The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report radio.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Another great show in line, lined up, and we’re looking forward to it. Thank you for tuning in. I was a little tired yesterday. If you heard my open, I was a little tired. I apologize for that. Sometimes I just get worn out and I was worn out yesterday, but I’m back. I got the energy level up.
And we will talk with our old friend Todd Bensman. It’s turning into the Todd Bensman Show, which is totally okay with me because the guy is a super talent. The journalist who writes over at the Center for Immigration Studies. He’s what I like best, he’s an investigative journalist who understands all the policy, gets on the ground, (he’s at the border all the time), and then he’s willing to come up to D.C. and talk about it with the powers that be and try to tell them what’s actually working and what’s not. So we’ll talk with him.
We’ll get an update on that Venezuelan guy. He was Lebanese-born Venezuelan who came through the border, was flagged for being on the FBI watch list, and then released because he’s fat and they didn’t want him to get Covid. I’m not kidding. That’s what happened. And he’s now up in the Detroit area on the loose. I don’t know. He’s supposed to go to a hearing. We’ll find out more about that and get an update.
We’ll also speak with a man whose family is from the Ukraine. I believe he was born there. He’s a pastor up in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And I was put in touch with him. And I thought, let’s ask somebody about what the people are like there. Right? We’ve heard about the people all over the place. And we’ll talk with him about that. Probably be a chance for me to mispronounce names like I do with Ukraine and other places. Ukrainian names. All right.
So what you need to know today, though, let me tell you what I noticed. I want to explain this to you. It’s very important. You need to understand this. And I’m going to try to walk through this very carefully. And let me tell you what you need to know right now is this: war is popular. Now, what do you say? What do you mean by that? War is popular, meaning war is popular to the people of a nation. We’ve seen this. Okay?
Joe Biden’s poll numbers, his approval ratings are going up. Nothing is better. In fact, the world is worse and America is worse. Life for the American people is worse this week than last week. His poll numbers are going up. Now we’ll talk about why this happens in a moment. But here’s another detail. In Russia, there’s now some polling and some of it is unreliable. But there’s a few polling outfits that are more reliable. And I just believe this.
I think this is true when I tell you Putin is more popular. He’s more popular today than he was last week. The people of his nation see him as their leader against the people that have tried to abuse them, NATO and others, and these godless people from other countries. It’s not hard to make a… You watch Twitter and not hard to see some of the arguments. But my point here is to pull back and tell you, war is popular. War is a galvanizing thing to have happened to a community. The instinct of a nation, a good nation, I mean, a nation that has its fibers linking each other is to pull together and to make the leaders more popular because of the fight.
Now pause for a moment and say to yourself, wait a second, we’re not in a war with Russia, but it’s being positioned as we’re in the war. We’re one side of the world. We’re the good guys and we’re against the bad guys. But I think that’s actually true. We’re not fighting the Russians. We say that all the time. We don’t want to fight the Russians. Two nuclear powers – that would be bad.
But effectively, with all the sanctions and all the things happening, you sort of are obviously opposing forces. So what’s happening here? Well, one, when you have control and you are the powerful leaders, you can influence the coverage of what the war is. Now, you think to yourself, let me pause. I mean, after 9/11, you didn’t have to think much about it to say, we got to defend ourselves. After 911. A couple of years later, as the government uses its power to tell us why we have to go to war in Iraq, we can look back now and say, that was sneaky stuff, right? We weren’t getting the whole deal.
After World War II, and as historians wrote the books, looked back and said, we banded together. Americans banded together. The men ran towards the war and the women a lot of times ran to the factories and helped out. It was a success in terms of people getting together. And the leaders received popularity because of it. We don’t want to be against our leaders while we’re in a war. And again, you look back at World War II, there were things at the time I think were probably… someone misleading or more than that by our leaders.
