Heartland Daily Podcast

The Heartland Institute’s Linnea Lueken and Jim Lakely are joined by writer and commentator Jon Gabriel​ for episode 479 of the In The Tank Podcast.

With the certification of Trump’s election victory, the ousting of Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister of Canada, and other progressive defeats around the world in recent years, could this spell the beginning of the end for global progressives? Are big companies and big tech finally shifting away from a focus on DEI and ESG, and will it stick? The team talks about all of this and more.

Jon Gabriel (@exjon on X) is the author of Sink the Rising Sun, his first novel.

Creators & Guests

Guest
Jim Lakely
VP @HeartlandInst, EP @InTheTankPod. GET GOV'T OFF OUR BACK! Love liberty, Pens, Steelers, & #H2P. Ex-DC Journo. Amateur baker, garage tinkerer.
Guest
Linnea Lueken
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. Before joining Heartland, Linnea was a petroleum engineer on an offshore drilling rig.

What is Heartland Daily Podcast?

The “fire hose” of all podcasts produced by The Heartland Institute, a national free-market think tank.

Linnea Lueken:

Hey, everybody. We are live. It feels like we're off to a running start here at the beginning of 2025. The central theme in the news the last week or so has been a sort of dominoes game of progressive projects and people failing or at least floundering from a slew of companies abandoning DEI principles to Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada finally being chased out of his seat, as well as other international failures on the part of global progressive movements. We're gonna be talking about this and more on episode what episode is this?

Linnea Lueken:

I forget. I'm sorry. I've already failed. Okay. I am a new host.

Linnea Lueken:

Anyway, this is the In the Tank podcast. Thanks, guys.

Linnea Lueken:

It is episode 479. Thank you, and I am sorry. Okay. You might notice that I am not, Donald Kendall, unfortunately, who has gone on to great things in the Heartland Institute's Emerging Issue Center, which he is the director of. You guys can count on him swinging by the show frequently so you don't have to bear with just me forever.

Linnea Lueken:

He's not gone forever. If you wanna keep track of what, Donnie is up to, and I strongly suggest that you do, you can go to heartland.org at the emerging issues center page under the topics tab, which is the main page for his center. Alright. Anyway, so I'm on the Alukin, your new host. This is my very first time hosting, so please be patient with me.

Linnea Lueken:

I am learning, and so I already messed up once, and we're gonna keep a tally. Okay. So today as usual, we've got Jim Lakeley, vice president of the Heartland Institute. Jim, how is 2025 looking so far?

Jim Lakely:

2025 is looking, pretty great so far. You know, I guess, you know, it's kind of we call it pulling a gym when you are muted, when you're supposed to be, not unmuted. You're supposed to talk. So, hopefully, we can come up with a few pulling up Linnea coming out here soon. It's previous maybe it's forgetting the number of the episode at the time.

Jim Lakely:

I thought it was maybe pulling up Linnea. But, yeah, I'm I'm doing great. It's a it's a new year. I think, you know, people talk about how it feels like there's been a vibe shift, in the country and in the world. And, before we get into the show, actually, I wanna I just wanna say that, my heart, it hurts, and my prayers are with, the people of Southern California with those, devastating fires, the worst that the LA Basin has seen, in probably most people's lifetimes.

Jim Lakely:

I used to live for for, 5 years. I lived in Pasadena, California. I lived right below where those fires were coming. I would have been in an evacuation zone. So I I know it very well.

Jim Lakely:

I have friends there still. And so, you know, stay alive, keep, you know, be hopeful. You'll be able to rebuild, and, we're thinking about you all the time.

Linnea Lueken:

Yep. It's really, really bad stuff. We'll probably touch on that a bit on the Friday show, which is climate realism show. So that's my little plug for that one. We also have a very special guest this week.

Linnea Lueken:

This is John Gabriel, the undisputed king of stuff according to x. He works with the ricochet podcast network and is also a writer for discourse magazine and the Arizona Republic and a bunch of other places. He's also a fiction writer with a new military fiction novel out. John, I'm sure I missed a bunch of stuff. You've got a really extensive history.

Linnea Lueken:

So is there anything else that you wanna add here?

Jon Gabriel:

Not really. I I make really good coffee. I make pour over coffee, and I'll be doing a demonstration later. But, yeah, that about covers it.

Linnea Lueken:

Thank you very much. Alright. For for the audience here, before we really get started, I wanted to remind you guys that YouTube hates us. Therefore, if you want to support the show, you can go to heartland.org/inthetankanddonatethere. If you're a regular YouTube viewer, you already know all of this, but I'm gonna say it anyway, in case we have somebody that's, like, tuning in for the first time, waking up from a multi decade coma or something.

Linnea Lueken:

Clicking the thumbs up to like the video and sharing also helps break through some of YouTube suppression. And even just leaving a comment also helps. Alright. So it's we're gonna we're gonna launch right into our our first topic here because I know that Jim doesn't care about this topic at all, and it'll be interesting to see his reaction. Heartland Institute, as many of you guys know, is on pretty much all social media.

Linnea Lueken:

We're pretty well informed about how difficult it is to post what you want even when it's within the reasonable guidelines of the website. We're also pretty well known for debating the consensus narrative on a variety of topics, especially climate change and some COVID stuff that may or may not be the reason why we're demonetized here. And on Facebook in particular, we're pretty regularly suppressed for questioning those common progressive narratives. So when we see this, a shift in, you know, Meta or Facebook's approach, it's really striking to us. From National Review, we have, Meta to replace fact checks with community note system as Zuckerberg vows to return to free speech.

Linnea Lueken:

National Review, writes, Zuckerberg said after Trump won the 2016 election, Meta tried addressing concerns made by the legacy media about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. As part of that effort, Facebook partnered with a number of prominent legacy media outlets, which were tasked with educate educating? Yeah. That's right. The veracity of high profile stories that were receiving significant attention on the platform.

Linnea Lueken:

But the fact checkers were too politically biased, he admitted, which is why Meta is ending the program altogether. And, Jim, I think you have a video for us too.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. We do. Let me pop this up here. Okay. Sure.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. Here we go.

Speaker 5:

Has happened over the last several years. There's been widespread debate about potential harms from online content. Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more. A lot of this is clearly political. Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that's millions of people, and we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship.

Speaker 5:

The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech. So we're gonna get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.

Jim Lakely:

Okay. I got I gotta I gotta stop it right there.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Okay. So, Jim, we don't have any history at all with fact checkers here at the Heartland Institute, of course.

Jim Lakely:

Oh, no. Oh, no. Our our, no. It's not as if our Facebook page, is completely useless and has been for about a decade, because we are, you know, shadow banned, and we can't grow. We can't get any we can't usually even do any Facebook ads for anything.

