Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
The problems we have in the country are solvable, but not solvable the way we’re approaching them today, because of partisan politics. Richard Helppie, a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist seeks to find a place in the middle where common sense discussions can bridge the current great divide.
Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
Episode 246- A Fun Talk From Inside the Beltway with Justin Higgins
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Embark on an enlightening exploration of American politics with me, Rich Helppie, as I welcome Justin Higgins, the insightful host of Politics and Media 101, to dissect the complexities and undercurrents shaping our nation's political discourse. Together, we dissect the overshadowed, yet consequential, races and issues that slip past public scrutiny amidst the hype of presidential campaigns. We probe the perplexing inner workings of the GOP, the centrists' influence on electing the House Speaker, and the broader public dissatisfaction with the recurring Biden-Trump narrative, daring to question the reelection prospects of such polarizing figures.
Navigating through the murky waters of our two-party system, Justin and I challenge the status quo by considering the potential and pitfalls of third-party involvements, while also scrutinizing the track records of current political heavyweights. Our conversation takes you beyond the election's facade, delving into how policy decisions on COVID-19, international conflicts, and the alarming reduction of elections to mere popularity contests can sway voter allegiance. We lend particular focus to the nuanced battlegrounds of voter swing states, where the delicate balance between political messaging, policy stances, and the last weeks of campaigning could tip the scales in unexpected ways.
As we wrap our intensive session, we venture into a spirited debate on the strategic calculus behind selecting a Vice President, weighing the merits of contenders like Nikki Haley and Liz Cheney, and considering how their political dynamics could shape future campaigns. But it's not all heavy politics; we also tackle the intersection of sports and politics, expressing personal stances on controversial public funding for stadiums and the nation's divisive abortion debate, sharing poignant personal stories that illustrate the profound impact of these issues. Thank you for joining Justin and me on the Common Bridge, where we strive to offer unbiased and stimulating political discourse. Don't forget to subscribe for future episodes that promise more than just the surface-level chatter.
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Politics and Current Events Discussion
Speaker 1Welcome to this episode of Season 5 of the Common Bridge, where policy and current events are discussed in a fiercely nonpartisan manner. The host, richard Helpe, is a philanthropist, entrepreneur and political analyst who has reached over 4 million listeners, viewers and readers around the world. With our surging growth in audience and subscriptions, the Common Bridge continues to expand its reach. The show is available on the Substack website and the Substack app Simply search for the Common Bridge. You can also find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. The Common Bridge draws guests and audiences from across the political spectrum, and we invite you to become a free or paid subscriber on your favorite medium.
Speaker 2Hello, welcome to a very special and spontaneous edition of the Common Bridge. We're recording this on Friday, May 17th. I'm just saying that up front in case anybody on today's program makes any predictions. We'll have the benefit of hindsight perhaps. And, of course, coming up on the Common Bridge, we're going to be talking about Title IX and some of the changes We've got, programs on energy, on vehicles and Europe, with a very popular guest, Robert Greenfield. And today, just out of nowhere, our favorite man inside the Beltway, Justin Higgins, has agreed to join us. We're just going to have a very informal talk about whatever comes up. Justin has been working in Washington DC for many years and he's the host of the Politics and Media 101 podcast, and he's a big Boston Bruins fan. Besides, so glad your team's still in the playoffs, Justin, and how are you?
Speaker 3I'm living on a prayer, like my Bruins Rich. It's game six tonight, so we're down 3-2. We've got to win two in a row. But I know it's fantastic to be back here with you on your program and I'm looking forward to getting into everything politics right now.
Speaker 2Very cool. Well, you know what it seems like we're getting a lot more about politics and trying to get as far away from the issues as we can. I always listen, for what aren't we hearing about? Let's see Healthcare, firearms, the border, housing, covid of course, we don't want to talk about that. Trades come up. Recently it looks like Joe Biden's discovered another popular program for Donald Trump and he's going to adopt that. But we do hear a lot about the conflict with Israel and Gaza and Hamas, the unrest on the college campuses, what's going to happen in the Ukraine and, of course, we still have the abortion issue literally being beaten to death. We're here in a swing state in Michigan started way too early, but they're here, justin from the Beltway, what are you guys talking about there?
Speaker 3Well, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head, rich. Right, it's coming up to a massively important election in a very polarized country, so obviously the campaign, and specifically the presidential campaign, is of major focus, to the point where a lot of the other very important races that could determine the Senate and House are kind of just in the background, right. And then all the issues that you mentioned we've recently what was it? A month ago we had a major foreign aid bill to fund Taiwan, israel, ukraine, so that had been a focus. Abortion is consistently and continually a focus due to its impact it will likely have on the campaign. And then other campaign themes, like democracy right, that's a campaign theme that the Biden campaign is focusing on. There's also these lawsuits going on, but really, to simplify it, rich, it's the 2024 campaign. That's what everybody's focused on. You're either excited or afraid, and that's where all the energy is.
Speaker 2Well, you can mark me and a lot of people as just disgusted, because it seems, like the folks in the Beltway, they've succeeded at crushing populism, or so they think, because they don't talk about it, apparently. So we have two very dysfunctional parties with a stranglehold on the nation. Poll after poll shows people still don't want Biden or Trump. Yet this is what we're being handed, and it's a horrible choice to make, because on their record, you can't really vote for either one of them, can you? Well, I mean.
Speaker 3so that's where you and I have a lot of disagreements. I don't think the parties are equally dysfunctional. I think that the recent and historic dysfunction in the GOP house, with the whole speaker issue struggling to elect a speaker, then removing the speaker, then struggling to elect another one it's really a new level of dysfunction running for two years.
Speaker 2Look, that's an inside the Beltway view. Let me tell you where it's viewed out here. The Democrats did the right thing. They said we're not going to let that extreme edge of the Republicans or the extreme edge of our party influenced the Speaker. So the centrist Democrats crossed over and we have a Speaker of the House. It's not supposed to be a Speaker of the Republicans or a Speaker of the Democrats. And so the Marjorie Taylor Greene's and the Ocasio-Cortez's are muted because their votes aren't needed, because enough people in the middle said enough of this stuff. But it's being captioned as a failure of the Republicans for not being able to sway people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who apparently is unpersuadable, and if she's as portrayed in the news media, she's a nut job.