But here we are, especially if you believe you’re in an existential crisis. So when you’re watching this and Putin is telling his people “we must unite, we must get back our cousins who live in the Ukraine territory, who are being basically co-opted by NATO and the west to try to mess with us.” That’s what he tells them. I’m not defending them. I’m saying that’s what he tells them. And the people of Russia say, “yeah, I see that. I see all the stuff that’s going on. I see the corruption, the Biden family corruption in the Ukraine, Barisma paying the money.”
Why wouldn’t the people of Russia look up and say Biden’s family made millions from the Ukrainian oligarchs, of course he’s taken their side. They would recognize that as the kind of corruption you see in everyday life in the world. So that’s what Putin’s talking to his people in Russia and saying, we have to defend ourselves. Look at these people. Look at these nations across over there, what they’re doing. Look at what the EU is doing in terms of its values, in terms of free speech and free association and freedom of religion. Look at the empty churches in across Europe. This is what he’s saying.
Is he untrue? When Putin says that America caused, America and NATO caused (and NATO is effectively America – we pay all the bills and we tell them what we’re going to do). If Putin says America effectively caused this war, is he lying? Well, I’m not sure, but that’s what he’s telling his people. And back here in America, we’re now watching Joe Biden tell us Russia is at fault for the gas prices. Now, put aside that only 7% of our oil consumption comes from Russia, and we just stopped that. Put aside that the decisions to stop drilling on lands and fracking and EPA regulations are all Biden’s from 15 months ago. Put all that aside, you have to. Joe Biden and the media is now going to tell us it’s Russia’s fault that gas prices are up and inflation is up.
And here’s the thing. Two things will work in favor of that message succeeding. One, in a war footing people want to believe in their leader. It’s not a good… we don’t want to believe that we’re failing. And two, the sophistication of big tech, big media working with big government to tell us what that truth is has never been more sophisticated. That sophistication is as high as it’s ever been. It’s a technical sophistication, it’s a messaging sophistication, language sophistication. It’s just as high as it’s ever been.
It’s a neuroscience is involved. So we’re watching war or conflict, and it’s war, war delivering what is almost always the reality, at least again, in the short term, the bloo may come off the rose in a year or two. But for this period of time in this kind of crisis, we’re watching the predictable happen, which is the people of each nation… And it’s happening in Ukraine, by the way, the Ukrainian people who had, I think, a 30% approval rating for Zelensky, now they think he walks on water. And we’re starting to get more on this guy again, I’m not blaming him.
I happen to know enough politicians and elected officials that I don’t think that knowing character flaws about Winston Churchill makes me think less of his leadership. Knowing that there’s character flaws about presidents or top leaders means that you know that they’re human beings “And that they overcame the failings and that they have the same kinds of moral issues, moral problems, moral failings – everybody does.” And that’s not what you necessarily judge them by. But you better be careful when you put them up on a pedestal. Especially when the left looks at the pedestal and says, I’ll take that guy down. I won’t take Martin Luther King, Jr. down for his own moral failings, but I will take down, I don’t know who, George Washington. So that’s the problem.
But watching what’s happened brings us to this question: Who’s lying and how well are they persuading us with their lives? That’s the question. And are our leaders, opposition leaders being sufficiently sophisticated because we live in a free country? I don’t think in Russia right now if you are in the opposition parties you’re going to have much luck communicating your message of concerns.
I don’t think that works very well now. Now they’re in a full on war footing, so it’s a little different than here. Maybe if we were on a full on war footing, we wouldn’t allow much of it either. But right now the opposition leadership can articulate what they see as the failings in this “Russia’s causing high gas prices and inflation, we should focus on that” instead of all the other aspects of what’s gone on.
And yet I see Republicans and Conservatives without much vision on this yet. So understand war will be used by leaders to increase their popularity. It works. The question is whether We the People will have have the ability to be critical of that and see through it.
All right. That’s what you need to know. We got to take a break. We’ll come back. We’ve got Todd Bensman and others. We’ll be right back. Ed Martin here in the Pro America Report. Talk to you in a moment.
