The David Feldman radio program is made possible by listeners like you.  Welcome to the broadcast, I'm David Feldman, DavidFeldmanShow.com. Please friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, it's the holiday season, please do all your Amazon shopping via the David Feldman Show website.  It will not cost you any more money. In fact, you'll be taking change out of Amazon's pocket. On today's program, one of my favorite guests, that's not fair, I love this guy and he's my favorite guest, that's not fair. I'll just say on today's show, Greg Fitzsimmons. It's always great when Greg Fitzsimmons stops by. And Judah Grunstein, he's been on the show before, he talks to us from Paris, he's the editor-in-chief of World Policy Review, and we talk about Trump and nationalism spreading throughout Europe. Well, I had a suspicion that the show we did last Friday where I went after Kellyanne Conway would, a couple of people would be upset with me over that, and somebody here at the show printed out a complaint and I'm going to read it. In case you didn't hear the episode entitled, saying no to Trump, I opened up by just calling Kellyanne Conway what she is, which is a piece of dung.  Really complained somewhere this was handed to me before the show started, so I wanted to read it. It's a complaint from a female listener, which I'm always grateful for. Feldman calls himself a quote-unquote progressive, but I just listened to a podcast where he attributed, sorry, where he attributed Kellyanne Conway's support of Trump to her probable molestation by her father, and he predicted, in what I assume he thinks is a satirical fashion, that she write a book about that and her quote-unquote eating disorder. Yes, she's a terrible person, but how is Feldman's sexism and body shaming any different from Trump's? Feldman's always talking about how women are angry at men. No Feldman, they're angry at you. Well this one is. So I don't know who wrote this and I don't know where it came from. By the way, thank you for the comments. I always say you have a right to be offended, and it's a well-written complaint. I call myself a progressive. I am a progressive liberal, yes. And I attributed Kellyanne Conway's support of Trump to her probable molestation by her father. Now, that's partly true. You say that I attribute Kellyanne's support of Trump to her probable molestation by her father. I never said she was molested by her father. I said that her father or her uncle, or both her father and her uncle, did something to her when she was younger. I stand by that, and I don't think that's sexist. I think that's true. I think any woman who defends Donald Trump has something seriously wrong with them. Some unresolved bad touch.  And that's not sexism, and that's not body-shaming. What I'm saying is something seriously horrible happened to Kellyanne Conway that would force her to spin and lie ferociously for a sociopath. She identifies with her abuser. I don't know why that's sexist. I don't, and I don't know how that's body-shaming. This person then goes on to complain that Feldman said that Kellyanne Conway would write a book about her eating disorder. Well, is that body-shaming? There's obviously something wrong with Kellyanne Conway. That's not a healthy-looking body. I didn't specify anorexia or bulimia, but there's something definitely going on, some kind of self-loathing going on.   Something's going on. That's not sexist. That's not body-shaming. What she's doing by staying as thin as she is is creating a false body image. She's creating dysmorphia, body dysmorphia for women. You have a fat-shaming guy like Donald Trump who is, technically speaking, morbidly obese. He's easily 300 pounds. He body-shames women, and then you have his chief spokesman who is frightfully thin. What kind of message does that send to women? Forget the fact that she's defending a guy who talks about grabbing women's P-words.   And women have come forward. So we know this guy is bad with women. I have every right to point out that Kellyanne Conway, by being out front, unfazed the nation as the spokesman for Trump, unhealthily thin, is sending a bad message to our daughters that if you want to get ahead, you have to not eat or throw up after you eat. That's not body-shaming. That's true. Does anybody honestly believe that Kellyanne Conway has a healthy relationship with food, working for Donald Trump, who fat-shames all women? Then this person goes on to write, yes, Kellyanne Conway is a terrible person, but how has felt been sexism and body-shaming any different from Trump's? Well, again, I don't think that's sexist.  Yes, it's wrong to fat-shame people unless you're Chris Christie.  You, you're the elephant in the room. Why should I be polite to Chris Christie?  I believe in the politics of personal destruction. I stand by everything I've said about Kellyanne Conway. I stand behind everything I've said about Chris Christie. Ken Melman, who was the chairman of the Republican Party in 2004, was a closeted homosexual. He ran George Bush for president in 2004. I'm one of the most homophobic campaigns in American history.  