 It's Wednesday, it's 11 o'clock, it's October the 13th, 2021. That can mean only one thing. It's time for What Now America? I'm Tim Apachele, your host, and welcome. Today's title is The Insurrectionist Wear Suits and Ties. You know, I borrowed this title from Adam Schiff, who's a House representative. You might remember him from the House impeachment hearings. And that's a direct quote from Adam Schiff. And what I think is interesting is when Adam Schiff says that the people who stormed the Capitol, they didn't know better. They believed in Donald Trump's big lie that the election was stolen from him. And they reacted, well, thanks to his prompting, they reacted and they stormed the Capitol. They're the insurrectionists. However, those who are in Congress and the Senate, the ones that wear the suits and wear the ties, they know better. They know that Donald Trump did not have a stolen election taken out from him. They know that he lost the election fair and square. They know that there was no massive fraud. And they know only one thing, that they can't say anything different than what Donald Trump wants them to say, because they cower in fear. And that's the state of our general GOP, Congress, and state legislatures, county legislatures. Anyone who dares step outside the boundary of Donald Trump is in risk and fear of being ousted from the party, and that frightens them. So we're here to talk about that and many other things. So good morning. Our guest today is Jay Fidel and Winston Welch. Good morning, everyone. Morning, Tim. Uh-huh. Jay, Steve Scalise, number two, the highest position in the House of Representatives. He's the minority whip. He was on Fox News with Chris Wallace. And several times, Chris Wallace tried to get him to basically state his opinion, whether or not the election of 2020, the presidential election, was stolen from Donald Trump. Steve Scalise, number two person in the House. Number three in the whole Republican Party refused to answer that question. He kept going to statements about how these states didn't follow the rules, didn't follow the Constitution of each state. But when Chris Wallace pinned his ears back to the wall and said, do you or do you not believe that this election was stolen, he punted. He didn't answer it. What does this say about those who wear the suits and ties in the GOP and where they're headed and what is their agenda? What is their agenda, be it either with the 2022 election or the 2024 election? We know it's not the crazies, the Marjorie, Brown, Taylor, people of the world. It's now the establishment of the GOP. Where are they headed? We're in a bad place. The Republican Party has been gutted and replaced, hijacked by these people. And the Liz Cheney's of the world are very, very few. And I think what's happened one way or the other is that the regular Republicans are out of there. And this new crowd of Republicans, the cultists call them are in there. And they are increasing just as somehow magically, mysteriously, Trump is able to, you know, get new supporters around the country. We are in a transition to Trump. And it is as scary as anything that has happened in this country from the beginning. Winston, same question to you. What do you think the established GOP party is headed? Particularly when they cannot acknowledge that Donald Trump lost Farron Square to President Joe Biden. And where does this take this nation? Where does it take the next election? And certainly the 2024 presidential election. Well, I think that his, with Steve Scalise, you saw that the no answer was an answer. You know, when you can't answer Chris Wallace, I think any normal person can read between the lines there. And they could see that they're neither willing to confirm nor deny the report, which, you know, it says what it says to whoever's looking at it. But yeah, how many joined in the impeachment process right after the Capitol was stormed? It was 10 people, wasn't it? And the Republicans out of the 50. So we're not hopeful that that party's gonna regain its bearing anytime soon. And yet, you know, the optimistic part of me says that the middle portion of this nation that just says enough with the shenanigans, we can't go back to that time of just such extreme insanity, really, where we're led by this one person where we can get back to some conservative principles for those who feel that way. I think that they will probably step up. I hope that they will, but right now the entire leadership is beholden to one individual. They're afraid to say something or maybe they just wanna keep their jobs, you know, and at the end of the day, that might be it. But they're also afraid to speak up. And if you look at people around the nation and school boards or wherever it is, you're seeing people become completely unhinged by whatever beliefs they have. So this idea of decorum, rule of law, good faith on the other side, it seems to be being jettisoned and yet it's not gone all the way. So I'm hopeful that something will change as the midterms approach, but underlying all of that is the more scary reality that this sort of eternal recount and false elections, like we've seen in Arizona or now what it is, is it Texas or Michigan or Georgia, whatever's next that this is, this groundwork's been laid in what a third, maybe half of the states. That's where any legitimate election will then be subject to