Speaker 3No, she is, I believe. Have you ever met her or been in the same room with her? No, thankfully, I try and keep my distance from those type of you know folks that are maybe unhinged. But I do really like how you describe centrist Democrats as saving Speaker Johnson, which is true because it was led by Speaker sorry majority minority leader Hakeem Jeffries. He is a centrist Democrat like most of the Democrats in the party. They all banded together and they saved him. But I think the interesting thing here, rich, is what might be new to your listeners is one of the main reasons why I believe that Speaker Johnson was saved and Speaker McCarthy never had to.
Speaker 2Why do you call it saved? Why not just he was elected by a majority of the House. Why are we using that term saved? Well, because he was. Was he elected or saved, did they say. We are now voting to save Mike Johnson.
Speaker 3They voted to table the motion which is saving him, so they didn't vote to elect him. Democrats did not vote to elect him. They most literally voted to prevent the motion to fire him from reaching the floor. They didn't vote to affirm his speakership.
Speaker 3So the way that I view that is they voted to save him, and I think the interesting part here, though, is folks may or may not think that policy disagreements or some other ideological disagreements between McCarthy and Johnson is what led Democrats to save him, but it's very interesting, and this kind of encapsulates a lot of what Capitol Hill, and, specifically, the House, has run on. It's simple why Johnson was saved. Democrats don't hate him on an interpersonal level like they did Speaker McCarthy, and it shows you that you don't have to be maybe the most skilled to have the position of Speaker of the House, because I think a lot of people would say that McCarthy is maybe more a skilled fundraiser, which is a big aspect of the role but in life, in elections, in friendships, but in life, in elections, in friendships, in relationships being likable or at least not detestable matters, and that's what saved Speaker Johnson, and, like you're saying, it is a good thing.
Speaker 2You're saying that from the inside the beltway, a threshold to be reached is to not be hated. Yes, Like this is supposed to be our best and brightest representing we, the people. And we're saying, hey, guess what, we got a guy that's not hated. Yes, Like this is supposed to be our best and brightest representing we, the people. And we're saying, hey, guess what, we got a guy that's not hated. It's absurd when people are running around with trillion dollar budgets, multi trillion dollar deficits and you know, you mentioned the international aid package, which was sold as hey, no, no worries, because we're going to be building those arms and munitions in the United States. It'll be great for jobs, and I'm looking at that. It's like, okay, if I burn down the schoolhouse, better be careful how I say that, theoretically, metaphorically but it'll be good for jobs, rebuilding it, OK, it's the same logic. It's like what are people drinking and what air are they sniffing there? That they think that's a good idea.
Speaker 2And then all I hear in this campaign here's, as you know, I've tried to get attention to something other than Republicans and Democrats. I have never said that Donald Trump was qualified to be the president of the United States. Joe Biden was supposed to return us to normalcy, be a one-term president, and we're going to go set a different course. Of course, none of that's happened. I've had Dean Phillips on my show, who's a short-lived campaign. We've talked about the numbers and Nikki Haley what she picked up. Voters have had it, but we're getting not a third party, not rationality from either major party. But can we scare you enough about the other guy in order to win? I think they're both of their campaigns. If I was going to save money on their campaigns, I'd say just go with one slogan. It says I know you are, but what am I? That's what this sounds like.
Speaker 3I don't disagree that voters claim to be dissatisfied, right. However, we just had two primaries and voters had the opportunity to not vote for President Biden or former President Trump, and in resounding fashion they reaffirmed the parties, reaffirmed the voters that they want these two to be their candidates. So I do just. I do agree with you. Energy is low in this election. I would assume and projecting into the future is very difficult that turnout will be reduced, but I just think it's hard because voters did have an opportunity to vote for Dean Phillips. He was getting less than one tenth of one percent in some places. So it's just hard to square whether or not it's kind of the media dissatisfaction or there really is a true dissatisfaction in the country because voters are voting the other way, you know you made a point about the primaries, which is factual.
Speaker 2Can't dispute that people did go out and vote, but were they informed? So, by way of example, donald Trump never showed up on a debate stage with Ron DeSantis, nikki Haley, chris Christie or any of the other challengers which he should have. And Joe Biden, the DNC basically anointed him, canceled primaries in Florida. I would have loved to see Joe Biden. The DNC basically anointed him, canceled primaries in Florida. I would have loved to see Joe Biden and Dean Phillips, rfk Jr, marianne Williamson on a stage. Let's talk about this, but instead it was the. Let's hide Joe in the basement again. And Trump, is you know, while there's actual debates going on which did have some substance, is out there pontificating in front of the loyal. Is you know, while there's actual debates going on which did have some substance, is out there pontificating in front of the loyal. They were rewarded with nominations or anticipated nominations. I guess there's always. Is there any speculation that either one of them won't make the ballot for any reason at all? I?
Speaker 3don't think so. Unforeseen health consequences for 280 plus year old men, you know. Notwithstanding, I can't imagine there being any reason why they wouldn't make the ballot.
Speaker 2There's always speculation and things, and sometimes people just have a job to write something, so they write that. But I can't imagine two ambitious guys like this, with the arguably most powerful position in the world in their sights, would say you know what, I'm not going to do it Right there. It's like they're like Joe and Joe Biden Same thing, like it was supposed to be one term. He's got in there and it's like yeah, I think you know we'll do another one, or at least his handlers have said that. So what's going to affect the election? We talked a lot about COVID four years ago and nobody wants to talk about that now because it apparently brings up too many bad policy decisions and a good dose of idiotic behavior. And we have the clash with Israel and Hamas. Is that going to dominate our politics this year, or is there something else?
2020 Election Policy and Messaging Discussion
Speaker 3So, rich, to take a step back, and a lot of folks in the Beltway, a lot of staffers on campaigns in the Beltway in the House and Senate, lose sight of this. What is an election? It's a popularity contest. So what is going to affect this election? Ultimately, it's a popularity contest, rich. So you'd love to say policy would be the big thing that influences the election. You'd love to see something in the news right now, months and months and months prior to the election, will impact it. But we need to remember this Most voters 80 percent of voters are already decided.
Speaker 3There's 19% of voters that are traditionally swing voters, which are categorized as low information voters. That does not mean these people are stupid. That means these people are not listening to the common bridge and politics and media one-on-one every week and tuning into news or reading your Fox news articles. It just means that they have a lower level of interest. And what influences those people largely is the last two weeks of a campaign. So, to give you a very specific answer, it's not policy record, because I personally think Biden has a great one of those. Ultimately, it's outcomes and it's messaging, and both folks, both Trump and Biden, are going to struggle with those two realities.