This is a little show. People should be shamed. People should be shamed for their bad behavior. I don't think there's enough shame in this country. I think we cut way too much slack to people, especially my side, the liberals. I think when they go low, we go high. I say when they go low, we go high on Hitler and just go for it. Just grab them by the jugular and humiliate and shame them. I know I've talked on this show about how we can't make the other side feel stupid. I get that, but there's something seriously wrong with the other side that needs to be pointed out. The other parts of me that kind of can accept certain things about Trump, like the call to Taiwan, I don't have a problem with that. China commits genocide. What's going on in Tibet right now? China is as bad as Nazi Germany. We are trading with what is the equivalent of Nazi Germany right now by doing business with China. I know people don't want to hear that. But when we talk about George W. Bush's grandfather Prescott doing business with Hitler, when we talk about IBM doing business with Hitler, when we talk about Coca-Cola creating phantasodas so they could do business with Nazi Germany, that's pretty bad, right? That's pretty bad. And yet our corporations do business with mainland China and they are committing genocide in Tibet. Their human rights violations are legion. We do business with a pretty nasty regime. And so Donald Trump calling Taiwan while that spits in the face of 50 years of diplomatic protocol set up by the wonderful Henry Kissinger, who is, as we all know, a war criminal. When Donald Trump calls Taiwan and everybody's up in arms, I'm thinking, I don't know, that's not so bad. Look, we've gone from the best president this country has ever had to the worst president this country hasn't even had yet. We haven't even had him already and already he's the worst. He's a disgrace. You have to fight him every step of the way. But there is some tribalism at play here and I don't want to be associated with Kellyanne Conway. I don't want to be associated with Jared Kushner. I don't want to be associated with Donald Trump. There's a lot of tribalism that goes on. We've been faulted for making the other side feel stupid, right? You know, we shouldn't. The problem is they are. That's the problem.  Well, maybe that's because you get your news from fake news organizations. You're not too bright. You tend to be uneducated, statistically speaking. You don't read the proper newspapers and magazines. You believe what you're told by the people in your echo chamber. You have no critical thinking other than your racism and sexism and misogyny. That's the only critical thinking you're capable of.  The other thing that I've noticed about the tribalism, you know, I could be swayed over to the Republican Party if I liked those people. I don't like, it's a party.  That's a party. I don't want to go to that party. There's something wrong with those people. They're not educated. They're not intellectually curious. And then there's something psychologically wrong with them. I have noticed that even my friends who are readers and are capable of critical thought notice that my friends who are voting for Trump. And there are some friends of mine who have voted for Trump. And they're capable of critical thought. They do read. They are educated. There's something gravely, seriously wrong with them. There is a psychological condition that's untreated. There was an article by German Lopez. What a great name. German Lopez in Vox, which is a great website. This is from November 22nd, 2016. German Lopez. German Lopez. What a great name. He writes about historian Kathleen Friddle who has done a study, an academic study, noticing the correlation between the opiate pain killer and heroin epidemic. You know, we have an enormous epidemic right now of opiates and heroin. We have a record number of drug overdose deaths past three years coming from heroin and opiates. She has done a study and she says the counties in Ohio and Pennsylvania that swung from President Barack Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016, the counties that switched had a epidemic of opiate and heroin addiction. For example, in Ohio, in 26 counties that reported 20 or more drug overdose deaths per 100,000 people, all of those counties, except for two, went from Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016. I'll link to this story. The numbers indicate that in the counties where people are dying from heroin and opiate addiction, which has become an epidemic during the past four years, those counties switched from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. And then there's another study that German Lopez talks about in Vox. Penn State sociologist Shannon Monnet has found that rural areas and the rust belt in the counties that went to Trump, the quality of life has declined to the point where the voters for Trump are more likely to suffer from suicide, drug use, and alcohol consumption, and depression. So new studies are coming out that Trump got a lot of his votes from people who were addicted to heroin, people who are alcoholics, people who are suicidal, people who are depressed. Those are the people who voted for Trump. There's something wrong with those people.  