Jim Lakely:

But just getting back to that, there's just a couple of things I wanna say off the top about this. I'm interested to hear what my friend John, has to say about it as well as he is a master of social media and, knows knows that inside and out. But, first of all, would any of this been been happening if the election turned out the other way? Do you think Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, and YouTube and Google or who you know, whatever is going on out there, I guess, everything other than blue sky, would any of them be now rededicated to allowing Americans to exercise their first amendment free speech rights? Do you think that would that would have happened if Kamala Harris won?

Jim Lakely:

Of course not. Of course, it wouldn't be happening right now. This is happening because, as Mark Zuckerberg realizes, there has been a vibe shift, a cultural shift in this country. And, you know, I don't want to I don't wanna punish him for making the right decision. Right?

Jim Lakely:

But the idea that now now it's okay, Mark Zuckerberg, for you to stand up for free speech rights. I'm I'm very glad this is happening. But you gave $400,000,000 to Democrats on the left to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. Your platform, believed the government and the the deep state and the CIA. That's another thing.

Jim Lakely:

You probably have CIA, assets in your company right now. You might wanna look around and do something about that so that the censorship actually does stop. But you told the world that the, the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Now, again, I don't wanna punish you for doing the right thing, but how about an apology? How about a real apology And, actually, a fuller accounting of exactly how your company, and every other social media company in the world until Elon Musk caught x, was collaborating with the government to illegally destroy the free speech rights of Americans during an election.

Jim Lakely:

An apology for that, and then we can listen to more of the more of the, video, I suppose.

Linnea Lueken:

Well, that's I love it when we get a gym rant. Yeah. I mean, a heartland is too like you said, we clash all the time with the fact checkers. I I'm strongly skeptical that this is legitimate, and I'm wondering, John, if you might agree with me on this. And the reason why I question his change of heart here is partially informed on those lies that he told previously about Facebook censorship during government hearings.

Linnea Lueken:

You know, and in and in part because the government hasn't really shown any intent to shut down their own censorship programs and stuff.

Jon Gabriel:

This is definitely a trust but verify kind of thing. I applaud him for making the statements he did. At least he admitted, you know, how bad the censorship had gotten. So that is a start. He went to the censorship anonymous meeting and said, hello.

Jon Gabriel:

I'm mister Zuckerberg. And, or I'm sorry. I'm Mark z, and I am a sensor, and, that's the first step recovery. So we'll wait and see, but he's already shown when the winds were blowing a different direction, he was shutting down free speech. So he's trying to keep in the good grace of the government, whether, it's a pro censorship regime as we've had for, gosh, at least 8 years, if not longer.

Jon Gabriel:

And, now he's trying to fit in with the new vibe shift, which living in Silicon Valley, he knows that's going on. That's where this vibe vibe shift terminology even came from. It was about a year ago, last February, when, some of the I think it was, Santiago Peleggi who noticed this vibe shift that people were speaking out loud, thoughts that everybody was thinking, but, previously censored themselves from saying. Just even just asking questions about the government and what's going on with printing money, what's going on with the climate exactly, you know, where is all this money going, they would just not talk about it because it was not cool to talk about those kind of things. You just kinda follow the agenda being set by leaders and, you spoke accordingly.

Jon Gabriel:

And especially since the election, but it really started before that, all the way to February, More and more people are doing this. You know? More people I don't know. You'd be at a dinner party or be out in public, and it's not, you know, it's not a political place at all, and a waiter would make a crack about Biden, or someone would you know? I'd get my haircut, which was too aggressive a couple days ago.

Jon Gabriel:

I'm debuting it now in shame. I'm hiding with my hat. But talking talking to the barber and him just, you know, never mentioning politics before, and all of a sudden, he's just like, man, This country is kinda messed up right now. So it's only intensified since November. I think it's just a matter of zeitgeist.

Jon Gabriel:

It's a cultural thing more than a political thing. So, yeah, Zuckerberg's riding that wave right now. People just have to keep on him, so he doesn't change his mind, and he actually follows through with changing who knows how many algorithms that have been suppressing articles. I I've seen articles that, you know, I'll write an op ed. It goes semi viral, and then no one shares it anymore.

Jon Gabriel:

Just just like shutting a door. It's like, oh, okay. I guess that annoyed somebody. So I've been shut down, but that's why I'm barely ever on Facebook anymore because it's boring. I I don't wanna just see, I don't know, you know, boring recitations of what I could see if I flipped on CNN or open the local paper.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean and and Jim knows this because we have the background for YouTube and stuff. Maybe one of the mistakes that these technocrats made was letting us have access to the analytics of our posts and stuff because it makes it really easy to tell that something artificial is happening when you have something that's on a pretty good upward trajectory and all of a sudden it flatlines and falls off out of nowhere.

Jim Lakely:

And

Linnea Lueken:

it doesn't have, like, a gradual natural looking curve to it. It's just cut.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. Well, yeah, you're I mean, we're Linae is talking about the, the climate at a glance video series that she had done, and we have a new set of those coming on the way very soon. But we did, what, I think 31 or 32 of those, and one of them really took off. I mean, it had 250,000 views, I think, within 24 hours, and then it just went it just stopped. And that it is impossible.

Jim Lakely:

It is impossible, but that was a natural algorithmic thing. So a a human being went in there and decided a leftist human being went in there and decided, this is not the message I want anyone to see anymore. I'm going to kill it. And, having the power to do that behind the scenes, it's one of the frustrating things about social media and what I think is good about Elon a lot of many good things about Elon Musk buying Twitter and renaming it x is that, obviously, that has had an effect on Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg would not be doing this, again, if the election had gone the other way.

Jim Lakely:

He also would not be doing this if Elon Musk did not buy x because just him doing that one social media, service, he is starting to change the the ripple effect is starting to change, at least starting with Facebook, and I'm sure, hopefully, YouTube and Google and others. But, you know so he wouldn't be doing this if the election had gone the other way or if or if Elon Musk had bought x. And, you know, like I said, I I hope this actually, YouTube really I mean, this is not gonna help us get our channel re monetized, but YouTube, Google is a problem, that they that they that they basically shadow ban anything that that is not giving off the leftist, agenda and message. And, you know, they'll let you have your free speech. They will say things like, you know, free speech does not mean, free promotion, which is not what anybody, honestly, is asking for.

Jim Lakely:

We just don't wanna have, you know, the boot on our neck, you know, having our head pushed down under the water constantly because we don't we don't go along with, with leftist orthodoxy on climate, especially, and all sorts of other things.

Linnea Lueken:

Yep. Definitely. Do we have more of that

Speaker 5:

We're gonna get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes similar to x starting in the US. After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth, But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US. 2nd, we're gonna simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.

Jim Lakely:

Alright. I got I gotta stop it right there. There is so much to unpack. I know we could do the whole hour on this, and I could just keep stopping this. But, you know, there's the admission that the election, well, first of all, let me back that up just a bit.

Jim Lakely:

He says in this video we may not get to to that part of the audio, but he says that it'll take a couple of months, but we are going to restore your free speech rights on Facebook. It'll take a couple of months. He could have done this at any time. He could have done this in 2020. He could have done this in 2017.