Speaker 2Indeed, and there's lots of attack service on both of them. But you know you mentioned popularity, so we have a popular vote and I don't think there's probably much dispute that the Democrats are going to win the popular vote. They're going to win it on either California or New York. They don't need anybody else. You know Biden won 7 million votes in 2020. And you know 6 million of those came from California. District of Columbia votes overwhelmingly Democratic. Only Saddam Hussein's 99% seem to be stronger in a one-party way. New York, around New York City, is overwhelmingly Democrat. But it is going to come down to a handful of states and they keep talking about I don't know what the numbers are exactly five or seven states about who's a swing state and who's not a swing state, but given the attention we're getting here in michigan, I gotta figure that, all right, we're for sure one of those. What's the view on that?
Speaker 3yes, so typically seven, right? Um, you have north carolina I'm gonna try and do this off the top of my head rich. You have georgia, north carolina, pennsylvania, wisconsin, uh, north Carolina, pennsylvania, wisconsin, michigan, nevada and Arizona are typically the seven swing states. As you mentioned, the polling is kind of all over the place. I think we can assume that in a lot of these places it's in one or two percentage points pro-Trump right now, if we were to have the election day-to-day based on an aggregate of polling. So what you're going to see, what you've already told your listeners, you're already seeing all of these ads.
Speaker 3That's super unique because, typically speaking, ads don't really start to ramp up until a month or two before the election and then they continue to ramp up at an exponential level two weeks out, a week out election day. So, just bluntly, you are going to be you and your fellow Michiganders are going to be just inundated with campaign messaging, and all that I can speak to is what I perceive the key points to be moving forward, which is for the Democrats, it's going to be democracy, it's going to be abortion and very soon here it's going to be run on a reduction of crime, and then for the Republicans, it's largely going to be immigration. And then an economic argument inflation is too big, it's too bad, it hasn't come down. So those are typically the battle lines that I see being drawn. Now. Who's able to resonate with which voters will ultimately determine this election right?
Speaker 2That's no secret, it's interesting that you didn't mention Ohio or Florida. In that swing state and Florida, I understand All right. In Florida I spend quite a bit of time there. The governor is doing a great job, not the caricature you're seeing reported. But Florida is doing great. But Ohio, you think?
Speaker 3Ohio is not in play. I think it's like R plus 10, now Rich. It's really gone. I think that that spells doesn't matter in the general election for president. It does spell problems, though, for Democrats in the Senate because there is a massive Senate race with incumbent progressive Sherrod Brown, who is beloved by a lot of crossover voters in the state even though he's a progressive, because they feel he embodies that state. Can he win in an R plus 10 state? And then Montana right. John Tesser, similar Farmer, has seven fingers because he chops them off farming. Moderate, beloved in the state. Can he win a Democratic Senate seat in a presidential election year in an R plus 20 state? Those two states could ultimately determine who controls the Senate. So no, I think Ohio's gone and it's a big problem for Senate Democrats.
Speaker 2I'm interested on the issues that you have the Democrats running on reduced crime. Given what's going on in New York City, los Angeles, san Francisco and a party that is associated with this notion of let's defund the police that people in low-income neighborhoods are saying, are you out of your mind? And we've seen turnstile justice go back to Portland, oregon, clearly a left-wing operation. People were destroying federal property being turned out and I don't understand how they're going to make that pivot to reducing crime. I don't understand how they're going to make that pivot to reducing crime. Okay, let's see it. By the way, they're not talking about that in the ads I'm seeing for Biden here. It's pretty much abortion is all you're going to get.
Speaker 3Yeah, if I had my druthers they would be running on the facts, which is that crime has reduced massively. I you know this is impromptu, so I don have the the stats in front of me yesterday.
Speaker 3Um but it the numbers are staggering, especially in new york, I think it's down 80. I live in dc, one of the major cities where the mayor has done a horrific job. I have a recall charles allen sign out in front of my yard. He is a progressive uh council member who you know, defund the police and stuff like that. Dc is one of the states cities that has seen the least reduction in crime and is still down 27 percent from year over year. The numbers, though, are on par or a little bit lower in these major cities than when Trump was in was president, so you can run a campaign on the facts.
Speaker 2However, as a data scientist OK, of a long time and understanding where the data comes from.
Speaker 2It's just like Biden trying to convince us that inflation is under control Right as people go and spend four bucks for eggs and you know five dollars plus or minus for gasoline. That when you have less police and when there's no consequences, the effort people will make to report a crime goes down and that there aren't people there to record it and like, oh voila, it's not in the data, even though the crime occurred. But if you look at things where people are buying alarm systems, firearms, dogs etc. You're going to tie into immigration, et cetera. You got a tie into immigration where most populous county in Michigan, one of the wealthiest counties in the country, in Oakland County, the sheriff is coming out and saying there's these organized gangs coming in from Chile that have learned how to jam home alarm systems and pull off very sophisticated burglaries. I think it's a loser for the Democrats and particularly the mayor you've got in New York today. You know he's not going to be on board with that.
Speaker 3So I think that this kind of encapsulates why running on the facts is so difficult. I think it can't be done if you tie an emotion, but a lot of what you just said is wrong. So, for example, president Biden has increased police funding over his time in office significantly more than Trump ever did. And then, additionally, if you were to break down the districts and jurisdictions in Republican and Democrat based on the House of Representatives, $100 more million of that increased funding over the Trump levels. $100 more million of that went to Democratic districts. So there is a factual argument rooted in data and science that shows that Democrats are taking. You're talking spending, not effectiveness. You just said, though, rich, that the spending on police is down.
Speaker 2So they're restoring some of the levels. The number of recruiting deficits at police forces is material. And here's the flip side, and I don't know how to extricate from this dilemma, that it's oh, we're going to have more police, and almost immediately it's this hue and cry against over-policing. You know UCLA, the student group that wanted to do what they're capsuling pro-Palestinian demonstrations. One of the settlement things was don't call the city police to come to the campus.
Speaker 2New York Police Department accused of overreacting at Columbia, and many people from all stripes are looking at Chicago with trepidation. Are we going to have another 1968? By the way, I'm going to be doing a show with some people that are in Kosovo trying to put in the rule of law, and how difficult it is. From the law, through the police force, through the prosecutors, through the judges, through the certainty of punishment and such. I don't think Americans know what to expect from the criminal justice system these days. So a clear here's what we're going to do to bring integrity to that entire arc. Again, I'm just giving you the view from the Midwest. People don't know where to turn and I don't think they think it's going to come from Washington DC.