But there's an untreated psychological condition that many Trump supporters are suffering from. And I've always said this about this new Republican Party. A lot of the people who gravitate to the Republican Party have this aha moment where they say, hey, I'm not a racist.   I'm a Republican. And they no longer feel alone. They find their group. And they're all the same.  There's nothing wrong with you. The diagnosis is Republican. I don't need to be introspective. I don't need to get treatment. I'm a Republican. Of course, Republicans now say the same thing about our side. It's called projection. So going back to Kellyanne Conway, there is something gravely wrong with Kellyanne Conway. There is something gravely wrong with Rudy Giuliani. Gravely wrong with Donald Trump. Donald Trump is suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder. These are bad people, bad as in milk that's gone sour and it stays in your refrigerator while you're on vacation. Bad people. That's who these people are. The people who support them are bad. They're getting worse because the economy is getting worse. There are fewer opportunities for a lot of the Trump supporters so they get progressively more suicidal, progressively more angry, progressively more depressed, progressively stupider because they don't have time to read. They go deeper and deeper into themselves lashing out at scapegoats and that's how people like Trump and Kellyanne Conway thrive. There's something gravely wrong with these people. I stand by what I said last week about Kellyanne Conway.  That's not sexist. That's not body-shaming.  I think you need to shame these golems. All right, coming up, Greg Fitzsimmons.  What I do is at the beginning of the podcast, I take my pants down and then I toy with it for it, we're gonna do about 30 minutes and then I pop right before we hang up. And it creates a drama, a narrative. So you're hard right now? Not yet, halfway there.  I'm drinking coffee, I'm masturbating. You're in Boston today, where are you playing? Playing at Laugh Boston, which is, it's actually on the edge of Southie, it's on the edge of South Boston. So there's a lot of those guys, a lot of those guys here.  Speaking of Boston, your father was mentioned in Kevin Meany's obituary in the New York Times. Your father is responsible partly for Kevin Meany doing stand-up comedy. Absolutely, it was, there was a golf club that my dad belonged to in White Plains, New York, and then Kevin was a waiter there. And he started when he was like, but this way he was tending bar for a couple of years and then one day there was a big cake at the bar and everybody was like, what's it for? And like, it's Kevin's 18th birthday. So he'd been dart-tending since he was 16. Wow. And he would always, and then he weighed the tables and he'd come to the table where my dad was and he would do Ed Sullivan the whole time. And he would sing this whole thing about the cheese, the cheesecake boats are coming, oh yeah. And he had like whole routines worked out. And my father said, you know, you should try stand-up comedy. My dad was friends with one of the club owners. Like, I think it was a catch and kind of arranged for him to get on and then used to bring him on his radio show when he was starting out and yeah. And so then years later, when I was in Boston going to college, my dad said to me, hey, do you remember that waiter from Noelwood? And I was a kid. You know, I knew Kevin when I was 10 years old. Wow. And he was this funny waiter and I would be at the pool and he'd come down with his tray in a vest and bow tie. And I'd be like, Kevin, give me a Coke. Kevin, I want some peanuts. Wait a second. So wait a second. You were like some spoiled rich kid at a country club. Yep. And he waited on you? He waited on me. Oh my God. And he always remembered me like so. So then I come up to him and my father says to look after this guy, Kevin Meany. You know, we know him. I go, yeah, I remember funny Kevin from Noelwood. So I go to Catch a Rising Star in Harvard Square one night and I'd been watching Kevin on TV and going on The Tonight Show and killing to the point where Carson had his head on the desk and was pounding the desk with his fists like just annihilating. And he had this great one hour special and so I see him at Catch. And it was like magic, watching somebody destroy a room the way he did in his prime when he killed. As you know, there's nothing close to it. And the crowd leaves and then I'm standing there and he walks up and he goes, Fitz Simmons.  