 Welcome to Talk Story with John Waihei. We got an interesting show as usual this afternoon. We got something special. Instead of the usual guest host afternoon, I have with me the CEO and founder of Think Tech Hawaii, Jay Fidel. And what we're going to do for you fine people is that you're going to have a show with two hosts. And this is a chance for us to have a conversation and not have one person waiting for the other person to do any talking. He's a pro. He knows we've got to follow a time schedule. He knows what a host has to do, but more importantly, he knows a lot of things about what's happening in America, in the world, and in Hawaii. So we're calling this show, Jay. This is a recap of 2019. Another interesting year. Thank you very much for agreeing to do this. Thank you for having me, John. It's great to be with you. We get a chance to sort of cross-examine each other, my friend. Let's start with where you want to start from. Let's start with the national scene. What was true 2019 like on the national level? Well, aside from the impeachment, we need to talk about that. Yeah, well, yeah. Sort of in a larger sense, it seems to me that the new normal that Trump has created and will still create has moved. And we tolerate, we accept things now that we would never have accepted in, say, in January of 2017. Oh. Never. It's the kind of things that our sixth grade teacher used to tell us would never happen. Never happen. Never happen. And there's so many of them. You know, as I was just thinking about that, and I remember, you know, this is going to sound, I'm probably going to make a lot of people angry by saying this, but I remember the statement that a Delf Hitler did, many, many years ago, when he said, if you're going to tell a lie, tell a big one, and tell it often, and what will happen is you'll do this. You'll shift the normal. I don't know if that's what you're trying to do, but you know, I had a conversation with my brother-in-law who's kind of a Trump supporter, you know, and which is, well, kind of because he sort of doesn't want to actually admit it, but he always rushes to his friends, you know, and his point. And so when I would tell him, like, you know, this guy's just really bad. He lies. He's just normal. He's a normal part of conversation. He needs to tell a lie. And so my brother-in-law just jumps up and says, well, what about Hillary Clinton? Really? What is she doing? And he said, well, she said she was under fire when it was on the other end of the airport. Aha! And I said, you know, okay, I'll give you that one. I'll give you that politicians puff sometimes. And it's not, they shouldn't be normal human beings, that when you hear gunfire on one end of the airport, you get scared at the other. You know, they've done, they're not normal. So she shouldn't have said that. But this guy, I can give you, documented 5,000 times at least where he actually told a real lie. And, oh well, well, politicians. And today he's floating Kellyanne Conway as his chief of staff. Oh, you got to tell me about this. She is a fabulous liar. She's where lying was invented. I remember during the campaign, she would make these outrageous untrue statements over and over again. It's like, you know, what do you think of the candidate? If the candidate's staff does this sort of thing, now he wants to make her his chief of staff. It's going to be really interesting. Well, it's going to be really interesting to see what her husband is trying to remember his name. But he always seems, he really is like Trump. I don't know how they're family. Is that sort of kind of? I don't think they talk about at dinner, yeah? Yeah, well, maybe it's trying to balance cosmically, you know, and the great universe that is going to be a benefit. He's kidding. Yeah, which one of us, you know, I'm going to let her do this so I can, you know, I'll say it. So anyway, so yeah, the impeachment is probably the biggest thing in the year. And I'll tell you why I think it's the biggest thing in the year is because our republic is hanging in the balance. If he doesn't get impeached, then if he wins in 2020, our republic is in deep kimchi. You can quote me on that. I worry about the Constitution every day. Well, there's some crazy, what was it, about a week ago where some of the white nationalists were talking about a civil war, if something happens to Trump? Civil war in 2020, and we're going to get to 2020. I mean, this issue has been, you know, just this great divide. And I don't know the boldness of the people that are espousing that because he gives them the nod. What's worse is that these guys, these supremacists are also Second Amendment gunfreaks. And they're the civil war they're prepared for. Well, they seem to want it, you know, and it's just, I don't know where this all goes. You know, I don't know how you keep the fabric of all of this together. We're going to find out, because I think this is the year or the year and a half. Well, a year from now, a year from now, we will find out if this country is going to survive. Well, I tell you, what are you saying? You think it's going to get impeached? Well, by the House, but not by the Senate. And then he'll say he was, you know, acquitted or exonerated. Exonerated. In fact, I think he wants that. He wants that, he wants that, and he wants to be impeached, but not actually removed, which is what the Senate's done, because then he will use it as exoneration. And he'll use it as a campaign tool. See, the Democrats are all bad, and they went on this witch hunt, and I survived the witch hunt, and I'm really a great person, and you should vote for me. It's awesome. Let me, I saw a poll recently. It was West Virginia, McConnell's up for election. He's barely ahead. Kentucky. Yeah, Kentucky, Kentucky. I'm sorry. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. No, no, no. West Virginia, I don't know who's West Virginia. Yeah, this is Mitch, Mitch McConnell, and it's 47 to 46. And there is some hope that you may actually lose the election. Now, would that change any of this scenario? I think so. I think so. Well, folks, you heard it here. If you really want to help America contribute to whoever's running against Mitch McConnell. You're talking about that, Joe. Politics has, they always said, didn't they always say in your day, they always said politics is old, local. Well, maybe not anymore. Well, maybe not. Politics is national now. Or maybe the Republicans have learned learned it a little bit better than Tip O'Neill when he said, you know, I mean, it might be all local. It might be that there are enclaves of people in America and that are going to make this, you know, happening. I don't know. I mean, it's it's it's absolutely it's it's just crazy. You know, I remember, and this is a little history thing. When we used to have history, civics and history, American history, in about 78th grade. And they would tell us, you know, we almost had a president impeached. His name was Andrew Johnson. And by the way, folks, it was a good thing for America that he didn't get impeached. Because he's, yeah, and also because he was on the side of making sure that, you know, he was on the side of the making sure that former slaves actually can vote and doing what's right. So he, you know, he held it all together. And so that was a good thing. And yet I cannot see a history teacher, 50, 25 years from now saying that the Trump administration was a good thing, unless, of course, we're living in an entirely different. We might we might be, you know, one of the things that that I see here is that people, including in Hawaii, maybe a special in Hawaii, they don't they don't realize that what happens in Washington with all these machinations, all his strange maneuvers. I think they think we're a million miles away. And that's there. And this is here. And it's it's not connected, but it is connected. And if he brings the country down as I think he would want to do, then we have to pay for that. We have to pay a penalty. We will be in trouble. We will be affected big time by what goes on in Washington. We are being affected right now. Yeah, right now. And I I shuttered to think of the kind of I mean, I couldn't believe, you know, this whole thing with Syria, for example. I mean, the guy has no conscience. You do you do things in foreign relations and with the Ukraine that affect our security, our national security. And you think it's just another deal, just another situation. And people walk around believing it because you see, if that didn't happen in George Bush was president, the whole country would be in a trouble. Trump does it and it's just him in on his Twitter, you know. Well, you know, I this is a government by sole proprietorship. You know, he has managed to, you know, diminish Congress into a non a non institution. He's managed to stock the courts with with right wing conservatives. People who are not qualified are getting getting confirmed. And this is from a conservative bar that's only interested in how well you can write a memo, basically his moves, his mistakes. I mean, his moves are all mistakes. Everything he's done in foreign policy is a mistake. This isolation business, no free trade, this Arab war business. He talks about deals, you know, the art of the deal and all that. He hasn't made a single deal. We're all being hypnotized, not you and me, but a lot of people are being hypnotized, you know, by his claims that are lies. It's just remarkable that this can happen. That a guy who makes one mistake after another, whether it's intentional or stupid or what, one mistake after another isn't being called on it. Well, I tell you what is one of the factors might be. It is for the conversation I was having with my brother-in-law. There is a kind of religious factor involved in all of this. And it's unfortunate because I truly believe in religious liberty. I think that we ought to be able to worship anyway we want all of that. But there are people who think that the only issue that's important in America is the right to life, for example. Or the idea that people of the same gender should not marry each other. Or, you know, so that these social issues become so overriding. What was that? Rick, the Secretary of the Energy. Rick. Perry. Perry. It was on national television saying that as far as he's concerned, Trump was anointed by God. And as an anointee of God, we shouldn't be doing this. And that what we learned from Scripture was that Saul and David and Solomon and all these leaders of your great leaders, you know, like in cases of Solomon, were, how shall I say it, they're not perfect people. So why should we criticize Trump? I mean he forgets Ahab and a few of the other bad guys, you know, the Lord actually sent people and busted out of office. But it's that mentality. You can't imagine somebody saying that. And then they'll turn around and criticize some Muslim Islamic fanatic. And not even realize that when you point a finger, there's like four or five pointing back at four. Or realize that if you condone war crimes, then our American troops are in greater danger of war crimes by other people. We are all in greater danger if you condone war crimes. So that's where we're heading now. And the remarkable thing is that nobody in Congress really to speak of. Has turned against him. And in fact, he has a devoted cabinet that