Speaker 3frankly, I hear you, rich, but again, that's why policy initiatives for folks that aren't paying attention don't really matter, because in 2023, more police officers were sworn in than any of the previous four years. That includes 18, 19, and 20, president Trump's last two years in office. So there's more money, more police officers being sworn in. The policies are trying to address the problem. It's just we're getting back to what I originally said. It's the outcomes, which again, the crime data would seem to suggest are improving, and the ability to message.
Speaker 3Inflation's not perfect.
Speaker 3It's going to be very difficult for him to sell it to the American public when he's an old guy who struggles at messaging and isn't always in front of the cameras.
Speaker 3When you have a different media ecosystem on the left, for example, msnbc is not going to be touting the facts on crime reduction because that's probably not what they think energizes most of their viewers. They probably don't think it juices their audience. So if you have a president that can't message on his own, you have a media ecosystem that isn't, you know, incentivized to do it for him Then what you have happen is you don't have word of mouth messaging, you don't have conversations like this happening between friends who are just debating and discussing and then all of a sudden, oh wow, I didn't know all these facts, or oh wow, I didn't know that the country was heading in this direction. So you're reducing word of mouth marketing as well. So this is to say that the facts really don't matter here. Biden is in a big deficit and it's because of his inability to message and outcomes not being absolutely perfect.
Democrats, Lawfare, and Democracy
Speaker 2That's a Democratic talking point of hey, we're doing a great job, but we suck at messaging With the communication arms. They have control of most of the major media outlets and they can't get the story straight. And they've got the bully pulpit of the white house just doesn't seem to hold water. And while we're talking, about.
Speaker 3I think democrats are great at messaging. I'm just saying that there are structural differences. Wait, wait a minute. You just said that they weren't. No, I did not. If if you heard me, I said that biden's not good at messaging.
Speaker 2He's too old, or something okay, so right, so right.
Speaker 3Democrats are different than Biden, so MSNBC, wait a minute.
Speaker 2Biden's not leading the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3Yes. However, right, biden is one candidate and he has an immense role to play. He is not good at messaging you. Saying Democrats are not good at messaging is not what I said.
Speaker 2What I'm telling you is that the Democrats are saying they're not good at messaging. As you know, I'm a fiercely independent center of the road person. I don't like what the Republicans are doing. I think they're the deer in the headlights party that with a gun to my head I don't think I could tell you what the Republicans stand for and what they would do, and I look at the Democrats as the gang that can't shoot straight that they're just running around from one emotional thing to the other, and we need better government. Our people and I talk to people from all walks of life every day and universally they're just disgusted with what we're getting out of the federal government. Now, contrast that Local governments are really stepping up and part of it's due in funding that they're getting. By way of example. The city of Detroit is an amazing place today and there's so much going on, and part of it's Mike Duggan, and Mike is a centrist. Get it done, mayor. He is a loyal member of the Democratic Party and some people might say he's the key to Joe Biden winning or losing the state of Michigan because of the large population there. And man, oh man, mike is doing a great job. I support him. I'd love to see him be governor or even president someday, because he's what we used to elect as people to take care of problems. But that's what the Democrats are saying is they can't message. And let's kind of blend those two things together.
Speaker 2Where we talked about law enforcement and messaging and I remember in the not too distant past, all we heard was 91 counts, 91 counts, 91 counts, 91 counts, 91 counts. You know I'm being a curious sort with a high reading comprehension. I actually went in and read the documents and I'm like well, this is nonsense. And the first of the lawfare trials are over, which said two very sophisticated parties came together in a very complicated transaction. Both were happy with it and later on a Democratic attorney general and a judge decided it wasn't a good deal, extracted one piece out of it, extrapolated it into this damage claim Complete nonsense.
Speaker 2Now we're looking at people looking at the Alvin Bragg case, and again, complete nonsense. And now what? I'm listing my Democratic friends that I talked to. They go well, we really didn't believe in those me. So, justin, whether someone believes in the cases that have been captured in lawfare or not from a political strategy, any sense of how it's being viewed in the beltway. Is it something that people think, oh, maybe we shouldn't have done that, we need to back out, or oh, we really got yes.
Speaker 3So Rich. Similar to you, I think that anybody that breaks the law should be prosecuted, uh, no matter the political implications. Uh, so you know, if the net result is that it hurts Trump from my personal perspective, I mean, if the net result is that it helps Trump get elected, prosecuting him uh, then you still have to do it because the rule of law matters, right, Everybody should be treated equal. To your question directly, I think there's a divided view. I think that, looking at it from how the cable news networks have covered it, what you can see is they really were amped up for a mass amount of interest from the general public specifically the news from the general public, specifically the news consuming general public and they have since dialed back their coverage because folks like me are not interested. I do not care about these two cases, Like I'm not following them, I'm not interested in them, Generally speaking.
Speaker 2Just on a tangent Okay, are you still consuming the cable programs? And I'm going to tell you I just like they're so predictable Fox, msnbc, cnn. I will peek over there every now and then, more like I'm getting the direct to consumer journalism from Substack and other independent publications, just because I'm not getting anything, you know so I don't want to malign all the pundits, like, for example, on cnn.
Speaker 3Ellie honig, I think, is honest, I think he's down the middle, I think he's engaging. So like I'm not maligning everybody. However, no, I have not been consuming cable news as much because, um, you know, as I get older and mature and have worked in this industry a while, I'm realizing that most people on there don't know what the heck they're talking about. They don't have experience in the field, they don't have expertise from studying it and internalizing the messaging, and it is just a lot of talking points. Substack, yes, like the common bridge, but even though I may not agree with most or all of what you write. Um, but also rich, I'm a sucker for reading. So I read my Fox news, my wall street journal, and that's a punch bowl news. New York times, that's where I get it. But I agree, over the last for me it was two or three years I've kind of begun to tune out cable news, like most Americans.