Jim Lakely:

He could have done it in 2018. He could have done this at any time. You know? Again, I don't wanna punish him and yell at him for doing the right thing, but you were the ones you you all together, Silicon Valley decided that they could not believe it. They couldn't stand it.

Jim Lakely:

We didn't use our power to stop the bad orange man from getting to the White House. We will never let that happen again. We are going to use our power to destroy that bad orange man and punish all anybody who had the, the, you know, the gall to vote for him will also be punished. And then the then then then the society will turn out the way we think it should be instead of the way the people want it to be by voting. And so, again, all of this could have been done at any time.

Jim Lakely:

It was immediately known, Mark Zuckerberg, that the Hunter Biden laptop was not Russian disinformation. Immediately known. That was bullshit, and everybody knew it. You could have turned the switch right there and said, I'm tired of being lied to. I'm tired of being manipulated by by government, actors out there.

Jim Lakely:

I'm tired of getting emails and phone calls saying, hey. That's a pretty nice, $1,000,000,000, multibillion dollar social media company you gotta go in there. Be ashamed if something happened to it by the government coming in and regulating you out of existence. He could have said all of these things earlier, and he didn't. He could have stood up for the constitution earlier, but he didn't.

Jim Lakely:

And, again, that was the 8th time I've said this. I don't wanna punish him for doing the right thing, but it does anger me a little bit that he says things like, yeah. You know, restricting what people could say about, you know, the transgender movement or, what with the election or some other things, you know, it was out of the mainstream. Us Facebook censoring the, by far, majority view on controversial topics. Yeah.

Jim Lakely:

Gosh. I guess that was a mistake because they the the there was put us out of the mainstream. One last thing I'm gonna say about this, and we should probably want another topic or I will keep going, is, like, here's where the here's the issue where the proof will be in the pudding, climate change. You know, the the, the the trans the transgender issue kinda came out of from out of nowhere. It's pretty obscure.

Jim Lakely:

You could call it a new, you know, ritual in the leftist religion, transgenderism. Climate is like the old testament of leftist, social religion. If they allow people to actually say what they think and what the science tells them about the climate, then then I will stop punishing them for doing the right thing because that is the last hurdle they need. The first hurdle, really, they need to jump.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. I mean, you've got LinkedIn kicking Greg Wrightstone off for just publishing research papers on on LinkedIn that are, you know, saying that, like, there aren't more hurricanes than there were. And it's just the fact the data just shows that, yeah, it's it's pretty bad. And I really briefly, before we move on to the next topic, I do want to bring up because it's related, this report from The New York Post. There was some news going around saying that the government is going to get rid of their global engagement center, which is their censorship center, basically.

Linnea Lueken:

But it turns out that they're actually just rebranding it under a new name with the same employees. This is from the article. The State Department reportedly notified Congress last month that it plans to shuffle staffers and money from the controversial and now shuttered Global Engagement Center to a new office aimed at countering foreign information manipulation and interference, which is again harkening straight to the, you know, the Russian bot, Russian disinformation stuff. I have no doubt whatsoever that there are people planting fake news online for, you know, geopolitical reasons. But, John, you know, as someone who's been working with media for a long time and has kept his eye on the government like a hawk, do you imagine that the feds are going to now stop trying to manipulate information that they just don't like?

Jon Gabriel:

Oh, of course not. And, boy, Marco Rubio, when he shows up at state, he needs to you're talking about the old testament. He needs to move up to the gospels and get a whip and, clear out the temple of the money changers kind of a thing because that Foggy Bottom is rotten with political operatives, and, they can't be allowed to get away with this chicanery just, shuffling around, the cards, shuffling the deck chairs. It's a bad system. It doesn't work even if they were fear of heart in trying to do the right thing.

Jon Gabriel:

The way you combat is everybody knows the way you combat speech you don't like is with more speech, and that's the only thing that's going to work, especially when the government is involved. You know, as annoying as it is for social media companies to censor and so forth, it's not they're not included in the constitution, but I say it's bad for the culture, it's bad for business. But when the government is in charge of doing it, it's just crazy. I'm sure that censoring global misinformation isn't going to get rid of something like the ghost of Kyiv story coming out of Ukraine because the administration likes that. That that was a very handy myth for the people to tell

Jim Lakely:

you it

Jon Gabriel:

was disproven. You know? And nothing against Ukraine, but that's what we're going to see. We're going to see favored countries, favored conflicts. And who knows, you know, if there's another president, you know, several terms into the future, you know, they they could just gin up anything.

Jon Gabriel:

Another reason to invade the Middle East, some Middle Eastern country. So they're not going to censor stuff that they approve of, only things that they are that don't help them get reelected, that don't help them receive funds. And it it's just a terrible idea to leave these people on the taxpayer payroll.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. Do do you know what's more dangerous than disinformation? Government censorship. That's a lot more dangerous than misin misinformation. And, also, just one last thing.

Jim Lakely:

I I love the idea of the community notes as opposed to using lying on the hard left as a PolitiFact to be the authority or any mainstream media organization to be the authority on the truth, or the government the government, the biggest disseminator of mis and disinformation, that we've ever seen over the last 5 years on you just named the topic, and they were they were peddling the most disinformation. But the community notes idea idea is great. If you're experienced, you know, trolling on on x, you can see that community notes are actually quite helpful. It's going to be very important in the details on how Facebook institutes their own community notes program. If it's going to be allowed to be dominated by the likes of lefties that were who work for PolitiFact, it's not gonna have the effect that he hopes, and he's going to actually just continue the the de facto censorship regime that he says he wants to correct.

Jim Lakely:

If it's going to be truly and and truly, crowdsourced by among users who know what they're talking about and can cite use citations. Again, I wanna I can't wait till this is implemented. I'm gonna try to do some community notes on false climate alarmist BS and we'll see if I can, get that community note up there. We'll see.

Linnea Lueken:

Yep. It definitely remains to be seen. Speaking of things that progressives love being slowly taken away from them, A whole bunch of companies are now seeming to call it quits on DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Andy, you can pull up the little graphic that I made for this. From the AP, we have that McDonald's is the latest in a ton of companies, especially the bigger names that you would recognize, apparently walking back DEI commitments and maybe even in some cases, entire departments.

Linnea Lueken:

The AP reports that McDonald's said Monday it would retire specific goals for achieving diversity at senior leadership levels and end a program that encourages its suppliers to develop diversity training. The company's diversity team will be renamed the Global Inclusion Team. The Chicago Burger Giant says it remains committed to inclusion and believes the diverse workforce is a competitive advantage. So not every I want to emphasize before I open this up for comments that every company is doing this a little bit differently. Not every company's alleged withdrawal is the same type or to the same degree, but we are seeing a general drawback or at least they're trying to rename things so that they can stop getting yelled at for DEI all the time.

Linnea Lueken:

So, you know, the AP claims that DEI policies are actually a counterweight to discriminatory practices of the businesses. John, do you find that to be true in what we've seen from DEI so far?

