The Federalist Radio Hour

Kaitlan Collins, entertainment editor at The Daily Caller, joined Bre Payton, staff writer at The Federalist, to talk about stories from the Olympics, the Kardashians, and the hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton. The media loves to dish out puff pieces on the Clinton family, like todays story in the New York Times about how broke they were after leaving the governors office. I dont think its good journalism to write a piece like this and paint this sad story of Hillary Clinton, Collins said. She was a partner at a law firm during that period. Thats crazy--shes clearly making money. Michael Phelps has been criticized since arriving in Rio, from carrying the American flag to being accused of poor sportsmanship. This guy has won some of the most medals of all time-- he can celebrate how he wants to, Collins said. People just want to be outraged with something. Theres nothing wrong with natural competition. andnbsp;

David Harsanyi and Mollie Hemingway, senior editors at The Federalist, discussed the media class frenzy of anti-Trump hate and the frustration with craven Republican politicians who now openly talk about finding a new candidate. They debated whether Trump or Clinton would have the more dangerous foreign policy and a recent episode of the Netflix show Bojack Horseman that is centered around abortion. There is nothing different about what Donald Trump is doing this moment than what he has been doing for the last year. [Republican politicians] knew exactly what they were doing when they got in bed him, Hemingway said. They knew exactly what they were doing when they brutally crushed perhaps the only path to keeping Donald Trump from getting the nomination. On foreign policy, Hemingway said humans are reluctant to go to war, but that if they do go to war they want to secure victory rather than nation building. I think that is a real thing that Donald Trump has tapped into and the Republican party in Washington, D.C. would like nothing more than to avoid talking about it. andnbsp;

CJ Ciaramella, criminal justice reporter at Reason Magazine, discussed his latest reporting on national and local crime on todays Federalist Radio, including the politics and policing in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. What [protesters] say theyre asking for is police accountability, for there to be more mechanisms for police to be held accountable, he said. Part of the problem with making this a national debate about police reform is that every police agency is a local agency and all criminal justice really starts at the local level. The tension between local-level conflicts and national-level solutions has been a major part of the rise in anti-police attitudes. Thats where the rubber meets the road-- at the very local level. Starting with the district attorneys. Staring with the police chiefs, Ciaramella said. Youre starting to see a big uptick in challenges in competitive campaigns for DAs and state attorneys.

Robby Soave, associate editor at Reason Magazine, joined Senior Editors Mollie Hemingway and David Harsanyi on The Federalist Radio Hour today to talk about the Libertarian town hall, why millennials arent having sex, the cargo shorts debate, and more. Gary Johnsons campaign and the Libertarian Party are have gained more support than usual this election cycle, but not from the voters you might expect. You would think the obvious thing to do would be to win Never Trump people and they are definitley not trying as hard to do that, as they are to win Never Hillary lefties, Soave said. They seem more comfortable talking to those people than they are conservatives. Soave wrote about a new study that came out this week claiming that people born in the 1990s are twice as likely to refrain from sex during their early 20s as members of the previous generation were. Having sexual responsible behavior is something that I think millennials should be credited with, Hemingway said. At the same time, its seems disconcerting.

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, talked about the latest polls, the question about whether Donald Trump is a actually a racist, and debated with Ben about what a vote for Trump really means to a conservative. I know that [Trump] looks at these polls, I know that they impact him. I know that when he has a bad stretch like he did with the California judge, and other episodes, I think it changes him because he sees the impact, Schlapp said. He responds to that as a business person, as one of the metrics. Schlapp argued that the immigration plan of George W Bush is the same as Trumps but with different labels. People are calling Donald Trump a racist for a policy that tells illegals they have to go home, get legal, and then come back. Whereas, they told George W Bush that he was a sell-out amnesty squish, Schlapp said. Lets all get a little more honest and detailed about these things before we start throwing out these terrible condemations. andnbsp; andnbsp;

Eli Saslow, staff writer at The Washington Post, shared his latest reporting on heroin, addiction, and job loss in the American economy. Saslows feature story this month uses one familys struggle with painkillers and opioids to give readers perspective on what its like to go through addiction problems in the U.S. healthcare system. Its an unbelievable traumatic problem in the country right now and the more I learned about the numbers, the more staggering it was for me, Saslow said. [Amandas] dissent into addiction mirrors what a lot of people have gone through. Saslow has also written about economic decline of the middle class, specifically in the manufacturing town of Huntington, Indiana where factories are shutting down and moving to Mexico. Huntington is a town of about 15,000 so to lose 800 jobs in a town that size, it will decimate it, he said. And these arent just 800 jobs, but they are the last 800 really solid middle class jobs.

Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, joined Federalist Radio Hour to tell his own immigration story, discuss Gary Johnsons religious liberty fail, and how the experiences of the working class explain Donald Trump. Shapiro said Johnson is running as someone who is less concerned about constitutional issues and more about Uber or marijuana. It seems like a lot of these other things that he and Weld have been saying are unforced errors in the sense that theres this whole Never Trump contingent in places like Utah, but elsewhere, social conservatives and otherwise, who would be on the Johnson gravy train, he said. On immigration reform, Shapiro holds views that are shaped by his own frustrating immigration experience. Unlike every other immigrant-accepting country in the world... theres no way to simply apply, he said. Its backwards in America. Its very very hard to get a green card. Later in the hour, they talked about J.D. Vances fears and explanations for the Trump phenomenon as it relates to the culture in Appalachia. That frustrations among white working class voters have been ignored for such a long time... that when someone comes along that appeals to their biases in this nature, its a much lower bar that you have to clear, Domenech said. andnbsp;

Zeke Miller, political reporter at Time Magazine, returns from back to back coverage of the RNC and DNC conventions. On todays show, he discussed Hillarys remarks at the end of the week in Philly, Trumps comments on the Kahn family, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the resurfacing of Harambe. Trumps feud with the muslim family who spoke at the DNC show his counter punches are the same to anyone who criticizes him.  These comments make you look like not just somebody who says that are politically incorrect but as someone who actually holds racist views and I feel like this controversy is similar to the judge in that respect, Domenech said. Miller was on the floor talking to Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton delegates. Theres this civil war in both parties, this schism, and on the Democratic side they havent resolved it, Miller said. From a lot of democrats there is a lot of blame on the President and the White House. The fact that Trump had thought out commentary on the death of Harambe says a lot about him as a candidate, compared to traditional candidates with executive experience. His reaction to being asked about Harambe was not Why are you asking me this? or This isnt important or what any other conventional politician would have said, Domenech said.

Peter Suderman, managing editor at Reason Magazine, joined Mary Katharine Ham in the studio to discuss the disappointment of Trumps lackluster RNC, the historical nomination of Hillary Clinton, the potential for Gary Johnson, and much anticipated Star Trek movie of the summer. Despite Donald Trumps promise for a glamorous, celebrity-filled RNC, he is now trying to distance himself from the claim of convention planning as it pales in comparison to this weeks DNC. It is the partys job to build this picture, Ham said. Donald Trump, many of the things that hes supposed to be good at and that are in fact the rational for his candidacy... were not on display during that week. An inspiring orator has never been one of Hillary Clintons characteristics. I think what Clinton did was simply say, Look, you may not love me, but Im the normal candidate, Suderman said. Thats her argument... It was in many ways a conservative appeal in temperament. Later in the hour, Suderman and Ham discuss the potential for a third-party candidate and the future of the libertarian party. If you look at where the young people on the Right are at, they essentially look like libertarians even if they dont call themselves that, he said.

Mary Katharine Ham, senior writer at The Federalist, talked to Sonny Bunch, editor at The Washington Free Beacon, and David Marcus, senior contributor at The Federalist about the DNC, Comic Con, and the protests in Philadelphia on todays Federalist Radio. On night three of the DNC, we heard speeches from Tim Kaine, Joe Biden, and President Obama. I thought Obamas speech was totally fine and it was very much aimed at that kind of disaffected moderate Republican, the college-educated white Republican who has not been hit hard over the last eight years, Bunch said. Bunch recapped the all the news coming out of last weeks Comic Con in San Diego, including debut of the DC Animated Universe’s The Killing Joke. The Killing Joke addition to becoming a very classic and beloved Batman tale, has also become problematic, he said. The social justice warriors really hate this comic book. David Marcus has been on the the ground in Philadelphia this week, talking to Bernie Sanders supporters and following their protests. A lot of them thought she got a free pass on the email scandal, but really its just that they dont want the party going back to that third way, Clinton-Blair style of the Democratic Party, Marcus said. andnbsp; andnbsp;

