you get too far in that direction, then you start getting to the point where you start dictating lots of things other than environmental concerns. That's what ostensibly, that's what the Green New Deal was all about was environmental concerns. But if you read it, it meanders into territories like organized labor, indigenous rights. It's just festooned with with all kinds of things that are loosely connected to environmental issues. So uh to me, it's like a boat anchor. You know, this thing with so many things on it, if that anchor is too heavy, the the whole boat is gonna go down. So, what I would prefer to do is is not do things like the Green New Deal because it's just way too much too fast. I would rather just work on the little deals all around uh the periphery. I can get into you know clean energy, I can get into civil rights, I can get into universal health care, but I'm not gonna tie all those together. Okay, there are separate things that we need to fight for. Pick your battles, right? I'll I'll pick the ones that I think Missouri wants at this point and fight for those.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

I agree with you on that subject, Dan, because I've always felt like Like things like the Big Beautiful Bill or these giant omnibus bills that both the Republicans and and Democrats have put before Congress in in recent decades, actually, just have so much stuff in them. Nobody knows what's entirely in them. But why can't we just vote on things one at a time? That way everybody knows where everybody stands on every issue. And um I I don't know if we'll ever be able to get back to that type of governance, but I think it's certainly uh uh something we could shoot for.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

Yeah, I I agree. I I think it it really would it would streamline government a lot more. And it would really streamline our arguments a lot more. We could argue about one thing at a time rather than everything. The only thing I would say that two things that drive omnibus bills, from my observation, it happens in Missouri all the time because we have a limited five months in which the legislature meets, and you get toward the end of that five months and there's still a whole bunch of unresolved issues. So they try to just bundle it all up and put it into what they're calling omnibus bill, and that becomes a fight unto itself, and then it's like all or nothing sort of thing. Uh the second thing that drives it, I think, is legitimate politics, where you always have to make compromises. If you're a progressive and you're dealing with someone who's totally conservative, but you got to get a problem resolved, right? You're gonna have to compromise. So the way that they compromise is they attack all these different uh amendments to the bill, and it starts to become a monster unto itself. So if that process is not sufficiently managed, it can become an omnibus bill. It can it can become a nightmare.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Now, you want to represent a predominantly red district. Correct. So you obviously have a steep hill to climb. What are some of the challenges you face when it comes to changing hearts and minds of voters there?

SPEAKER_03 23:58

That's a that's a really good question. Because what happens in Missouri here, I I have a district that's kind of interesting. It it ranges from urban or should say suburban to rural. And what happens when you at the further you get into the rural areas, the more red it becomes. And what you find out is that the Republicans have very successfully over the last several decades consolidated all of the media underneath their control. Uh, I did a survey one time where it was slightly more than 90% of all talk radio is conservative. 10% is is uh slightly less than 10% is what people call liberal or left-leaning or whatever. So, and you when you're out in the middle of the rural areas, you're you know doing whatever you do out there, you know, repairing trucks or driving combines or something like that, you're listening to the radio. 90% of it is is conservative. So you're up against a media machine out there that has just been drumming these messages into people's minds for a very long time. And you come along and say, Well, how about did you consider, you know, voting for a Democrat? And right away they're like, Democrats are evil. You know, I can just see it in their eyes sometimes when I knock on the door and announce myself, and you get this look from them, like, you know, maybe I better get off this property pretty soon, or I'll be like getting a shotgun at me or something. I that's not quite that bad. Most people are actually quite decent. But I'm dealing with that uphill messaging machine, and that is really tough. And the Democrats try to fight it with their own messaging, and I think that's of limited success because it's very difficult to break through that messaging uh machine that the Republicans have built. One way I've found to get through it is to uh talk to the Republicans. I know a lot of Republicans in this area. One of them, uh several of them actually uh run a radio show here for a conservative talk radio show. I've gotten myself on the show once already, and they've invited me back to come on again. And I tell all the other Democrats when I was at this Camp Carnahan thing, I says, don't turn your back on conservative radio. Um, these guys are always looking for content. They would love to talk to a lot of Democrats out there, maybe try to make fun of you, yeah, but at least you're getting your name out there. And when I actually had my experience on live radio there uh at one of the conservative stations here, uh they were very respectful, actually. And we had a really good conversation. And I think that those types of things need to happen more often.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Well, radio is America's number one mass reach medium. Um you're right, it is predominantly as far as the talk portions of it, dominated by uh right-wing talking points.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Whereas the television news is quite often associated with the left. So they have the they have the visual while the the right has the audio, uh, so to speak.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

Yeah, I've I've I would uh I'd hang an asterisk next to that because you know I've been watching CNN, MSNBC, ABC. I would I would take issue with a lot of that because if you look at how they especially coming up to the last election, every time Biden made a uh a faux call, you know, he tripped over his words or something like that. Like, oh, it was you know, the message was always getting old, is getting C Now. Trump has nothing but word salad. And the media, you know, the MSNBC, CNN, et cetera, they clean it all up before they present it to the people. They rarely show him verbatim or rarely read verbatim what he says. So I would I would argue that that um it's even getting worse now with uh the recent thing with uh CBS paid off what 15 or 16 million dollars to a Trump campaign, or not to his campaign, but to his library. And they they did that because the at least ostensibly anyways, was because the um the FCC was debating whether or not to allow that was CBS, wasn't it, to to converge. Um and I don't know all the details about it, but I do know that Well Paramount Paramount and Skydance are hoping to merge.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

That's it. They already have a deal on the table, but they need FCC approval for that to happen.