Jon Gabriel:

Yeah. It was basically forced on companies because they thought it was the polite thing to do. Look. We're tired of getting yelled at, for being horrible people, you know, whatever it might be, whatever the social issue might be. But what you're seeing now, this vibe shift, now none of this is to say that, oh, okay.

Jon Gabriel:

The right one on these issues. Everybody you know, no one believes it anymore. They didn't believe in DEI either. It's just it was considered cool in 2018 to create all these initiatives. It's seen as uncool now.

Jon Gabriel:

Now when, they get together at the country club, the CEOs get Snickers because of their crazy d I DEI quotas or something like that, and they would rather not get that. So now people are no longer you know, I remember a few years ago where LinkedIn, every time I checked in because it's such a riveting site to read in detail. But, anytime I check-in to LinkedIn, it was just like, enter your pronouns. I'm like, why would I do that? And then I started seeing all my friends who work in, especially, the private sector, he, he, she, she, you know, she, her, you know, things like that just started popping up and a few with jokes.

Jon Gabriel:

I didn't see their posts anymore, you know, putting jokes where the pronouns were. So it it's just, it it's, meaning it's a fashionable thing is why they did it, and it's a fashionable thing on why they're getting rid of it. So I don't think people believed in their heart of hearts that, all the crazy manifestations of wokeness that we've seen, they didn't take this stuff to heart. They didn't, you know, bury it in their soul. And, oh, I I'm a true believer.

Jon Gabriel:

I'm committed to this. I'm going out in the streets to protest. They just followed the herd, and that's where the herd was going, and now the herd is abandoning all that stuff. And you're seeing you know, I know some people in the Hollywood area, and as Jim started the podcast, gosh. Please stay safe out there, everyone in, Southern California.

Jon Gabriel:

But I know some people out there, and they're talking about projects. It's like, wow. I couldn't have, sold the script a couple years ago, and now people are buying it. I, you know, recently put out a novel, and it was kind of the same thing. It's just like, why bother going through publishers and things like that with sensitivity editors, and, oh, why isn't your hero from a paraplegic from Guatemala with, emotional issues?

Jon Gabriel:

You know? Oh, okay. I'll I'll change World War 2 history to do that. Instead of going through that, it's just like, how about a book where the hero is a good guy trying to do the right thing? He's not perfect.

Jon Gabriel:

He loves his country. He's not dealing with emotional trauma. He's not an a gritty antihero. I think we've been fed this stuff for decades now, and it's just boring. Nobody wants it anymore.

Jon Gabriel:

So and you're seeing that, yeah, in entertainment. You're seeing it in media. You're seeing it in corporations, and you've already seen it for years in smaller stores, shops, mom and pop businesses who are just like, look. We don't have the resources to do all this crap. You know?

Jon Gabriel:

Why bother? And you've also seen the rise of a lot of online or virtual HR departments, that a lot of small businesses use because, like, look, you guys deal with all this nonsense. Let me know which, which squares I need to check on my screen, and so we don't have to worry about all this craziness. We're, you know, aligned with state laws, whether we're based in Oregon or based in Utah. They can align with the state laws without having to deal with the all the drama that this kind of victim mentality always brings.

Linnea Lueken:

I mean and there's another angle to this too that I don't think people talk a lot about, and that is that there are you know, I worked for a, you know, major international kind of company in the past, and we had all these DEI trainings and stuff, and they were odious. And when I say odious, I mean, it wasn't just that it was a waste of time and it was boring. It was, like, actively insulting and belittling and stuff. It was really, really bad. I wish I had screen recorded it or or something to show just how bad it was.

Jon Gabriel:

But There's actually a trick for that that I used working in the private sector, if I may interrupt Yeah. Is I always listen to what the teacher is saying about the requirements of diversity or whatever the latest woke agenda is. I say, what you're saying here is completely insufficient. It does not address the root causes, and then I amplify the wokeness to ridiculous lengths until they have to tell me to shut up and, just shut up and pay attention. So it's just like, you know, you are you're leaving all these other groups out, and I start getting more and more obscure.

Jon Gabriel:

And then they get annoyed with me, but they usually just think, uh-oh. I'm gonna have to teach what this guy says a year from now. This guy's going way too far.

Jim Lakely:

You make them regret putting John Gabriel through a struggle session, don't you? Exactly.

Linnea Lueken:

That's right. Yeah. It's it's almost, what I think at this point, we would almost call the Matt Walsh approach to, dealing with GEI. Exactly. But yeah.

Linnea Lueken:

No. But it was it was so bad. Unfortunately, in my case, I couldn't bully them back because they were smart enough to make it a computer module with unskippable videos and stuff that you had to sit through and watch. It was just terrible. But, what I was getting at is there's entire companies, like massive companies that do nothing but produce this stuff.

Linnea Lueken:

And so there's like a financial incentive to sell DEI programs to major corporations, and it's a huge scam. It's like the craziest that when you really start digging into, all the little, like, rabbit holes and stuff that you can find with that, it's it's nuts, actually. You know, they contract out or a major company will contract out, you know, a a, like, a training company and buy all of their training modules and have you check them off. And that's supposed to, I don't know, cover it for the company. So it and it's not and it's not just DEI either.

Linnea Lueken:

Some other stuff that's getting killed is also, and I'm hoping that this sticks, but I really kind of don't trust it either. We've got JPMorgan and Black, even BlackRock, who is kind of a big pusher of this, but they're exiting the net zero banking alliances and net zero asset managers initiatives. Specifically, we've got BlackRock. So what I what I wanted to say about about the BlackRock issue in particular or no. Oh, you know what?

Linnea Lueken:

Let's do JPMorgan. You're right. I'm sorry, guys. I'm a little clumsy here. There they are claiming to be withdrawing from their net zero like environment, social and governance programs that they are part of The Net Zero Banking Alliance and the Net Zero, Manage Asset Managers Initiative are basically just like collections of companies and organizations that pledge that they're going to make sure that all of their portfolios are are directed towards the cause of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and pursuing different environmental projects and social projects and all of that great stuff that we love so much, including DEI.

Linnea Lueken:

The fact that they're withdrawing from this stuff makes me kind of suspicious, not just because, again, like we said with Meta and, and with the DEI stuff, it seems like there might be just kind of a a reframing, especially considering we have the SEC pushing to, kind of increase the ESG responsibilities that companies are supposed to adhere to, at the same time that this is going on. So, Jim, do you think that this stuff like, is is BlackRock really going to be giving up the climate issue? Is JPMorgan Chase and all the other banks that have withdrawn from these alliances? Are they really giving up on those issues or are they just rebranding it?

Jim Lakely:

I think they might just be rebranding it. On the net zero, I think they're gonna have to give it up because that is a complete dead end. They know it is not is not sustainable. In both the net zero thing and, you know, woke corporate wokeism and DEI and all of that in the corporate world. Let's understand what that was.