Speaker 2Great. Well, by the way, don't forget my brand promise is something for everyone to not like in every episode, so I appreciate the affirmation Inside the Beltway on the law firm. You said you're not following it that close. I've read this stuff and like what they keep repeating hush money. It's not even about hush money, it's about business entries. And when you look at the timeline, there's literally nothing there and the governor of New York's actually kind of intimated that and it just looks bad. And again, I don't have any sympathy for Trump. I don't think Trump should be in the political arena. I think he had his shot. He chose not to act like an adult when he held the office and he just needs to go away. And I've said that over and over again. And I just see these suits and stuff pumping air into the guy.
Speaker 3There's lots unpacked here, right. So I'm going to say, before we get into it, I'm going to say this I don't think this matters that much at all come election day because of those 19 percent of voters that are largely low info, not following this, they will have forgotten, likely, and then, whatever happens, the October surprise, as we all know, will influence things much more so, and specifically the last two weeks in the election. But I would tend to agree with you that, generally speaking, a lesson we received from the Bill Clinton impeachment trial. He was impeached basically for lying, but it was really for adultery and his approval rating went up through the trial, reaching 77% at the end. So I would say, specifically, the core of these charges yes, it's campaign finance violations is the core. However, the deed or the action was cheating on his pregnant wife or the porn star. I just don't think that that resonates with Americans that much. I don't.
Speaker 2The sorry state of our politics is a and I'm glad I'm on an independent network here so a blowjob from a 23-year-old intern and a rocking evening with a porn actress are seen the same in American politics. You got to laugh. It's just too funny. But you think about the amount of coverage that's been spilled on it. It's the ridiculous and I've also noted some of the coverage afterwards like all the slut shaming that went on with the young women that Bill Clinton manipulated. Yet the defense of slut shaming on a woman who literally makes her living having sex on a camera because she's now virtuous for whatever weird reason that is. Let's talk about democracy, and this is another thing that we have to save our democracy. I've noticed that tagline has dropped out of the lexicon. Why Well?
Speaker 3I don't know if that specific tagline is dropped out, I'll have to take your word for it, but the two central themes of Biden's campaign are going to be democracy and abortion, and it's going to be something that we see continuously. For example, you're going to have rule of law arguments. You're going to have Ukraine funding arguments targeting those Haley voters. There's a reason why she's not on the ballot Yet.
Speaker 320 to 30 percent of Republican primary voters are voting against Donald Trump because these arguments do resonate, whether it's here in the United States or overseas, and specifically they resonate with a lot of people that are focusing on politics. They'll these 19% of voters. I'm going to get back to them Rich, they are not ideologically charged. Most of them think that politicians rightly so in a lot of cases lie on both sides, so you can't trust either of them. They're going to go into the last two weeks of the election. Maybe abortion grabs them right One way or the other, maybe they're pro-life or pro-choice, and that'll swing their vote. However, if you have two candidates that you think are both too old, that you think both lie all the time, and you see one candidate in advertisements stoking what many would believe to be an insurrection versus another guy who doesn't have that same type of let's go storm the Capitol almost rhetoric, directly showing these type of riots that many people believe may be enough to swing the election. That is to say nothing of the substance of the argument.
Debating Democracy and Transparency
Speaker 2It's hard to argue with that. Look, I thought that Donald Trump's behavior and his rhetoric on the 6th of January in 2021 was reprehensible. I don't know that it rose to insurrection or a criminal, but clearly it was beneath the office of the presidency. I remember listening live to him and what he was trying to get Mike Pence to do was absurd. I don't know that we'll ever have the full story of what actually happened at the Capitol, because, other than some windows and things, there wasn't a lot damaged. I mean, if you compare the damage in the Capitol versus, like the Multnomah County Courthouse or the precinct in Minneapolis, I mean there's a lot more destruction that went on there. And what were people doing? What did they think they were doing? I don't know that. We'll ever know, but I think Trump disqualified himself then because he did what I always said about him he doesn't know the job of the president, he doesn't seem to want to know the job of the president and he's got massive personal issues and I think not going to the inauguration and gracefully exiting just showed he didn't know how to do the job as president. Now I also think that the Democrats overplayed this hand, that the made-for-TV slickly produced hearings everybody could see right through that that was a show, not a trial. It was not really a hearing and that it's really hard.
Speaker 2There's a concept in law called having clean hands and for a guy that's been caught with censoring, like Joe Biden has saying we're going to protect democracy, I'm like, really your version of democracy. It's like, eh, it's pretty scary what I see happening in the court system. That's not democracy either. When you're weaponizing the justice system, when we've seen what the F, we now know what the FBI was doing in 2016 and after, and it's met with a shrug.
Speaker 2You know, in recently, biden's own videos when he was being investigated by special prosecutor Robert Kerr oh, wait a minute. All of a sudden, those are presidential privilege. It's like that's not the transparent, open, honest government, the democracy, the populism that we were promised we were going to get. And had Joe Biden actually done the return to normalcy and he actually protected the Constitution, he'd be up 75-25 right now. And the only reason he's not is and the only reason Trump's still in the game is basically what Biden and the Democrats have done. I mean, there's nothing to recommend Donald Trump for another term other than you don't like the other guy better.
Speaker 3I won't go through one by one, but we fundamentally disagree on a lot of what you said. I think, though for me it comes down to even if I were to accept the premise that you laid out about Biden and implying that he's as bad.
Speaker 2Which one do you want to look at? Look at it.
Speaker 2There's no dispute that they censored through the social media platforms. They took out knowledgeable people talking about science and said we don't like what they were saying. Not that it wasn't true, not that it was put for a nefarious purpose, we just didn't like it. We know that they knew that the Hunter Biden laptop was authentic and it contained information that was harmful to Joe, and we know they suppressed the story. Okay, we know that they got 51 intelligence heads to say it wasn't true. That's scary. I mean, that's just frightening, that kind of restriction on free and accurate information. And you watch Biden's.
Speaker 2I've never been involved with my son's business. Oh, yeah, well, we did talk about it. Oh, I never talked to his business association. Yes, I did. But we just talked about the weather. Okay, well, he's the most high-paid weatherman in the history of weather forecasting. I mean, to me it's like it's just so obvious and this is not making a case for Trump. It's saying that if you're going to put your stake down on democracy, you've got to show a better example. Here's what Trump did, here's what we do and, by the way, I want to remind you, after Trump won in 2016, we had riots and we had cities burning and Washington DC had riots.
Speaker 3So a couple of things are happening here. The royal, we is doing a lot of work. I do not know what you just said.