go along with everything he wants. And a lot of people out there, you know, one of the remarkable things to me in 2019 is that people that I saw as Trumpers at the beginning of 2019, I thought, I honestly thought, you must have had the same experience. I honestly thought that by the end of 2019, I would ask them, are you still a Trumper? And they would say, no, I could have to some of the things he's done. I could never support it. That's my conversation with my brother-in-law here. I haven't been able to find anybody who fits that profile. The ones who were Trumpers in January are still Trumpers. Nothing he has done has dissuaded them from their absolute loyalty to him. I do not understand that. It must be something in the drinking water. Well, I tell you, it's a sad commentary on the state of affairs, you know. And this is just, but it's not sustainable. I can't believe that it's not, it's, you know, now you worked in, I'm assuming you've done something in New York, right? And I've worked in New York and New York's a place where people, you know, bought. Even in New York, there's a level of integrity that you just don't cross. And this guy is- I mean, even in New York. I'm just saying. It's a very enlightened place, actually. We're going to be back in a minute. We're taking a short break. And when we come back, my guest and co-host this afternoon, Jay will get a shot at me talking about what's happening locally. Okay. Thanks to our Think Tech underwriters and grand tours. The Atherton Family Foundation. Carol Mon Lee and the Friends of Think Tech. The Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education. Collateral Analytics. The Cook Foundation. Duane Kurisu. The Hawaii Council of Associations of Appropriate Owners. Hawaii Energy. The Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. Hawaiian Electric Company. Integrated Security Technologies. Galen Ho of BAE Systems. Kamehameha Schools. M.W. Group Limited. The Schuyler Family Foundation. The Sydney Stern Memorial Trust. Polo Foundation. Yuriko J. Sugimura. Thanks so much to you all. Back to talk story with John Wahey. I am having a great time this afternoon with the CEO, founder of Think Tech Hawaii, Jay Fidel. And this is his 15 minutes. Hey, Jay. So we're going to talk about Hawaii. Yeah, let's talk about Hawaii. I mean, Hawaii is its own special brand, is it not? And Hawaii seems to have a similarity with Congress in the sense that Congress can't do anything. Well, Hawaii in many ways cannot address a lot of the problems that we have. So how do you feel about the ones we have or have not addressed this year? Well, I think that, first of all, there seems to be malaise in our politics in the state of Hawaii. And I don't know whether it's contagious from the mainland where either you're an extreme right wing or you are sort of in hibernation. But it has an effect, though. We know it had some kind of effect. Oh, yeah. Well, first of all, what's the big stories in Hawaii? The Kailoha situation, right? And that definitely started out with a mailbox and look where it's going, you know, monarchy and Hawaiian rights. So somebody's doing something, but it's not necessarily the government. And I think people are feeling it, you know? Yeah, that's true. You know, I had a conversation with Jerry Burris in the day, this is years ago. We talked about the three branches of government. And then we talked about, what was it, the fourth estate, which is the media. And we talked about the fifth estate. And we determined together we were at a party. So we were being very creative. As you should be at the party, yeah. The fifth estate, I hope there's no other fifth estate to compete with this. The fifth estate was the protesters on the streets. And in the absence of action by the first three, and when the press sort of takes an observer point of view instead of, you know, straight advocacy, which they don't like straight advocacy, then you get the fifth estate, which is the protesters. And so many issues are being addressed to use that broadly. On the streets. On the street, by protesters who are relentless at using social media. Well, how much of that do you think has to do with the fact that your, in a way, your industry, think tech, is a contributor? A lot of slots. When you can do all this social media thing. I remember when I was young and festy and doing the Kahualavi protest, that, you know, we actually had to go and talk to people to get them out there. And our social media of choice was the fax machine, which was so exciting in those days. You know, you could send out faxes. Back in the 50s, it was the mimeograph machine. Mimeograph, you know? If anybody remembers that. But where, I remember those little blue sheets, you know, in every law office, and they were there, and whiteouts. You know, Jay, you and I are from the old party line pay phone generation, you know, when you actually have to go to a pay phone to call somebody. Well, a protest means more when you have to work harder and putting it together. Maybe, but I saw a survey on millennials. And it's really interesting, including Hawaii, how their definition of privacy and advocacy has actually changed. I mean, you know, it's so easy to be eating your turkey dinner and say, wow, we finally got a great turkey dish here. Take a picture and send it to the whole world, right? Or, for that matter, take a picture and say, you know, I'm here at X restaurant, and this is the worst steak I ever ate in my life. You know, I mean, my kids traveled by Yelp. I don't know any of this. I have no idea. It's okay, it's okay. So I gotta tell you, one little historical, I have a tendency to do this, especially at the end