Jim Lakely:

That was that was the left using corporate America to be the enforcement arm of its agenda and its and what it wants the world to be. They, the left has been horribly, unsuccessful in persuading people that their outlook and views on how, like, how we should organize our lives, how much energy we should use, how big a house we should have, the kinds of things we should say, the flags we should fly in front of you know, on our homes, and all those sorts of things. The left has very particular, ideas about the best way to go about all sorts of different pursuits in life that, you know, ostensibly, you're free to choose for yourself. But they were very bad at persuading people that that was the way to go. And when you add in the climate cult, where they think that the way we're living our lives now is literally destroying the planet, and we will be unlivable for human beings within a 100 years if we don't go basically, put ourselves back to the stone age tomorrow.

Jim Lakely:

They had a hard time persuading people to make the choices in their own lives, to live in that manner. But what they found out that they can do, again, using the government once they came into more power in the bureaucracies and especially with the election of, first, Barack Obama and then, the you had the interregnum of Trump there for a bit. And then then Biden, they got right back to it and did it in a big hurry. They decided the the the best way to make the permanent change that we really wanna make, is to use corporate America as the enforcement arm of our aims. And so this is where you get, you know and they got arrogant about it, frankly.

Jim Lakely:

I used to have we played the clip on this show before, and I think we've played it on the Climate Realism Show as well. Larry Fink at a, I think, WEF, World Economic Forum, panel bragging, just stating out out out overtly that the they were using their immense power in the global economy to, quote, force behaviors. We need to force behaviors. And he doesn't mean, force behaviors, in a rightward direction. He means forcing behaviors by, making people leaving them no choice because I'm going to bankrupt that corporation.

Jim Lakely:

I'm gonna not gonna give you loans. We're not gonna invest in this sector, and we're gonna force behaviors. And and that way, we can finally get to that leftist utopia. He doesn't say that kind of stuff anymore. Another big catchphrase for the left was the whole of society approach to social change.

Jim Lakely:

This was all part of it. It it they there was the thing that frustrated the left, I think, for decades is that they couldn't get corporate America or the global corporate, behemoth to go along with enforcing their ideology. But they have been very successful in that over the last few years, and DEI is a bit you know, it's a part of it. It's a bit part of it. But this net zero thing, you know, the idea that they're not going to invest you're not gonna be allowed to invest in in oil or natural gas companies or coal companies because we need to phase those, you know, those forms of energy out of the our global economy for good.

Jim Lakely:

The reason you don't hear Larry Fink talking about forcing behaviors anymore is because he did another, panel not too long ago, I think, within the last year, where he looked at the AI revolution and said, holy crap. We're gonna need a lot of energy for those server farms for the for, artificial intelligence. And we have two choices. We can let China be the developer, and on the forefront of developing AI by using coal fired power plants, Or we can, forget about this wind and solar garbage because it's not strong enough and reliable enough to power our own AI systems. So we're gonna have to go nuclear is what he prefers, but maybe natural gas as well.

Jim Lakely:

So that's why and where I think net zero is the real abandonment. I really think they are going to abandon the net zero because there's AI on the one hand, and then there's the climate cult on the other. And, there's China competing for both. And, actually, China's going for the AI, and and we're gonna gonna we're gonna stop running for the climate cult anymore. So yeah.

Jim Lakely:

I I think all of this is part of that is part of that forcing behaviors. That's all gone. I think we've we've entered, hopefully, a new era in where forced corporations' forcing behaviors is no longer what they're interested in. They're interested in actually making profit and being in the lead in, corporate and and technological innovation.

Linnea Lueken:

Well, I don't wanna drag this, topic out for too long because we're a little bit behind schedule here on these. But, yeah, I would man, Jim, actually, I am again the the more cynical one compared to you on this issue. I think that they are sneaking around. And, while they might abandon net zero for themselves, they're not gonna abandon it for the rest of us. I think it's far more likely that they're going to invest in, like, micro reactors, like nuclear micro reactors and stuff and their own personal power plants Yeah.

Linnea Lueken:

While actively lobbying for, net zero green grid stuff in general. I I really think that that's the direction that this is going. It's gonna be like a weird, like, energy feudalism.

Jim Lakely:

I'm supposed to be the senator one

Linnea Lueken:

right now. You're the whole But I just I had to bring I had to bring the the hope down for a second.

Jim Lakely:

Oh, alright. Well, we'll we'll probably talk about this more on the Climate Real Estate Show tomorrow as well, actually.

Linnea Lueken:

John, before we move on to our, our wonderful next topic, did you have anything that you wanted to add?

Jon Gabriel:

Yeah. Net zero really is, running on fumes. Those of us in Heartland Institute definitely has been on the forefront of this. Just the math doesn't work. You don't make your energy policy based on purse your personal morality.

Jon Gabriel:

You make it on science, you make it on physics, and there just isn't enough power that can be generated by renewables we have now, unless you include, in a big way, nuclear, and I was a reactor operator on a submarine. I'm very familiar with the technology, and it is incredibly safe. We know now far more than we did when those submarine reactors were created, and they are have been made tremendously safer still. We need to deploy these things, and, if anybody can get my hands so if I can get my hands on a personal modular reactor, that would be great. You can find me at my off the grid cabin, where I'll just be listening to cool music and, drinking coffee and reading old books.

Jon Gabriel:

So I will never be on a podcast again, which is a tragedy for the Internet at large. However, that's really just the way to go, and, people have to get over their bizarre phobia about nuclear energy. It usually comes from a place of deep, deep ignorance and fear mongering by the media.

Linnea Lueken:

Yep. True that. Okay. So in my notes, I have this next segment labeled as, the Biden administration is sundowning. So we're we are, we are about to talk about the fact that, I hope everybody in the in the chat here, did see the video of, Kamala certifying the election.

Linnea Lueken:

But if you didn't, we're gonna kinda play it in the background here. Her facial expressions really cracked me up. It's a little bit sad to watch. It's kinda I don't know. It's kinda like I don't know.

Linnea Lueken:

Just kicking her while she's down, but, it is kinda funny that she had to certify the election that she lost. So we have from the daily signal. Do you have that one for me? Daily signal. Biden administration admits defeat by withdrawing 7 woke rule changes.

Linnea Lueken:

The daily signal rights, the withdrawals are being hailed as wins by conservatives who have submitted comments against the rules, which would have compelled allowing male participation in girls sports, prohibited religious exemptions for birth control coverage, taken federal funding away from pregnancy resource centers and more. Just a bunch of, like, the most bizarre, unpopular policies you could think of. He did have to back down on those, but unfortunately, he still has been ramming through all sorts of stuff anyway. From Click Orlando, we have, that Biden has signed into law 50 bills ahead of Christmas alone. And these are most of them are kind of little nothings, but every extra bill that gets passed that we didn't need is, just more clutter and more garbage that we will have to deal with eventually.