Speaker 2Furthermore, if what you just said I've actually read the documents. Let me finish my video I've seen. How can you deny that Washington wasn't on fire in 2017 and that there were riots?
Speaker 3I would love to be able to respond to at least one point that you're throwing out there in full.
Speaker 2You're starting with what I'm saying isn't factual. Now, justin, you need to say this is what I don't think is factual, and this is the problem people have with the Beltway when they hear something that they don't like, no matter how factual it is, it's like we're going to cancel it, we're going to erase it, we're not going to hear it.
Speaker 3I'm trying to respond and you're not letting me respond. You're the one canceling me. We can pick them all out, because, if anything, can I finish? If anything you said was remotely accurate and accepted as truth, the House Republicans, which have run a two year campaign on impeaching Biden for set for everything that you cited, they would have enough votes in their own party, after a two-year investigation, to bring articles of impeachment forward. They're not even voting on this stuff. The articles of impeachment aren't going anywhere because we, as you put it, do not know what you just asserted. That we know, that we know and, as a result, the whole campaign that James Comer and Jim Jordan and others have embarked on has been a big fat failure.
Speaker 2So that is all that I'm saying is I never mentioned impeachment or Comer or Jordan, or whatever.
Speaker 2I think the impeachment I think it's been a it is a club that's been wielded unnecessarily and I'm glad that there's not an impeachment hearing. It should be up to the voters to decide this. But it doesn't mean we can't get the facts out. And again you're proving my point that the Republicans don't know their butt from third base, because that's where they're spending their time. Right, it's the deer in the headlight. They don't know what else to do, so they have a hearing about it's just.
Speaker 3If the president was proven to have violated the first amendment, then they should be impeached. And the republicans have sought, and that's what you're claiming happened. And the republicans have sought for two years to do this and they have documented in the twitter files.
Speaker 2You can read it. They did it. They're being sued by martin kohldorff. They're being sued elsewhere for this. So there is legal recourse going on and their defense is hey, we didn't do it, the social media platforms did it. But yet you've got testimony from the people running social media saying, yeah, we had an open channel to find out what they liked and what they didn't like. And it's like, as someone said, yeah, you didn't do it, but it was like nice social media platform, you got here, be ashamed if something happened to it. So I mean, we have we're in a modern society, interconnected with a lot of information sources, and we're in precarious times, and it looks like those that are in power are abusing that and we need to call it out because it's not going to end well for you or for me.
Speaker 3I think that ultimately we're not going to agree on the facts or acknowledge that the Republicans have investigated this for two years and have failed to bring partisan articles of impeachment forward because even members of their own party who are objectively looking at these same facts are not convinced. But what it comes down to for me is if you were to assume and take your premise accurately, ultimately one president for two months tried to undermine the legitimacy of an election and stop a peaceful transfer of power through the big steel. As a result of his comments, you're saying we don't know what happened in the Capitol. We sure as shit do. We have thousands of hours of videotape that was released, with people smearing their own shit on the walls of our Capitol building, going and threatening members of Congress in their offices.
Speaker 3The Republican chairman of the Natural Resources Committee was hiding like a little freak in Kevin McCarthy's toilet with a sword because he thought these Trump supporters were going to come and string them all up. So from my perspective, I again disagree with your premise that Biden is just the biggest threat to democracy as Trump. However, if I were to accept your premise, for me somebody pushing the big lie and undermining peaceful transfer of power. It's more concerning than the alternative, and that's kind of where I think a lot of Americans will come down.
Speaker 2That's a fair point. Okay, it's the. My objection to the Beltway is that the hands thing and to double down on governing with integrity. But you and I are in agreement. I think Trump was absolutely out of line and I said it at the time. It was appalling. And again, this was primary information and the point I was making about the people walking through between the robes, not destroying the statuary, not setting things on fire. Compare that to the Multnomah County Courthouse, the federal courthouse in Multnomah County, which was utterly destroyed and left in ruins.
Speaker 3Yeah, Rich, they were just trying to hang the vice president. It's all in good fun, right?
Speaker 2Well, here's what we do. This is really interesting. You bring that up because how? Who put those gallows out there, and were they full size?
Speaker 3But if you're if you're arguing about whether the gallows to hang the vice president from the chanting mob that was chanting hang Mike Pence were full size or not, I think who was there?
Speaker 2Who put the bombs by the RNC and the DNC? We don't know.
Speaker 3I'm going to venture, it was not Democrats, just a guess.
Speaker 2I don't know that there's Republican or Democrat bombs, but there was one on each one Republicans stormed the Capitol, so I think we can.
Speaker 2It's not a. Again, we don't disagree. They shouldn't have been in the Capitol. Trump shouldn't have been egging them on and he should have been, and what he was asking his vice president to do was absolutely unconstitutional and abhorrent. And Mike Pence stood up and did the right thing, which kind of leads us to this sorry situation we're in. In the election that we're going to be holding in six-ish months, we know who the presidential nominees are going to be, barring any unforeseen health or other circumstances. We know who one of the vice president nominees are going to be. Who might Donald Trump pick as the vice president and who might accept that?
VP Selection and Political Dynamics
Speaker 3I think a lot of people will accept that, because that's the state of Republican politics right now. I think that one of his you know more prominent or likely choices was Kristi Noem, but she has admitted to being a sociopath, so there's really like we can cross her name off. Killing a puppy. I represented a tea party. Fifth generation farmer.
Speaker 2Excuse me for laughing, but this is going to go down as one of the biggest political fails ever it's bad Rich.
Speaker 3I'm a kid from New Hampshire so, like I'm not your rural guy, I worked for a tea party. Fifth generation farmer from the most rural part of Kansas, I can tell you rural Americans and farmers are not rushing out to kill puppies that they cannot train.
Speaker 2I know exactly right and like my qualification are you qualified to be VP Kamala Harris? Let me tell you what I did to a kitten with my 357. My qualification are you qualified to be VP Kamala Harris?
Speaker 3Let me tell you what I did to a kitten with my 357. It's on and like editors previously, like mainstream editors, had taken the story out, but now she went to a conservative editor and they didn't see anything wrong with it. So it's just. It's you talk about detonating?
Speaker 2Okay, so let's just stick with it. It's not going to be her who might be a candidate. Let me throw a name out to you just for fun, okay, and I love your insight on this Nikki Haley.