SPEAKER_03 28:18

Right. And if you're if you're making waves with the president and and doing, you know, bad stories about the president or not presenting them in the right light, it's the president does have a lot of influence over the FCC, and that's gonna be the case. So, you know, so it's getting worse in the sense that you're you're seeing things like Stephen Colbert, I understand, is now being pulled from CBS late night. He has his ratings are very high. He's a very entertaining guy. I like watching him. I don't get to see him that often, but um but the thing is he's very critical of the president. And so suddenly his show gets pulled. So I think the mainstream media is really they pretend, they talk a lot, like Susan Collins. They talk a big story about being liberal or or being you know common sense, etc. Uh, but when it comes right down to it, it's business as usual with these guys.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

What kind of issues are unique to Missouri?

SPEAKER_03 29:12

One of the things that that we've done in Missouri here is we were the first state once the once Roe v. Wade was rolled back, we were the first state to implement a complete abortion ban. And it was because it was a there was a trigger law in effect. And that trigger law went uh took place within hours of uh of the official reversal of Roe v. Wade. We had a proposal or a uh an amendment to our constitution that came up for uh for a vote last November, and we uh we voted to allow women's reproductive rights back in to Missouri and legalizing things like abortion. So uh now the now the conservatives are back in power. They're they're the they're the state legislature is a trifecta of of Republicans in both houses and and the governor. And um they're trying to reverse this whole thing right now. They're trying to create another proposal to re-implement this ban that they had before. And I think that's uh that's somewhat unique. Missouri also is a Second Amendment protection state. They want to eliminate, I think they've virtually eliminated all gun laws so that even minors can have guns. This is becoming an issue here. I don't think that that's nationwide. We're facing that yet. There are elements within the nationwide politics that want total freedom on the Second Amendment, but uh Missouri is actually very close to implementing it.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

Now you had mentioned that Missouri had also recently legalized recreational marijuana. From what I understand, that is kind of unusual in a red state. How did that manage to get like I said before?

SPEAKER_03 30:49

Missouri is when we're allowed to vote on issues, we always come down progressive. Always. It's amazing. And yes, the marijuana thing is is one example. But these are things that, you know, the average Missourian really, really wants what the old Republicans wanted, which is uh less government in our lives. The government should be looked upon as a service for the people rather than a controlling element in people's lives. And that's what the, you know, that's what the conservatives, that's what the Republican Party was saying right up to the point of Reagan just about. And um and now it's uh it's gotten to the point where uh there's there's many laws that have that have centralized uh control and power within the uh within the state capital of Jefferson City.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

Aaron Ross Powell Your bio says that you have a background in engineering. So that tells me you're an analytical person. Is that true?

SPEAKER_03 31:48

Yeah, pretty much. I I've you know it's it's hard to provide analysis toward political issues because engineers have this sort of arrogance that they have to be aware of that they think because they've logically figured everything out that they're obviously right. You know, and politics isn't that way because everybody has their own opinion about things, and everybody has their own reason for having their opinion. Even, you know, people who are extremists on on both the right or the left, they have their reasons. I don't agree with the reasons, but you know, if I were one of them, if I were an extremist, I'd probably find ways of rationalizing it as well. So I have to keep my own arrogance in check. Do I agree with it or not? And if I agree with it, then I can get behind it. If I don't agree with it, then it depends. If it's a if it's a majority opinion, then I have to, you know, I have to be honest with people and tell them, okay, I don't hold this particular opinion that you have. Take the good with the bad sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

Now it also says that you have a passion for honest government.

SPEAKER_03 32:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

What's happening in the state of Missouri that needs to be more transparent or that you believe is being done dishonestly?

SPEAKER_03 33:03

Well, I'll give you a good example. We have a guy named Eric Schmidt, who's one of our uh one of our U.S. senators here. Eric Schmidt used to be the attorney general for the state of Missouri. When he had his aspirations to run for U.S. Senate, he started campaigning for it. And my concern was, and I shared this concern with local newspapers as well, is uh when he takes all these trips and he's campaigning, is he doing it on the Missouri dime or not? He famously what what tripped me up, what what uh triggered me was he took a trip down to Texas to stand in front of the Rio Grande and say, yeah, we're doing something about immigration here, blah, blah, blah. And I found out that um he used government funds to fly down there. And so I'm I'm like, okay, so I filled out a sunshine request. Missouri has this thing called the sunshine request that's that's basically like a Freedom of Information Act, uh FOIA type of request to get information about his expenditures. And he stonewalled me on this. And so I filled out a second request and he stonewalled me there. And so there's no transparency from these guys. They they want to do what they want to do, and they don't want to have transparency for it. There's a tremendous lack of transparency in this state. The the more people like that that get away with these sorts of things, it just encourages the next person to do the same thing. So uh that's just one example of I think is a lack of transparency in this country in this state.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Do you think the Biden administration was honest with the American people about his cognitive abilities and have his active participation as the chief executive of our nation?