Linnea Lueken:

Worst of all of them is him attempting to do some, like, kind of last minute offshore bans, our offshore drilling bans. These I'll be able to talk to talk to this issue in a little bit more detail on tomorrow's show. But I wanted to pitch it out there anyway because it's kind of like the death throes, you know, like the last, like, dying spasms of the Biden administration. And I wanna just throw it out to the whole gang here to, comment on whatever you you feel like with regard to that. I don't think it's overly unusual for an outgoing administration to try to cram through as much of their own agenda as possible, but it's it's mostly nonsense.

Linnea Lueken:

He gave out a bunch of awards and stuff to people that are like George Soros. Just the worst people that you could think of.

Jim Lakely:

So What?

Linnea Lueken:

That's alright. What you got, guys? John,

Jim Lakely:

make sure you're here. Spoke with Jim by talking while

Linnea Lueken:

muted. Terry.

Jon Gabriel:

Hi. I'm Jim Gabriel. Yeah. I I just for years now, I've been saying it's not a Biden administration as much as it's a Biden regency. You have kind of the doddering old king being held up and, processed by various counselors who are jockeying for position to get their pet projects funded to gain more land back in the medieval times, but, that's what you see going on here.

Jon Gabriel:

All these goofy staffers throughout the White House are just, hey, if you sign this piece of paper, we'll give you another scoop of ice cream. He's like, alright. I'll I'll do that too. And that's what these things feel like because they're just so random. They're all over the place, just flinging money, hither and yon, and, yeah, just giving awards out like crazy.

Jon Gabriel:

Just like, oh, I get to play president for a couple weeks before I'm booted out and have to return to my home in Delaware. The whole thing has just been pathetic. The past 4 years have been a prime example of elder abuse. Everybody could see it when he ran in 2020, and, how the media pretended that he was fine, and, boy, we can't keep up with this guy. He's a tiger.

Jon Gabriel:

No. He's a very, very old man who's been on well a very long time, and, he should be kicking back in a rocking chair at his lake house, dropping a line in the water, and hanging out with his grandkids. And now great grandkid, who he announced instead of dealing well with the horrific fires going on in SoCal. So, it's just yeah. It it's very much a death row.

Jon Gabriel:

I love that concept of his entire administration's sundowning because that's what it feels like. Please go away. We're we're done now.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. And a lot of it feels too like he's kinda trying to twist the knife in, you know, for Trump when he's on the way in. And I think Jim had something to comment on that particular theory of why all of this is happening now the way it is. Because now Trump comes in, he has to deal with all this stuff that Biden is doing.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. I mean, did I rant on something on on on a message board that we had that did I miss it? Did I did I rant it and forget? But no.

Linnea Lueken:

You may have. I have it closed so it won't ping at me during the show.

Jim Lakely:

I did. I tend to go a little nuts sometimes, when these things trigger me, and I I take them out on the staff at the Heartland Institute. Look. I mean, they're they're when you see the stuff that the Biden administration is doing first of all, if we had a real media that was interested and it has never been interested at all and look at having a critical eye, pointing a critical eye at the Biden administration, they would actually maybe we would see an outrage story or 2, from the legacy media saying, you know, maybe it's a little inappropriate to, mister Biden to be implementing these some of these radical policies that the American people wholly rejected just, a few weeks ago, that this is not what America wants. America voted the other way.

Jim Lakely:

And so it would be, it's rude, to say the very least, to think that you just because you can do it, you should do it. You should implement your, your policies and ram them down America's throats, you know, good and hard whether they like it or not. The one policy that I think that might be, well, just backing up. There there's something called the Congressional Review Act, which, Bill Clinton signed in 1996. And it's basically designed to handle a situation like this, when an outgoing administration, the lamest of lame ducks, decides to sign all of these executive orders or to have their administration, their their agencies, their bureaucrats quickly write all of these rules.

Jim Lakely:

And a bureaucratic rule has the force of law. You could go to jail if you violate a rule implemented by an unelected bureaucrat. So the Congressional Review Act is supposed to allow expedited review of those new regulations that were put in in a lame duck session for a presidency and then just quickly overturn them. And then on top of that and this was supposed to be a deterrent to have these kind of shenanigans going on, part of that law says that any similar rule that you try to write just like this in the future is null and void immediately. In other words, you know, don't try to abuse your power like this on the way out when when, when a new administration is coming in, because the one of the punishments is gonna be you can't even do anything approaching that rule ever again.

Jim Lakely:

So but the one rule that that Biden is that, and, Lynae, you you could probably speak to this even better than me, was was putting because you used to work on an offshore oil rig. Was putting even more of the, ocean floor off limits, from, oil exploration right before Donald Trump gets in, who says he wants to drill, baby drill everywhere he can. And the little wrinkle in this is that the the statute that Biden is using to take that, seafloor off of oil exploration possibilities, basically makes that almost almost permanent or, at the very least, even harder than than normal to reverse with the stroke of a pen. In other words, you can make it the law with the stroke of a pen, but a new president coming in a month later cannot just undo it with a stroke of a pen. It becomes a lot more complicated.

Jon Gabriel:

Well, so the president add too Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Shoot. If I can add too, with offshore drilling, the upcoming issue, everybody's talking about the latest thing being AI, deep sea mining. China is moving very hard into that into that area doing tons of research, and that's actually a lot of their submarine program is, kinda based on that exploration, and we have to be prepared for that.

Jon Gabriel:

Russia's involved, and several other countries were getting involved for all these untapped resource resources in the ocean, which are vastly more plentiful than mines on land. Of course, environmentalists don't want mines on land because, I guess, they're icky even though we need them for all their green energy initiatives, and then they say they're against it looking for the ocean because something might happen that's bad somehow. But we need to be doing research into that. Who knows? It might not be profitable at all, but we at least need to be ahead of where we are in research into seeing, you know there's so many rare earth minerals involved.

Jon Gabriel:

And right now, China controls all of them. They control all sorts of resources for this green energy revolution, for the batteries, for solar panels, and so forth. And, we have to get in the game on these things, and, Biden is still suck stuck in last century.

Linnea Lueken:

Right. And I'll definitely be able to go over that a bit more tomorrow. But the, the areas that it it's, again, it's kind of a little petulant move because, actually, the areas that, Biden has taken off the table are mostly areas that there isn't all that much production going on anyway. It's still bad. Like, it's still very you know, it's terrible.

Linnea Lueken:

But he's like, you know, the West Coast of the United States, the East Coast of the United States. The only offshore drilling that's going on in the East Coast is in, like, Canada. So we're not doing any of that.

Jim Lakely:

The East of America, you mean?

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. The East Coast of, the Gulf of Mexico, which is right alongside Florida, where a lot of offshore drilling is banned anyway.

Linnea Lueken:

I mean, it's he is he's being a little bit sneaky about it, or at least his staffers that wrote this rule are being a little bit sneaky about it.