this process and you can't have a functioning country when you're faced with every single election being a question like that, when it is in fact, free and fair elections as evidenced by international observers. So that's- You mentioned a very good point and that is the rule of law, the level of civility. There's something called a tipping point. And the question is, where is that tipping point where we go from what we've called an organized democracy of an election to a total and utter chaos in the future? And this tipping point seems to be advancing. Your thoughts on that and what should be done to stop and cool things down? Well, unfortunately, it may be someone unhinged that goes into a school room and waves a gun or something and hopefully that won't happen. But when things like that do happen, it gets national news and then people say, wait a minute, am I aligned with that party, with that people, with that, am I lumped in with them or do I stand for reasonable discourse for not always getting my way, but for realizing that there is room for compromise or intelligent discussion that may, in fact, win me over to another point of view because I have more information or better information or my position has changed. But when it resorts to this thug mentality where people are coerced, thugged into behavior, they're terrorized into behavior, if nothing else, that's when we really lose the essence of what this nation is about. And we need to go back to that place and really marginalize those people in our media, in our everyday discourse and just say, that is not us. You may have passionate beliefs, but you may not get to just only have your way because it suits you. Okay, you know, Jay, Winston just mentioned about the media marginalizing these crazies, if you will. The insurrectionists that aren't wearing the suits and ties, are we seeing a good enough job for the media that should be marginalizing those Republicans that do wear the suit and ties, the congressmen, the senators? What do you think? Is the media doing a sufficient job to point out the error of the GOP's ways? Or are they just kind of playing along as if it's a normal news story of the day? Not realizing what's at stake here. Let me touch on two things before I get to that. One is Winston mentioned the notion of reasonable discourse. And I think a lot of people in this country, especially the Koch people, don't know what that means. They have no idea what it means. They weren't educated in civics. They don't know what the rule of law is. They don't know really what the Constitution is. They don't know what the social compact is. They don't know what it is to be a citizen in a country. And they certainly don't know about reasonable discourse. They are driven by something else. And that's really tragic. The other point I wanted to bring up is the Karl Bernstein approach. Karl Bernstein, you asked about tipping point. Karl Bernstein, if he were here today with us, he would say, we're past that. We've already lost it. We've lost our democracy. And I would tend to agree with him. We're already in the frying pan on this. And the only question is just how bad it's gonna get and how soon it's gonna get as bad as it's gonna get. But we can talk about Karl Bernstein later. To go to your question about the media, okay? I think the media has to be treated as part of this. There's obviously Fox News is spreading disinformation and lies as fast as you, and you think that they would have some sense of order, discipline, reasonable discourse, some sense of truth, of journalism, of democracy and of the damage they can do with all their listeners. But they follow the rule of engagement. That is, you wanna maximize your profits, you maximize your engagement. To maximize your engagement, you appeal to the lower instincts. You know, that sounds just like Facebook, doesn't it? So we have many, many influences on our lives. We, all of us, have many influences on our lives that tend to engage us with raw meat stories. And that includes not only Fox News, it includes the liberal press, if you will. You know, where do I look for my nudes? And I'm, I have to say that it's really getting old. You have these two channels, MSNBC and CNN, and they go on with opinion, opinion discussions with pretty much the same group of, you know, people, the, what do they call it, the ones who are regular contributors, like CNN contributors or MSNBC contributors, I guess that means they're paid to come on. And they have, you know, a certain amount of prestige, but they come on all the time. You know, it's, you can count them on two hands, all of them. And they're always talking about the same issues. And, you know, if you compare that, for example, the BBC, and somebody told me yesterday, I should be looking at Al Jazeera because Al Jazeera, though it's not, you know, available in this country is, is actually a pretty good news organization. What's happened is we've gotten into opinion and bubbles and they are catering to what they think we want to hear. They are not giving us the old kind of BBC type of news. They are not giving us a lot of global news. They are not giving us facts. They're telling us to, you know, assume facts. And they're telling us that the opinions of these handful of contributors is what tells the day. I don't think that's good media. And I think over the years, they have exacerbated