SPEAKER_03 34:48

Yeah, I I was I would have at one point said yes, he is being honest, but then I saw that debate. And I I hate to say this, I'm gonna probably make some enemies in the Democratic Party by saying this, but when I saw his performance during that debate, I saw this sort of vacuous, distant stare in his eyes. And I know that stare very well because my dad right now is going through Alzheimer's. He's he's 91 years old. He's still doing pretty well. He recognizes me and everything, but he gets that that sort of distant stare when he gets when he disconnects from the moment, when he loses situational awareness. And I'm not saying that's what Biden was going through, but I saw that happen and I said, oh my God, this is not good. I I didn't like the fact that he decided to run again. I thought he was just going to be a one-term president, a transitionary president. And I think he did a decent job at that. Not a hundred percent. I didn't agree with him a hundred percent on a lot of things, but uh but he did a fairly decent job of of chaperoning this country through a very difficult time. But yeah, I I've I don't know. I don't want to be part of a conspiracy theory and saying that there was a cover-up, but uh I have my own thoughts about it, and they're not necessarily very flattering toward uh Mr. Biden.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

Why do you suppose a recent Quinna Piac poll shows public approval of the Democratic Party now at a mere 19%?

SPEAKER_03 36:17

Yeah, yeah. I I yeah, we've only got a limited amount of time, but I can talk a lot about that topic. Uh I I give you like one one crystallizing example of my mind was when you remember earlier this year when President Trump addressed the joint session of Congress, and and what it did, the Democrats did a couple things there. One is they held up these little paddles, the of little signs saying, you know, we don't agree with you, sort of thing. And I thought, what a wimpy thing to do. What an absolutely wimpy thing to do. And then it was who is that, uh, Representative Green that shouted something out. Like the Republicans always do it to the Democratic president, you know, always shout over the president. Well, he shouted over the president and immediately he was escorted out. That was an opportunity for all the Democrats just to get up and walk out, but they don't do it. And there's two reasons why. One is they're afraid of their voters. They're afraid to be who they want to be, they're afraid to fight. They really are afraid to fight. They don't realize that this isn't a chess game between gentlemen. This is a knife fight in the street. And the Democrats are are just uh they they they haven't been able to comprehend that. The second thing I think is they're afraid of their donors. This is becoming a controlling factor in both parties. Ever since the uh Citizens United decision handed down in what is that 2011, there's been an un or should say unlimited amount of money flowing into candidates, if not directly to the candidates through super PACs, PACs and super PACs. And this has created an environment where the Democrats are too afraid to do anything. And I just want to see these guys get up and fight. You know, I I've I I don't want I don't mean like physically fight, but but the Democrats are in a position of saving us and and they're just walking away from a fight. They're not walking, they're they're they're carving their head and and and crawling away from a fight. This is the fight of the century right now. And people want to see the Democrats stand up. I'm a Democrat, I'm gonna stand up. And I wasn't always a Democrat. I I joined the party fairly recently. I was an independent up to that point. But um, yeah, I'm not gonna take this. You know, I'm not gonna crawl away. I'm not, you know, and and give you an idea of what I do in my own personal campaign is I'm gonna be running against another Republican uh next year. And uh he and I have already met on several occasions. We had lunch a few weeks ago, and we talk about the issues, talk about, talk about the people, a little bit about our campaigns. We don't want to give away our secrets, of course. But my opinion is you got to get in there and understand these people, where they're coming from, what they want, what they need, what's driving them. I've got a pretty good idea of what's driving them, and then fight them. Fight them when these issues come up. Fight them when when and and also if you know the guy you're fighting, if you've had lunch with him, if you sat down and talked to him, you have a personal relationship with that person, even though he's on the other side, you have a personal relationship with that person. They're not going to be as willing to to call you bad names or or or do nasty things to you if you have that personal relationship going. So that's the one thing that Democrats have not done. I think Obama had some wonderful opportunities to create good relationships. He blew it, in my opinion, on several occasions. I I've got so much disappointment for that guy. So I think that's I think that's basically it. We we see our democracy crumbling before our eyes, and we look for uh someone to come in and save us, and at the end of the day, at the end of the day, we realize nobody's coming in to save us.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Thank you, Dan, for spending some time in the listening tube. You can learn more about Dan at danformo.com. That's D-A-N the Digit4MO.com. Thanks again, Dan. The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly, copyright 2025. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. Follow the listening tube at thelisteningtube.com. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for Thou Ad Infinitum.