Jim Lakely:

We can call Canada West Greenland.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. Exactly. But the, so so Trump's victory here has really obviously put them all into a tizzy. And the the victory of the right over here is not the only one that's occurred in recent years. For our our main topic here, we have the most recent other leadership that has just been announced is going to be changing, hopefully for more conservatives.

Linnea Lueken:

But there's always chance it could go back to liberals. Is that Trudeau, who from this article and see CNN, I'm going to read it off, leader of the Liberal Party for 11 years and prime minister for 9, was facing a mounting set of crises from Donald Trump's tariff threats to the resignation of key allies and disastrous opinion polls. His resignation could be seen as choosing to jump before he's pushed ahead of a general election to be held later this year that he is widely expected to lose. And Canada is just the latest in this trend, though, other than Trump's election, as we have this Politico article as well. And this writer explains in this very cope filled article, the long standing effort to keep extremist force forces out of government in Europe is officially over.

Linnea Lueken:

I'm going to read a bit off of this one because the article is just oh, it's so it's so good. Alright. For decades, political parties of all kinds joined forces to keep the hard right from the levers of power. Today, this strategy, known in France as cordon senate sanitaire, I'm not good at French, I'm sorry, is falling apart as populist and nationalist parties grow in strength across the continent. 6 EU countries, Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and the Czech Republic have hard right parties in government.

Linnea Lueken:

In Sweden, the survival of executive relies on a confidence and supply agreement with the nationalist Sweden Democrats, the 2nd largest force in parliament. In the Netherlands, the anti Islamic firebrand geared to elders, I'm very sorry if I mispronounce that, is on the verge of power, having sealed a historic deal to form the most right wing government in recent Dutch history. Meanwhile, hard right parties are dominating the polls across much of Europe. In France, far right leader Marine Le Pen's national rally is cruising at over 30%, far ahead of president Emmanuel Macron's renaissance party. Across the Rhine, alternative for Germany, a party of police surveillance for its a plea a party under police surveillance for its extremist views is pulling second head to head with the Social Democrats.

Linnea Lueken:

Okay. So obviously a lot of these guys are European right wingers, which nowadays is not so extreme, unless, of course, your central access lies somewhere around like Trotsky. Europe is also not the only place that we're seeing this kind of stuff. We've also seen Javier Mili in Argentina. He's been quite a bit of a fire branch.

Linnea Lueken:

Everybody likes him up here at least. I don't actually know how Argentina is taking it, but hopefully well. So, John, so we've got left leaning groups like Politico here that are just, like, losing it. Are they, like, totally missing the point, though? Because it seems to me that the rising popularity of these guys has something to do with, I don't know, the policies of, you know, progressivism for the last several decades.

Linnea Lueken:

It it's like a it's a reaction. It's not, you know, like a like a, you know, the return of the empire or something. But

Jon Gabriel:

Yeah. In anytime, an older government is thrown out, it's because they were fired. It's not necessarily because the new government or the new party, the new president, whatever it might be. It's not because they're the greatest thing since sliced bread usually. It's because people are ticked off.

Jon Gabriel:

They're they're tired of being lied to. They're tired of seeing their standard of life, decrease. Their economies collapse. Germany, was standing, you know, the standing giant, looming over Europe 10, 15 years ago. Now now they can't turn on a light bulb because they're out of energy.

Jon Gabriel:

So people have seen the disastrous run that, these left leaning governments have had, and they're tired of it. Trudeau is a perfect example of this. Their economy is in shambles, and now if you look at the income per capita for Canada, it's equivalent to the state of Alabama, which is the 4th poorest state in the union. People notice these things, and as a kid, I used to go back and forth over the border. My parents or my grandparents lived in Sault Ste.

Jon Gabriel:

Marie, Michigan, right on the edge of Canada, and there's a Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario as well, and it was just a quick day trip we'd take up there. And everything looked about the same. Didn't matter which side of the border you're on. Now Canada doesn't feel like kind of a miniature, more polite America.

Jon Gabriel:

It feels darker, definitely, with anti free speech stuff, which has really offended a lot of people, scandal after scandal, which the compliant Canadian media wouldn't cover. And, now clips going viral of Pierre Polive, who's the likely conservative party leader who will take over whenever they do hold an election. People have seen the results of their governments, and they're done with it. And, for the media, you see this a lot in the UK, media just mutter right wing and expect people to run-in terror. I'm sorry.

Jon Gabriel:

Protecting national borders is common sense. It is not right. It is not left, and that's why you see so many lifelong liberals, lifelong democrats, choosing to vote for parties they never considered in the past because they're like, this is just nuts. Can somebody stop this? At least we we stop the lurch to the left.

Jon Gabriel:

If not going full on right, at least we have to stop this craziness because people just see the results of their policies. They don't work. It's that simple.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. I mean, I have a pretty hard time believing that the the Sweden Democrats are this, like, firebrand right way, hard right extremist group.

Jon Gabriel:

Pushing the new Swedish empire.

Linnea Lueken:

Yeah. I I mean, I I very strongly doubt that, just as I doubt that our friend Millie down in Argentina is going to start people or start giving helicopter rides. It's it's it's kind of like you see, it's the same stuff that they did to Trump. Right? Where they came and the whole entire, you know, body of mainstream media said that he was some kind of a far right extremist for years years.

Linnea Lueken:

Oh, thank you very much, Andy. That's terrific. Yeah. See, they're pretty they're pretty happy with them. It looks like I can't really read it too well.

Linnea Lueken:

Approve. Yeah. There we go. That's nice. We like him too.

Linnea Lueken:

We love the idea of slashing 90% of our of our federal bureaucracy. It's it's it's just like what they did with Trump. And what ended up happening with Trump is a lot of people looked at him after all of the media hysterics, and they said, look. This guy is pretty casual, actually. I mean, he's not exactly even as far as American conservatives go, he's not that right wing.

Linnea Lueken:

He's not that conservative. So when you see the same stuff being said about, like, Nigel Farage or anybody else that's kind of rising in European politics, you can't help but roll your eyes and not take them too seriously. Jim?

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. I mean, I think you look at the, you know, I helped do the research for this part of the thing today and I had, I don't know, 500 links I said to you,

Linnea Lueken:

and you you were very nice editing now. Yeah.

Jim Lakely:

But but just looking at

Linnea Lueken:

the headlines for this.

Jim Lakely:

Yeah. Just looking at the headlines for these, this is The Sun in the UK. Dutch Trump meet Europe's most dangerous man, Gert Wilders. In Italy, BBC, Georgi Maloney, Italy's far right wins election and vows to govern for all. Austria, far right, gets chance to form government in Austria.

Jim Lakely:

That's from the Wall Street Journal. And so but if you actually looked at the policies of these so called far right, politicians in in Europe, they would probably, land to the left of me and you and most and most Americans. They would they would fall to the left, I would think, of what we would call mainstream conservatism over the last 20 years. All you need to do to get yourself labeled far right, in a European country by the European press and the American press is to is to deviate from the leftist agenda by 3% at most. And then, suddenly, you are far right.