Speaker 3Nikki Haley. He should pick her. That would be perfect. What he needs to do is play identity politics that's normally what's done or electoral politics one of the two is normally done with why you pick a VP. So either they're from a stateP, due to abortion and Trump's garish nature at heart, so he should pick her. She also would attempt to bring back the voters, the moderates that are leaving the party, and over democracy and all those fears Would be perfect. It gets back to Speaker Johnson versus Speaker McCarthy, where we kind of began our discussion. Rich Interpersonal dynamics run a lot of this. Trump hates Nikki Haley, so I can't see it happening.
Speaker 2You know I look at it. I mean, politics makes strange bedfellows, and Kamala Harris said some really nasty things about Joe Biden in the debates leading up to his election, but it's like, ok, we're putting that aside, now we're going to go play the general election, and it worked for him. I think Nikki Haley would basically be the adult in the room and give people a reason to go there. I don't know if she'd take it or not, and Trump's ego is probably in the way. All right, but what about Sarah Huckabee?
Speaker 3I don't think so. She doesn't have that crossover appeal to normal women that Nikki Haley does, because Sarah's not normal. You know, you've seen her screaming and hollering and shouting.
Speaker 2I don't know much about her. Ok, she doesn't seem to have the gravitas as a VP. Elegance, I'm just trying to find it, yeah, here. Ok, liz Cheney is probably off the list.
Speaker 3Ok, she's going to be hung right, mike pence, if trump gets his way pence has already said he's out.
Speaker 2Yep, desantis, they're saying 28 yep, he's just let no, let the chips fall where they may. And then also that about haley, that she could be there. Chris christie has said he won't take it. Trump won't pick him. Him anyways, yeah, doug Burgum from Dakota, and I think he could be. That's a big nothing burger to me. It sounds like that's not going to hunt, right? I?
Speaker 3agree, but I would not be shocked. Okay, so in 2016, when we were going through all of the potential choices that Trump was going to pick when I was at the RNC all of the potential choices that Trump was going to pick when I was at the RNC, bob Corker a senator from Tennessee who's much more charismatic than what's his face. Burgum was the choice and Corker said no. Corker stood on a stage at a Trump rally in Tennessee trying to make up his mind and Corker said no, this man is deranged and he's a threat to democracy. I'm not going to be his VP. Then he picked Mike Pence. So I do think Burgum has. You know, he's a white guy which resonates with Trump. He's a farmer which maybe he can project as being tough.
Speaker 3I personally like Burgum before he took this Trump turn. I think he's eccentric. He's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, so you could see how that could appeal to Trump. I think it would be a bad choice and I think Trump should pick a black Republican or a woman, to be quite frank. So that leaves us in my simple mind with maybe Tim Scott potentially as one option, who I don't think. He speaks like he has a mouth full of marbles, so not sure. That's great. He's also super awkward. Basically bought a girlfriend for the primary campaign, so not really sure if that dog hunts.
Speaker 2So he's on one line with Trump then.
Speaker 3Yeah, except I think Mr Scott's actually religious.
Speaker 2You're saying he's got a chance and in Burgum and Huckabee they'd have to check how their childhood pets met their demise.
Speaker 3I would imagine that Burgum is not. Maybe maybe Huckabee Sanders has, but Burgum has not shot any kittens or puppies. The other maybe, elise Stefanik. Right, she's a strong woman. She used to be a moderate. She's in New York. She says crazy stuff, really, really crazy stuff that resonates with Trump. She's a card carrying J6er, so I think there's a lot of appeal there. She's female. She could try to address the suburban woman flight.
Speaker 2So wait a minute. What's, what's, what's? A card carrying J6? I never heard that term before. What is that?
Speaker 3She completely supports the big lie. She does not really condone what happened on January 6th. She is a person that has put her personal ambition, overall integrity and objectivity to the point where she is somebody that will do and say whatever Trump wants to gain his favor. And she has done that and taken that approach with January 6th. So I made up that snide term because I do not find that an enviable trait.
Speaker 2Like I listened to like a lot of stuff out of Washington. I'm like these guys don't even live in the same place that I live, just to turn a phrase. Yeah, okay. So if you look at those seven swing states, I can't think of any name that jumps out. Now you're more versed in this than I am. But Kemp out of Georgia, I guess he said don't call him, is my understanding Glenn Youngkin out of Virginia, not a swing state, but traditionally a swing state. They floated his name. I mean, would that be a good move? I think yeah.
Speaker 3I mean I would be. I don't know if he would do it right, because Glenn Youngkin is similar to Bergman in that he is massively independent wealthy. He's like hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in personal wealth, which is a good thing, right, trump likes that. I think he's prim and proper opposed to Burgum, which is eccentric, which, when juxtaposing it with Trump on the ticket, there are some benefits there. He's a Southerner and if you look at our swing States, um, north Carolina is there, georgia's there, so that ticks a lot of boxes. He's also not too far. He's mid-Atlantic too because of Virginia's weird positioning, so maybe that resonates with some folks in Pennsylvania. So yeah, rich, I think that that could be an enticing pick.
Speaker 3I think what's working against him is he was held up as in similar ways to Ron DeSantis being held up during the primary. He was held up as the next great hope and he got his ass kicked in the last Virginia elections. It took a lot of shine off of it. He was supposed to bring the Washington Wizards and Capitals, the NHL and NBA team, from Washington DC to Virginia. He had a whole press conference with the owner. It was a done deal. He failed, the deal fell through. We couldn't get it through the Virginia legislature. So what started out as a promising career with a lot of momentum, lately has seen a reverse in fortune.
Speaker 2There's a podcast that we're going to release, a topic called Sportswashing, where we do talk a lot about the Wizards and Caps and where they're going to be located and the public financing of stadiums and the like, which I am against the public financing of stadiums, just for the record. I think it's unfair to your working people. Yeah, they're really interesting that a guy with your knowledge, this close to an election, can't pinpoint two or three people that would be a great fit for Trump and basically that might be his way back into the White House would be a great pick, but it doesn't look like he's got one available to him, unless that anti-puppy lobby comes in strong somehow.
Speaker 3Well, trump hates dogs and that for your listeners that's like insider theory. So not sure how much we want to get into this, but Corey Lewandowski, former top Trump adviser, is having an affair Allegedly I need to say that for legal issues with Chrissy Noem, and you know it's not, it's not a secret. But also Trump hates dogs. So the theory is Lewandowski whispered in her ear to put this in there. It'll make you look trough and endear you to Trump and that's why she put it in there. I don't know if it's true or not. Those are rumors.