So we reconnected and he started kind of taking me under his wing. He'd bring me on the road to open for him and he got me at the clubs in New York and was like my mentor. You know, I'm surprised. I figured that it would not be a connection. I thought that you would reconnect with him and there'd be a distance between the two of you. Right. So there was a bonding. He loved my father and mother so much. And then when he came back into my life, he started to spend time with them again. And he was like family. I mean, he really was. He was in my wedding party and I was in his wedding party. We became extremely close friends and he went on to marry, get this. The woman, the girl that lived next door to us growing up, she used to babysit and then she moved to LA and then Kevin moved to LA and then they both met out there, started dating and realized on like the second date that while he was serving drinks to my parents at Noel which she was babysitting us back at my house and they got married and they had a kid and then Kevin came out of the closet. Kevin less important on his desktop. This is insight into my personality. This is what I figured. I read Kevin's obituary and they mentioned your dad who I had met when I was about 16. We've talked about that on the show and your dad was very supportive. And as I'm reading the obituary, I'm thinking, well I bet Fitzsimmons, Greg has no relationship with Kevin Meany but this was between Kevin and his father that when Greg was starting out, he played the dad card and Kevin said, oh, great, yeah, I love your dad. And then it completely shut down and there was no relationship between the two of you.  But I automatically assumed that there was a relationship between Kevin and your dad and that there were lines, there were borders that would not be crossed. And that's it. No, it was really from the get-go. It was unbelievable. And he was just the most loyal, loving guy and I think that he just had this gratitude towards my dad.  I think he loved the fact that I was trying as hard as I was in stand-up. I wasn't some kid that was coming to him like, yeah, I've done four open mic nights and I want you to get me on HBO. It was like, I just wanted to say hi to him. I just wanted to tell him that my dad says hi and I think you're the greatest and all that. And so he saw me progress and he saw how hard I was working and I think it was just like, right now there's a couple of kids that I'm kind of mentoring that are young comics. And when I- You have sleepovers, right? Oh, you went there, you went there. You went, yeah. You went right to making love. Yeah, I got there a little bit quicker. Yeah. When they're, yeah, when they're, when they're snoozing face down on my couch, I think about Kevin. You know, I had to move some stuff out of my apartment in New York. Just have a lot of stuff and I wanted to move it into my mother's basement.  David Feldman's a loser? No, I just think I have some stuff that in my apartment, there's no room for it. So I had to rent a van and move it into my mother's basement and I hired my nephew to help me.  Right? Right. But if I say to Greg Fitzsimmons or people in our circle, hey, I rented a van, you immediately think, right? Windowless. Yeah. Candy. Yeah, it's a mobile Bill Cosby. My nephew. Yeah, your nephew. Why is your nephew black? What's that about? Yeah, in this scenario, why is he black and constantly shaving his balls? Mother's basement. Yeah. It definitely, it adds up to a comedy prep. You know, when this, when I hang out with this kid, he came up to my room, to my hotel room before the show last night. He was doing a guest, I hadn't done a guest spot on the show. This one kid, he goes to college here in Boston. And I just felt like, oh, this is where it would happen, you know, like, this is exactly how it would happen. Not that I wanted it to, but like, you feel a certain power, you know, like, like when, like I was, I got off the elevator one night at the hotel and this woman was on the elevator already and we got off at the same floor. So she, so I let her out first and then she made a left and then I was also going left. And so I was walking behind her and it's like one o'clock in the morning and then like, and then she gets down and she makes a right and gets where I'm going. So I go to the right and now I just, I just really started to think like, don't rape her. And I didn't, I didn't want to, but I just felt like this, this must be it. It must be the power. Two things on this. My son is a really good looking guy. He really is. He's just, he's right. Alex, perfect. Just, you know, everything is just like his father and loves comedy and is really funny. And I took him to the Montreal festival is I don't know, freshman year in college. I was working a week up at the Montreal Comedy Festival writing and they put us up in a room and we shared a hotel room together and he's a ball buster, my son. I don't know where he gets it from. So we'd get in the elevator and we'd be walking to the room and there'd be people. Sometimes they weren't comedians and he'd be going, oh, Mr. Feldman, I hope I sat, you know, we'd be, I'd be looking for the key. And I'd go, he'd say, as I'm fumbling for the, Mr. Feldman, I hope I can really please you. I'd, you're one of my favorite comedy writers. I hope the sex will be good enough that you'll hire me. And, you know, the first time I'm thinking, all right, that's pretty funny.  He'd give my web address.  I know. That's dark. I love it.  How old are your kids? 16 and 13. Oh, they are. That they know where the line is. Yeah. And then they know that when they cross the line. Yeah. It's even funnier. Yeah.  