Jim Lakely:

It's like that famous, that infamous or famous cartoon where there's a guy, ideologically, he's kinda stayed the same, and all of people that used to be, you know, he he thought were Liberals are running so far to the left that he is now right wing. And that's the way it works in Europe. That's the way it works here in the United States as well. I mean, notice that the headline for, in CNN, it just says simply, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has announced his resignation. What happens now?

Jim Lakely:

It's not far leftist Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, which is what he was. It wasn't leftist, you know, dictator, Justin Trudeau, the man who had people's, assets seized if they marched upon Ottawa to, protest against, you know, mass mandates and lockdowns. That's a tyrannical move. There's the cartoon. Thank you very much, Andy, if you'd be able to see it on the screen.

Jim Lakely:

You know, so the left is never labeled as hard left even when they are. And and and Justin Trudeau is was definitely a leftist, w e f, worshiping leader who fought nothing of trampling on the right of the the rights of their citizens to express themselves and to and to basically just get on with their lives as normal. And he has been rejected. And that that's the, you know, the title of this podcast today is purge of the global progressives. And when the progressive government governance has been, kicked out everywhere, basically, in the western world, at least, places that really matter.

Jim Lakely:

I was you know, just a humble brag here. I was driving Nigel Farage around, here in the United States for a day, and I talk was talking to him, when we were going to, film something at a cigar cigar lounge. James Taylor, our president, was gonna talk with him. In fact, you can still go to heartland.org, and you'll see this one of the feature things, a wonderful interview between the 2 gents. But I I remarked to him as we were on our way that, before Trump was elected in 2016, Brexit happened.

Jim Lakely:

And it was something that none of the elites and the and the so called smart set in Europe, the UK, or the United States had seen coming. And it was not that close of an election, to be honest. And I asked Nigel Farage. I said, that seems like a harbinger of change here in the United States too, because Trump won election, what, 6 months, 8 months after after Brexit. And then just before the 2024 elections here in the United States, there was a parliamentary election in the UK.

Jim Lakely:

And Nigel Farage's Reform Party, although I think it only grabbed 3 seats, ultimately, when it all shook out, did way better than people had ever expected because the Reform Party was, for all and political purposes, was invented 20 minutes ago. And I said, your success there, do you think that's another harbinger of change here in the United States? And it turned out to be true. And so what I think and and what I think you're seeing globally was the rise of Javier Mele, a hardcore economic libertarian, who campaigned with a chainsaw that didn't have a chain on it. But he ripped that thing up and promised to cut the government, you know, with a chainsaw, not a scalpel.

Jim Lakely:

And that that imagery was on purpose. He's like, this our government is too out of control to use a scalpel. We need to use a chainsaw. And he won, and I I think that was a harbinger. But you see all these places in Europe, they've rejected leftist governance.

Jim Lakely:

I think it's going to last for a while because I really think the people, when finally given the chance to express themselves, are purging their governments and societies of progressives and the progressive left's agenda. This is a this is why at the very top of this, podcast, Linae, you asked, how's 2025 doing? You know, after thinking about what we're gonna talk about on our first podcast of 2025, yeah, it's gonna be a good year when you think about all of the ways that the not just the American people, but people all over the world who are allowed to have a voice in their government are, embracing freedom, rejecting tyranny, and telling the progressive left that we've had enough. We're going in a different direction. Even Finland even Finland, dog Gabriel.

Jim Lakely:

Even Finland as as as the 3rd most prominent Finnish American, John Gabriel, you must be very happy. There are most prominent Finnish Americans, but you might

Jon Gabriel:

be happy to homeland is, coming around, solely but surely, getting more, they they don't really care what the rest of Scandinavia does because they don't trust anyone living next door to a rather aggressive neighbor to the other side. And, yeah, there's a there's conservative reforms going on there as well, which is great to see. So, I understand why my ancestors fled. Well, my, forebear fled originally because the mob was trying to collect a debt, and so we jumped on a ship in, Vasa, I think it was, and sailed off to the UP of Michigan. But, that aside, I I think other ancestors must have fled there for more legitimate reasons.

Jon Gabriel:

But it it's good to see because, again, it's just common sense. This stuff doesn't work. And, once again, like, after the election that we had, the left is all like, we must have a messaging problem. Let's change our terminology. It's like, guys, you have been pushing that for 20 years.

Jon Gabriel:

It's not the messaging, it's the results. And, and that's why you can have someone. It wasn't the eloquent speeches that Millet gave that, won him the vote. No. It was the results of all the governments before him, from Perronese to the military coup that was around in the eighties and early nineties, I think.

Jon Gabriel:

People saw all those previous efforts failed, so we're like, hey. Let's give this guy a try. Maybe we should just, I don't know, cut back expenses in governmental control and, let freedom ring.

Linnea Lueken:

Thank you very much. Well, unfortunately, guys, thank you, John Gabriel, for sticking with us as we went a little bit overtime today. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have. Thank you everybody for tuning in. We're live every single week on Thursdays at noon on Rumble or Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.

Linnea Lueken:

Maybe not Facebook this time, wherever they let us be. For audio listeners, please rate us well on whatever service you're using. Please leave a review. It helps us a lot. And thank you so much again to John.

Linnea Lueken:

I'm sure you have some stuff to plug here. Where can our audience find you and what's the title of your book so we can go buy it?

Jon Gabriel:

Well, yeah, I was just reading this book. I'll read a few chapters now, but, whoever this author is, just incredible. No. It's the best debut novel I've ever written, I must say. Sing of Horizon Sun, using my brilliant, award winning career as a submarine guy to talk about World War 2 submarines.

Jon Gabriel:

It's a lot of fun to write and it seems to be selling well. So if you're interested in that kind of middle aged man focused stuff, that's your book.

Linnea Lueken:

Thank you so much. And Jim, what have you got?

Jim Lakely:

You can reach you can find me at jlakleyonx. Also visit at heartlandinstonx. Definitely gotta follow xjohn on x. If he gives you a follow back, it will make your week. So we will see you on social media.

Jim Lakely:

And, oh, no. Always visit heartland.org and get that book, sink the rising sun. I just got it myself, and I'm looking forward to reading it, John. Alright.

Linnea Lueken:

Thank you. And you forgot to mention that it it beat Tom Clancy, this for at least Yes.

Jon Gabriel:

It crushed. I'm I Amazon thinks I'm better than a deceased author, which is quite an honor. But, yeah, number 1 over Clancy's number 2. So that that felt kinda good. Sorry, Tom.

Linnea Lueken:

It's wonderful. Okay. You can find me, you guys, at Linnea Lucan on Twitter. Please come check us out tomorrow at the Climate Realism Show. We stream live at the same time, noon central on Fridays to close out the week on a little bit of climate and energy news.

Linnea Lueken:

Always check out heartland.org. And, well, thank you guys all for coming, and thanks for bearing with me on my very first hosting opportunity here. So, I will see you guys next week. Have a good one.

Jim Lakely:

You are fake news.