Speaker 2One of the funniest things I read lately was the Babylon Bee, which made up makes up satirical stories that Kristi Noem had showed up at the Kentucky Derby asking if the owners wanted to put down any of the losers as she racked her shot.
Speaker 3I've read that story. It was funny.
Speaker 2I don't want this to become the Kristi Noem shot her dog episode, and we're at risk of that going on.
Speaker 3Rich, rich, rich, let's just. The country's divided on babies Right, and I'm being uncouth and my Democratic friends wouldn't like that but there is a division among abortion, the one thing that this damn divided country can agree on 80, 90% of people like puppies. So she's like, let me go tell the story of how I killed a puppy. It's just.
Speaker 2Look, we don't have time to do it justice, but it seems to me that there is a consensus around abortion if we actually let the facts come out, that nearly all terminated pregnancies happen very early, they happen with medicines versus with surgeries, that there are very few late-term abortions, and I thought, okay, Roe versus Wade, it'll go to the states, the states will get reasonable compromises.
Speaker 2And I underestimated the radical nature of some of our brethren and I never thought that the Republicans would go after the Petri dishes of in vitro fertilization or birth control pills, because I remember the 60s where you know they were talking about. The birth control pill was going to I don't forget what it's supposed to do, supposed to hurt us really bad, and I think there's consensus every place, but in the political sphere and with that vote for women in hand, the Biden administration undoes Title IX and if you really want to be cynical and cryptic about it, it'd be like it's probably a lot more women that want to run track in high school than there are women that want to terminate a pregnancy. By the way, you and I have no standing to be talking about either one of these issues.
Speaker 3Rich. To tie this all back in, I was a college athlete, so not really versed in Title IX, but you had a ballot initiative that was an extreme abortion ban to be codified in the state constitution. And then Republicans decided to write the other alternative, which was as mostly extreme pro-life as they could, because they thought we're in a state that is R plus 10, like we started off our discussion with. So when voters had the opportunity to go from the very progressive option or the very conservative option, overwhelmingly they chose the progressive option. That was written by Republicans in an attempt to sink and manipulate the initiative. So I do agree with you. I think we do have.
Speaker 2Yes, yeah, Look at Kansas. Yeah, it was a very I mean a very conservative state and they like no, we're not going to do this. And you know, again not having standing the dilemma of someone with an unwanted pregnancy to force them into a highly personal decision juxtaposed with the rights of that unborn child, and someplace in there, there is a period in that gestation that it's probably okay when you don't really know the outcome. And both sides are just jacking it up on the extremes and forcing us to pick really a radical policy one way or the other. And both sides are just jacking it up on the extremes and forcing us to pick really a radical policy one way or the other, and most Americans don't want that.
Speaker 3The doctors told my parents I had health issues. I was at Boston Children's Hospital. They advised my parents to abort me and you know my parents thought about it. They were religious Christian. My dad fought in Vietnam and they're like, no, he's going to. He may have all these birth issues, but we have a responsibility. You know it's our, it's our job and duty to to see this child through. I'm very, very thankful they did that. However, I'm also very thankful they had the opportunity to make that decision Today. They wouldn't have that opportunity in insert your conservative state and so, as somebody that you know, it's a very personal thing for me. I think that the government should not be trying to over-regulate people's lives, which is a conservative talking point, but it's true.
Speaker 2I think it's a great point. We have had more than one premature infant in our life, and some severely, but had the Clinton Care Bill been law, it would have been illegal to treat one of them, and she is a PhD scientist and molecular biologist and a thriving, good mom, great daughter. We have to accept all people for whatever they bring into the world, whether they may have fully functioning bodies, minds. That that's a human being and we need to be able to honor that life and also the incredibly difficult decision your parents must have made and I'm biting my tongue not to make a joke about during your teen years, if they ever said that they maybe would have made a different choice because you seem to have turned out okay.
Speaker 3Oh, my mom would have definitely made a difference. And, rich, I think that this program is so great because clearly you and I both do not have fully functioning minds yet. We're willing to accept each other.
Speaker 2Well, but here's the difference. I used to, and there's still hope for you, so you got that going. You got that going, justin. I love having these conversations. I'm glad that we decided, about 20 minutes before we fired up the recorder, to make this program. Is there anything else that we didn't talk about that you wanted to make sure that the listeners, readers and viewers of the Common Bridge had a chance to hear.
Speaker 3I think just to highlight that the feeling in DC from Democrats, including myself, is of major concern. The top of the ticket, biden, specifically, cannot message well due to his age, and that this is independent of my thoughts on Trump and what he can or cannot do well. So just realize that while a lot of people are out of touch in DC, a lot of people inside DC are in touch with reality and middle America and folks on the coast as well. This is a very important election. It's a scary election, probably for both sides, so all that I would implore your listeners to do is read and research articles from both sides to make your own opinion Great, and of course I would support that.
Speaker 2And you're not compelled to vote for either one. You can leave it blank, you can write in somebody, you can vote for a third party. Realistically, our options are limited and my perspective is we need to send a message and the message is do better. I've sat on executive committees selecting chief executives and had these been the two finalists, we would have sent the search agency back and said go, find us better people, because our people in the United States of America are better than our government. People aren't at each other's throats in the United States of America are better than our government. People aren't at each other's throats.
Political Sports Talk on Common Bridge
Speaker 2I live in two very diverse communities and have opportunity to talk to people from all walks of life, and there's not really much difference. As a youth, I hitchhiked the country a couple of times and met people from all statuses. Every description you can make not really much different than business in all 50 states and other countries. People just aren't that different and they all kind of want the same thing, and one of the things they want is a government that reflects their best values and the type of generous and compassionate people that they are. We've been talking today with the host of Politics and Media 101, our favorite man from inside the Beltway, justin Higgins, and we're going to sign off here by doing two things. Number one, wishing that his Boston Bruins do prevail and also that the Washington Commanders do not get ahead of the Detroit Lions. And with that, this is your host, rich. Helpe signing off on the Common Bridge.
Speaker 1Thanks for signing off on the Common Bridge. Thanks for joining us on the Common Bridge. Subscribe to the Common Bridge on substackcom or use their Substack app, where you can find more interviews, columns, videos and nonpartisan discussions of the day. Just search for the Common Bridge. You can also find the Common Bridge on Mission Control Radio or your Radio Garden app.