Yeah. But I'm the one that always crosses the line. Like I was on the phone with my wife yesterday and she's driving. And she's talking about the internet connection and how the service guy came. And she was telling him everything that might make the internet connection not work. Like the booster is in the kitchen in the wrong place and might be faulty wiring. And then I said, did you tell him that maybe the size of your bush might be affected by the waves in the house? And she goes, we're on speakerphone and Owen's in the car. And he goes, nice dad. Oh, that poor woman, no daughters. No, my son's 16 and my daughter's 13. Oh, so it's three guys on one woman. It's no two guys and two women. Me and my son and then my wife and my daughter. Oh, you do. That's right. You have a daughter that I'm sorry. Right. I'm sorry. Okay. I forgot that you have a daughter. So do you think women now have been humbled by Trump and they're going to be a little, they're going to get with the program? Yes, absolutely. I think that it was a mandate when we didn't elect Hillary.    Yeah. They decided this year and which is great news for women. Bad news for the $20 bill. Now it's only going to be worth $14. Wow. Wow. Yeah.  Like when I was touring the country during the run up to the election, I was saying to women, are you going to vote for Hillary? And I swear to God, eight out of 10 of them said no. They either said they, most of them just said they weren't going to vote. And a lot of them said, no, I'd rather vote for Trump.  We're having technical problems. Hang on. Are you getting a call? No. Okay. I think it's Greg's wife's bushes acting up. Can you, would you get that woman a Brazilian for Christ's I'm trying to do a podcast. She's trying to hide the tats for the cock. So you're traveling around the country and you ask women if they're voting for Hillary and they're, and most of them, does that speak to your audience? Maybe you have a lot of self hating women coming out to see you. I don't know.  So I don't, I don't think, I think it's actually women that were kind of educated and resentful. And resented that she was going to be, you know, their first president, their first female president. You know, I mean, that's my only guess, you know, because a lot of women on the right were completely brainwashed by it. But women on the left were also just not, they were not inspired.  And I don't know where they were before. You know, we gave them the right to vote.  Yeah. I love that phrase we gave them the right to vote. Like men are just like standing on the throne dispensing things to women and black people. Well, wait a second, we did give them the right to vote. Right. We did. I know. They had a fight for it. Yeah, they did. We couldn't, couldn't we have stopped it?   Do you think if women, if men could provide for women the way our fathers could? Women wouldn't be so big on equality and, you know, they could just shop their way to happiness instead of leaning in at the job. I'm just curious. Yeah, I mean, I do think that their natural state is docile. And all this manly behavior is, no, of course not, David. Come on. I'm just, I'm just curious. Do you think that, because the fact is that women are discovering that work is work? Yeah.  Even so, you know, OK, now you're in the work world and, you know, you've, you're coming close to a quo. I don't mean to be glib here because it's, but I'm being partially serious here. I want to be careful. But the point I'm making is women are now working more than men in many cases.  Right? Right?  Yeah, but also, you know, my wife didn't work for 16 years and she's just getting back into it now. And, you know, it's something that I think is difficult. Like I can say all the trite things about like being a stay-at-home parent and what, you know, how much of a job that is. And, you know, it's not, it's a valid thing.  But I think getting back into the workplace for her is like it was an empty part of her because she wasn't working. I think it's a way of validating yourself outside of, you know, two kids. It's, you know, I think it's something that you would miss.  I don't work that much anymore. I'm just kidding. You're sort of part-time now. You're semi-retired. God, I wish. I think, well, here's the difference between you and me.  