the divisions between us and they have not helped us, but only excited us and made us angry, which is exactly what we want to avoid. Agreed. You and I have many offline conversations about Fox News and even CNN and MSNBC about, you know, these opinions about, be it the coronavirus or treatments, vaccines, it's pandering to their audience. So more about that later. Hey, Winston, we have a question from Tom Yamashita. And the question is this, how can we go back to what this nation is all about when we have prevalent my way or the highway mentality? For example, Mitch McConnell's handling of Merrick Garland's nomination to be a Supreme Court justice. Wait, Tom, if you got the answer to that, please let us know. But I think Jay hit it partially on the head was that folks aren't being educated. They're not being educated in civics. They're not being educated in what makes this nation great and why it's great because of its institutions, because of how it functions, because of setting aside our differences where we can and forging ahead together as we move one direction or another. And we've seen this nation go left and right and now we're seeing a sort of bifurcate. But I would posit that most of us want the same exact things. And on the edge, that's just being flamed like a forest fire when in fact, it's not really there but when people can be tricked or misled or almost hypnotized into believing, oh, if I don't have this, my livelihood is at stake. And that's what you're seeing this silliness in replacement theory and in critical race theory. These things that are just red herrings is put out that probably the masses really don't understand. They might feel at some gut level like, oh, people are taking my jobs away. Well, not when you're educated at an eighth grade level. And as I saw from Lucero Cantu of the folk realm, it was printed in the Hawaii Tribune Herald, which is the big islands newspaper on Sunday, October 10th, 2021, says the OECD, the organization for economic cooperation and development found that 50% of U.S. adults cannot read a book written at an eighth grade level. So the National Institute of Literacy estimates the average American reads at a seventh to eighth grade level. Despite these concerns and analysis of 21 major media outlets, found that consumers require a 10th grade reading level to comprehend any of them. Most notably Fox and NPR ranked it at 11th grade level while outlets like MSNBC and Politico exceeded a 12th grade level. So it says whether we're talking about COVID-19, climate change, whatever it is, maybe what we need to do is follow the U.S. Plain Writing Act, which is to ensure that the public can understand and use government communication. But not only that, just sort of apply it to this media idea. So if we get our news from MSNBC or Politico, which we consume that news and we understand what they're talking about, hopefully for the most part, although it's easy to understand why it's confusing, maybe MSNBC needs to go through and run it. There's programs where you can say, put this at a 10th grade level or an eighth grade level so that they're able to reach more people at a level that they can understand and say, this isn't what it's risk. This is what we're looking for. And maybe all the news outlets need to do that and just simplify that instead of saying, this article goes on to say something about being carbon neutral. Just say, when you burn too many fossil fuels, which are gas, coal, and oil, it heats up the air. That causes climate change. That's sort of like that. You're talking about a picture book, a strategy for our education books in the future, on the short term. On the short term. Right now. Right now. The short term, right. And reach the people where they're at and not be, although we have relied on this sort of political and economic and in all levels, there's a sort of a ruling class. I mean, isn't there, whether they're university professors or whatever the experts, but there's another book out there called The Death of Expertise where every man or woman is an expert unto himself because they read a TikTok article about it or an Instagram post. And so suddenly they have, I was reading about the COVID-19 and this idea that it causes infertility. And it was an article. Yeah. I want to take this that you brought up and I want to ask Jay a question about this. Jay, it does seem like the genesis of all our problems is a lack of understanding from the population of what the basics are, the origin of our country, how we came to be, civics lessons 101, the basic understanding of the rule of law and how our government works, be it to judicial, legislative and executive branch. The basics are not understood. So how do you preserve a democracy when half the country doesn't understand what a democracy is? Is there a long-term solution and a short-term solution to try to get to this very problem so that we can preserve the democracy? Jay Leno, when he was doing the night show, used to have a thing called jaywalking and he would stop people in the street and he would ask them these really basic questions like who's the vice president? 