of the year, right? So I am in Washington, D.C. Frank Fosse, who was the mayor of Honolulu in those days, and I had developed a kind of an alliance. And we were trying to make sure that the battleship Missouri at that time was actually working, not a museum, would be stationed or shipped, or whatever you call it, docked in Hawaii. And so in order to do that, we had to create more housing, and we wanted to develop the bridge that now links Fort Island with Pearl Harbor. And which back then, the only way you could get to Fort Island was by ferry. So we wanted those bridges. And somebody or some people had decided that having that bridge there would would be contributing to the war machine, right? And so they were definitely against it. And so here we are. I'm working the lobbying the Senate, and Frank is working with some Republicans someplace back then. And we are getting bombarded. Every office that we went into, that bombarded with a fact, saying, don't do this. Don't do this. You know, like you sell a bridge, no bridge, no bridge or something. And I thought that was so creatively revolutionary, you know, because today that's nothing. I mean, our president, I don't want to talk about him anymore, actually tweets every month. I mean, you know, people, at any given moment, just say anything they want. The bad side of all of this is that they can also be extremely irresponsible with what you say and not have to actually confront anybody. Yeah. Yeah. And it's very scary that one person could address everyone. You know, early in his term, I don't want to talk about him either, but if he was trying to set up a system where he could get on his Twitter, which now has 66 million followers, his account, and sort of bypass everything and go directly to everybody in the country, you know, by virtue of Twitter and other elements in the Internet, so that he could speak everyone at the same moment. You know, good morning, everyone. This is your president speaking, and I have some news for you. Twitter is not far off that now. It has grown. But he was seeking. I guess he decided it wasn't really necessary. He was seeking to have a system that spoke to everyone in the country, from him, from any given moment. You know, that's the desire of all the guys who held absolute power. Whether we mentioned Hitler, but that was Lenin's trick. That was every one of them. If I could just talk to everybody, I would be in control. You know, not the Congress, not the courts, me. Shows you. It shows you. Okay. We're going to get to Hawaii, though. How much do you think the whole incident with the K.L.O.H. us? We'll start with this one first. K.L.O.H. has affected the way we think about government. I think a lot of people got tired of it. Are tired of it. You know, it can only be drama filled for so long, and then it gets... But do you think that people started to think in a way that maybe, you know, it played into the acceptance of things at the national level? I think, no, I take your point. I think it's a huge effect on confidence in government, confidence in the city and the prosecutor. This is very dangerous not to have confidence in the prosecutor. And in the police department. Absolutely. You can't have confidence in people. Although just to achieve ballet, in my opinion. Yes, she's better, way better. However, I think the institution of H.B.D. has been damaged, and she may not be able to fix Humpty Dumpty right away. It'll take a while before people begin to have confidence in H.B.D. You've got two minutes to ask me something about Monarch Air. I just heard it anyway. You did that purposely. No, I didn't. Actually, I think Monarch Air demonstrates a whole different phenomenon. It is part of the walking on the streets and so forth. Oh, absolutely. But it also demonstrates that young people are not going to be counted out. I don't know if they're going to be... I don't know what it is. Well, there's some simplistic terms. You know, it has been an assault on the rule of law. Yes. Because they, as well as these wind turbines here in Oahu, you know, went through the rule of law. And that was disregarded. And so what you have, and a lot of people, including people from outside the state, have said, well, I don't care about the rule of law. I don't care about it. I care about these people on the street, the kids. The ones who tell you that they're passionate about it and they tell you that it represents... The guys who have the future. That's... And that... Or what about the other young kid who told me when he heard that, who said, what law? The one that allowed all of these bad things to happen that we're protesting against? Crisis and confidence. You know, how about enforcing it against them? So I think that there is something... I think, you know, we didn't have enough time to actually start debating the actual issues of the... What between what we just... About instances that we just talked about, there is a crisis in understanding the value of the law when people seem to think that it is not fair to everybody. And that's unfortunate, because actually it is. Yeah, but I think it does tell of the future. And the future is bleak when people do not regard the law. And, you know, so this is Montecayeth. These are two wind turbine facilities. There'll be others. All the time. And so we don't know what to do. The investor doesn't know what to do. I think we are going through a stage of transition. And I tell you, we have come to the end of this episode. It was great to have you visiting with us. But for me, it's always very special when I have the opportunity to talk with Jay. Come again. We'll be here to... No, we'll be here in January. In January.