Dr. Sebastian Gorka, writer and expert on national security and terrorism, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to explain how America can attack the jihadi movement and defeat the war on terror. He is author of the new book, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, now a New York Times Best Seller. ISIS is more powerful than Al-Qaeda ever was and is the most significant jihadi resurgence since the Caliphate was dissolved said Gorka. What we are seeing--the murder of this priest, the murder of this pregnant woman--this is executed by people who are the incarnation of evil, he said. These arent random acts. These arent psychologically disturbed. This is evil incarnate and we must recognize that. Gorka explained the origins of ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the strategists behind jihad. These people arent crazy...they have a plan. Theyre not capricious and theyre not making it up as they go along, he said. Our national security is cross-wired with a political agenda that is endangering Americans. These things have become hot button issues inside the intelligence community, and you touch upon them, you discuss them at your own peril and at a risk to your career

Steven Dennis, Bloomberg reporter, joined Federalist Radio to discuss the first day of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia and the challenges that Hillary Clinton will face this week and heading into the general election. Bernie Sanders supporters spent the first day in Philadelphia spreading angst and frustration, disrupting many speakers throughout the day. Whenever Hillary Clintons name was mentioned, or Tim Kaines name was mentioned, there would be another chorus of boos from this contingent, which admittedly is definitley a minority of the people in that convention, Dennis said. Later in the hour, they discussed how politics and media have transformed over the last 20 years, and they recounted how Tim Kaines career as a politician evolved. If you want to run as a Democrat these days you must be for gay marriage, Dennis said. Abortion, gun rights and gay rights are probably the three issues...where the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have really sorted themselves into different camps. andnbsp;

Benjy Sarlin, political reporter at MSNBC and NBC news, returned from Cleveland to share some of the most surprising parts of the Republican convention and share some of his data-driven reporting after following the Trump campaign for the last year. Sarlins reporting looks at the county data of where Trump won primaries as well as demographic information of who was voting. It was a small plurality that kept growing as it went on, he said. When we looked at how the first six weeks of the primaries played out vs. the second six weeks, is that group of people has a very distinct identity. There were a lot of markers that separated them from Trump support now. In talking to dozens of well-known republicans across the spectrum, Sarlin hopes to get a sense of what the future of the party will look like, win or lose. It has just destroyed assumptions of what the republican party is on a policy level, he said. andnbsp;

Kelly Cohen, political reporter at The Washington Examiner, joined Federalist Radio Hour to discuss Donald Trumps first speech as the Republican nominee, the speeches from Ivanka Trump and Ted Cruz, and Hillary Clintons potential VP picks. Ivanka Trump comes across as everything that Donald Trump isnt and her speech Thursday night reflected that. She spouted of the stats on the war on women and democratic talking points, so I was very surprised that she was doing that and getting away with it, Bre Payton said. Rumors have circulated today that Hillary Clinton may select Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. If its going to be Kaine, hes going to have to sneak on some plane tonight to Miami, Cohen said. If Tim Kaine gets picked, his replacement would be selected by a democratic governor...but the other three people Clinton was looking at are all from states with Republican governors.

Tom Rogan, writer at National Review and contributor to the McLaughlin Group, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to follow up on the terrorist attacks in Nice, the resulting distrust in government, European media, and the politics of Star Trek. You have these attacks, it alters peoples belief in Western civil society, Rogan said. The anger is also reflected against politicians, the presidency, so there you have another angle to terrorism: destabilizing confidence in government, confidence in democracy. Media coverage of the Brexit vote came across with a lack of self-awareness and seemed shellshocked after the vote passed. It shifted in the last month quite significantly... the remain campaign was scare tactic driven and people get sick of that, telling them what to think or what to believe, Rogan said. Later in the hour, Hemingway and Harsanyi deliberate over The Man in the High Castle, the new season of Bojack Horseman, and Lady Dynamite.