90% of the people he asked did not know. They don't follow it. They don't care about it and they don't know to care about it. The problem with re-educating the public is, dumbing it down may not be the solution because you need to be educated and dumbing it down doesn't really require you to be educated nor does it help you be educated. And they say it's a generational thing. You've got to get into the schools and educate people and it takes a generation, a new brand new generation of kids entering schools where you train them up and you teach them about these things but think about the time that it takes. It takes a generation. It takes a number of generations before you have the country educated. We aren't going to get there. Carl Bernstein, I'm sorry. Carl Bernstein would tell you it's too late. He would tell you that we've already crossed the tipping point. He would tell you that we are in a civil war right now and it only leads to bad things, further divisiveness and violence. As it has in developing countries around the world, we're on that track. But let me add one other thing. It's not just education, it's interaction. One of the things I love about this program, Tim and Winston is that we interact. We throw out opinions. We test each other. We disagree. We learn. The three of us or anyone on this program learns a lot during the program but most people do not have that opportunity. Okay, A, they do not have that opportunity in COVID and if you look at your own life you find that you're talking with and engaging with fewer people all the time. We are in our little worlds, our little Zoom worlds or whatever you want to call it, it's not like it was and we don't have the engagement with people. Therefore, we don't have the opportunity to have a meaningful conversation and a little conversation, a conversation where we test and learn. We don't have that. The other thing is that we have the, and that's been going on before COVID by the way. That's the way our world works. We have lost this opportunity, this engagement, this critical thinking opportunity. But the other thing is to exacerbate that, to accelerate it, we have social media. And as we discussed a minute ago, the press, which gives you what you want to hear. You know, I've talked to one of the networks years ago and I said, why don't you guys cover more energy news, more global news, more news that affects our future? Why don't you do that? He says, no, no, no, no, we can't do that. We have to give them what they want to hear and they want to hear sports, news, weather and crime. That's what we give them. And if we do that, they come around and we get views. And if we get views, we get advertisers, we get advertisers, we get profit. The system is broken. It's not about to be fixed. We are not about to have opportunities for critical thinking and true education. Winston, you'd like to comment on what Jay said and to add to that, you know, we're going to get an education here shortly, maybe in the next month or two from the January 6th Steering Committee for the House of Representatives about the capital insurrection. That report would be beneficial, would be educational, will it enlighten even those who are, you know, on the Fox News watching circuit, will it give them insights to what really happened or does it sit on a shelf and gather dust and cobwebs? It will sit on a shelf and gather cobwebs at the end of the day. I mean, there'll be useful information in it. Who knows what revelations are would be. But again, when you have the supporters of Donald Trump saying they don't care if he was fed Russian information or any information, if he was lying to the public, it doesn't matter the goal of having him stay in power is what mattered. And when you have that level of belief and of acceptance of horrendous behavior, that just doesn't work. Now, to get back to Jay's point, yes, it is a generational thing. And are they going to get it? I don't know, what percent of kids here in Hawaii are in public schools versus private schools? I think we have the highest percentage in private schools. It's a lot of people that just say, I'm not putting my kids in public schools. How are they getting a uniform education? Do we really know what they're getting? And if we do have a ruling class, which I think most nations do and who controls the banks? How do they set financial policy? You and I can't make those decisions. We don't understand the mechanisms of it. Or even if we do, a lot of it's just sort of a black box. We have to entrust the people who do have a 12th grade education and who do have a master's degree or a PhD or at least graduated from college who are members of Congress and most of them who are attorneys or a lot of them, who know better to make the right decisions for all of us. And that's where that's a short-term thing. I don't know if it's gonna happen, but they're also motivated by these rallies where they have, you know, tens of thousands of people show up or whatever it is in support of a leader with a specific agenda who's telling you who to blame, how bad it is and how to vote. Or if you vote and your vote is accounted in the way that he wants or that is wanted, then it's a lie and it's fake and it's a fraud. So we've got a lot of fronts to face on this, but one of them can be, I don't even wanna call it a dumbing down. I wanna say it's a meeting of people where they're at. Now, are we gonna get suddenly people who are Donald Trump supporters to start watching MSNBC or reading Politico if they go to a ninth grade reading level by just simplifying some terms without really dumbing down the