But as a man, you can define yourself by what you do for a living and be proud. There are very few jobs out there where you can say, I go out to work, I do my job and that's who I am. And I'm proud of who I am because of what I do for a living. Most men from, you know, our parents' generation, the fathers kind of define themselves by what they did for a living. And in the end, it kind of was soul-crushing and corporate and they weren't too proud of it and it was empty. And I think most people who work want to define themselves by what they do for a living and it ends up being just a paycheck. And I think a lot of women who have entered the workplace went into it with work being mythologized and they're discovering, holy crap, work stinks. This is not who I am. This is all about humility and being crushed and doing what you're told. Tell me again about being a housewife and being supported by the husband. Well, I think you're, you're put in a context where you have meaning, where you're part of a team and as much as like, look, jobs today are worse than they were 20 or 30 years ago. There's no job security, there's no benefits, there's no gold watch when you retire. It is, it's constant humiliation and you have to change jobs constantly. You're always threatened by younger people coming up to know more about computers. And so I think it's a stressful, horrible thing, but I also think that as animals, we're, you know, we're, we want to be part of the herd and we want to compete. And there's a feeling that comes from that that gets the juices flowing and, you know, coming home tired after working hard is like, you know, one of the best feelings in the world. So, no, I don't think, I don't think it's fair to say that your job has to have total meaning to you for it to be fulfilling on some level. I think there's a, I think there's just a, you know, an innate need to be part of a team that's accomplishing something. And you think my theory that women want to go back to the fifties and make our country great again is wrong. Now I see it. I definitely see women going back home again. You know, my wife's a perfect example. You know, we made a decision when we got married that I was going to be the bread earner and that she was going to be the stay at home mom. I mean, it wasn't like she lost a job and couldn't get one again. It was just this thing of like, okay, you know, we can afford to do this if we live a certain way. And it's something that she didn't feel like her parents raised her, they both worked and she felt neglected and abandoned and she didn't want her kids to feel that way. And so she's been an unbelievable mom. She's incredibly attentive to every detail. She's very empathetic to their needs and, you know, aware of every type of parenting that you can do. And, you know, so I think that there is a backlash against the bad parenting of the two working parents system that started, you know, in the 70s and that we grew up with. So I think there is, I think for couples that can afford it, they go back to it. But I think that there's an honor to it that maybe there wasn't before. I think parents get into reading books about it and having mommy and me groups and, you know, doing whatever they can to make sure that their kids are, you know, not spoiled but are supported as much as they can be. And I think it feels complete. But so, yeah, I think that's the impetus for a lot of women to return. It's not necessarily they want to turn back time. When you tease women on stage, have things changed at all? Is it harder to tease?  And when did that start? About six months ago. So maybe their election riled it up.   And yes, they can't. And I get booze on that pretty much half the time. Do they even know what they're booing? No, because I'm making fun of the fact that they have to wear this stuff. So that is a you're being booed for being politically correct? Why are they? I think so, yeah.  And it's all about buzzwords and it's all about nuance. And you know, it's not, it doesn't work for comedy. Yeah, I remember for the triumph show, Trump Things Like Comic Dog, we were covering the elections and I went to the Javits Center. The night Hilary was supposed to give her acceptance speech or victory speech, you know, election day. And I'm waiting in line for my press credentials and there's this woman, angry woman, just really angry. And I'm with a comedy writer and I go, what's she so angry about? Hilary Clinton's about to be elected president. Why is she still angry? Right. And I said something and she was with her daughter and I said something like, yes, you know, Hilary's just a great role model.  Triumph said that? No, I said that waiting in line to get my credentials and this woman with her daughter. Oh my God.  I go, what? What, I'm a Hilary's wife. And I, what? Why did you say that? Because this woman was so angry and I'm walking in as, you know, part of a, you know, I'm walking in for my beheading, basically. Hilary was gonna win and, you know, I'd have to go file a, you know, a permit. I'd have to get approval from Lena Dunham in order to work in show business. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Wait, does that, does that mean you wanted Trump to win? No, but I was, I was, I did feel I was walking into my own execution as a privileged white male who's benefited. Thank you very much from, you know, I'm not that bright, I'm not that talented, but I am white. Oh, come on. I'm a white male. Right. And I was sowing the seeds of my own destruction by supporting Hilary.  And on a primal level, on a primal level. I, again, I don't think that she motivated any kind of feeling from women.  