message? I doubt it. Is the media's job to present facts and information? Ideally, but really fundamentally, these are owned by corporations whose sole responsibility is to create a profit for their owners, which means selling the most ad space. Now, whether they're selling it to the left or the right or the center, is there a center? I may be the mainstream media is the center, but that is their only responsibility at this point that I'm aware of. Let me go to that point exactly. We got a question from Cynthia Sinclair. Do you think stricter regulation will help stem the misinformation, which is to say, where is the FCC on all the misinformation that's being blithered and blathered about on Fox News, specifically about COVID vaccinations and COVID virus itself? I mean, this was irresponsible reporting and yet not a word out of FCC in its regulatory powers. Where do you put someone like Seth Rogan or like a Rush Limbaugh who may have their own channels and they don't rely on even Fox to disseminate their news, that they have their own followers outside of that? Where do you draw the line? There is something called public airways for the benefit of the public. And I've been harping about this for quite a while now and that is the FCC seems to be remiss in its ability to oversight the public airways, be it radio, be it TV and where are they? But how do you do that? How do you go, I was in Arkansas, right? How did they do it before? I mean, how did they do it before? You know, I was in Arkansas and all I heard was basically talk right wing, talk radio, a lot of Christian music, radio stations and country music and not a lot. Rachel Maddow was not on the menu that I heard there but if you go to Seattle you're gonna get the opposite. It's everyone's listening to Seattle Public Radio or whatever it is and NMS NBC and that sort of thing there. So how do you ensure that? How do you ensure that we on Think Tech right here in this program don't have to have Steve Scalise on here to give his opposing viewpoints good people on both sides? It's a really tricky question. And I don't know that we have any easy answers that the cat is out of the bag and has a million different venues for disseminating his or her like a Marjorie Taylor Greene. Should she have to give a press conference where Alexandra Octavio-Cortez is next to her and refutes her points? I don't know. I mean, that just kind of gives pretense to what Marjorie Taylor Greene is saying. So I don't have a good answer. Maybe Jay does. Yeah, it's a tough one. You know, sometimes- Oh, so that's a free-for-all. We have an information free-for-all and anybody can say anything they want under arguable cover of the First Amendment. You can make the craziest statement in the world and the government is not going to get involved because of the First Amendment or its perception or the perception of the person who made the statement about the First Amendment. And Joe Biden, this is one of his great weaknesses. He's got a few weaknesses as it now appears. He's not doing anything about it. You know, he's not encouraging the FCC to do anything about it. And so what you have is a, you know, it's a, what do they say about the internet? It's an information highway. This is a free-for-all information highway. Anything goes, even obvious lies, and the government will not step in. But don't worry because when Trump is elected again, okay, we will have regulation about information and it'll be regulation that's political regulation. And if you say something against Trump, he will find a way to your front door. This is a reminder of what happened in Germany in the 30s. In that next administration, there will be control of information and we will not like it. I wish that Biden would do something about this. I wish that somebody would speak up about it. But the truth is, you know, a lot of people in this country, they don't care about this issue. You know, the three of us care about it passionately, but there are so many millions of people say it's gonna be okay. It's all gonna work out fine. You know, this is the American backbone, the American exceptionalism. We will prevail, survive and prevail, and truth will out. And more and more, it does not appear that's gonna happen. More and more, we have a melee of information and we have the terrible possibility that when the Republicans get back in office, they will control and promulgate enormous amounts of disinformation. If you think the public is confused now, wait. All right, we've run out of time. My only comment is we'll see what happens to the Voting Rights Act that's right now pending in Congress. It's languishing, but it's pending. So I wanna thank you, Jay Fidel, Winston Welch. You bring to the table a lot of insightful comments. Hopefully a lot of food for thought for those who watch this show, it is concerning and it's depressing at times to hear what I think is the progression of things to come. As Jay, as you put it, the metrodome of time that keeps ticking on and nothing's getting done to prevent the advance of the diminishing rule of law and some of our electoral things that we cherish in our electoral process. And it's my hope that Joe Biden watches this show and starts to act. So with that, I'd like to say thank you very much. Join us again next Wednesday at 11 o'clock to What Now America? I'm Tim Appichelle, your host. We'll see you then.