There's always like five different feminist groups that are arguing with each other about whether or not, you know, transgender should be included under lesbian and whether or not that's post-feminist or what, you know, it's like they, they have all these meetings and they get into fights and that's why the feminist movement fell apart in the 70s. And so those were the only ones that would have been, you know, called to action. I think Hilary is like a dude, you know, she fits into Congress great. She fits in with the cigar smoking Wall Street guys. And I don't think that in the same way that Obama didn't, he didn't, I don't think he created like an African-American groundswell of, you know, people having to be PC about black people. I think just the opposite. Women think differently than men don't they? Yeah, I think they feel differently. I don't know if they think differently. They don't get to the point, right? No, no, no. Is that, is that, is that? They don't cut to the chase. Louis, Louis CK has been about that is about as good as it gets about just say the thing. It's like, yeah, it's an attention to detail. And I think that that goes back into what I'm saying about feminists that they're so caught up in details that they don't get to the point. Like everything has to be exactly right.  Boy, I hope no feminist groups are listening to this. I know, and I've said on this show for like three years that I'm so in touch with female anger. I've been saying that there's something going on with women, they're really angry and they have a right to be angry. I've been on the forefront of, you know, encouraging their anger and saying you have a right to be angry. And I realize I was the recipient of a lot of this anger. Well, do you think that, well, do you think that your divorce is feeding into this? Yes, I've noticed I'm very comfortable around female rage. Yeah. That's a familiar, oh, I know that. Yes, there's a little anger. Yes, anyway, but let's, by the way, so you're performing tonight before you go, because I don't want you to come back. I don't want to take up too much of your time. I promise this would only be 30 minutes. The audiences are a little different now, right?  And now as a joke, halfway through, I'll go, you guys want to talk politics just so I can hear 300 people go, no! And I don't know what the end is. Like I'm not sure. Like I think people are actually laughing really hard. I think people need to laugh. I found crowds to be really good since the election. I think it's an escape people really need right now. But I don't know what the end is in terms of doing jokes about the president. It's just too real. Are there more people, do you think that there are more people who like Trump than are willing to admit in your audience? Oh, definitely, definitely. Yeah, well, all that. I think that this virus, I think people didn't want Hillary to get elected and they were completely blinded to what the other scenario was. They were so excited to not have Hillary win because so many people hate her and unwarranted.  Yeah. Unless you're just, unless you're mainlining the media. It's just, it's not rational to hate her. And I think it boiled to that point and people went against their instincts and they really didn't think it out.  And I think the hatred that Hillary brings out in other women is women on women violence. That you really have to examine what is it about if you're a woman, what is it about Hillary that brings out this vitriol and it's probably something you see in yourself that you're trying to destroy. That. Interesting. Yeah, I noticed that there's either envy or there's a side of you. There's a lot of tension between fathers and sons. And a lot of times it's because the father sees a trait that he doesn't like in his son. Right. And the son will see a trait that he doesn't like about himself and his father. I think that's why a lot of women don't like Hillary. Yeah. They see something. Anyway, you've been generous with your time. This was, as always, just amazing. Every time. Can we do this more often? We have to.  I love it. I love you. When are you in New York? I don't know. I think in the summer maybe. I don't have any call to be in New York for a little while. But when I am, I'll come in. I would love that. I love you. I do. I love you too. I really do. And I miss you.  Work locally. Do local stuff as much as you can. Work with schools. Talk to your congressman. Sign petitions. And don't accept, don't normalize Trump. We can't ever start saying, you know, we have to accept this. So you can't accept it. You can't go on with that. Well, I just think that it's already happening. I mean, we're already, we're getting so many cabinet nominees in a row that my head is spinning with going like, wait a minute, drain the swamp, another billionaire, a Goldman Sachs executive, you know, what's his name's wife, the WWE guy's wife. Like if this, if there were time, and it was out of the context of like, we're trying to accept Trump and give him a chance, this people would be in a fury about each one of these nominees. And instead we're just normalizing and accepting it. And I think that we'll see what happens in Congress when he's elected. And if there's, if there's a consistent pushback or if the Democrats start playing nice and saying, all right, we'll accept that if you give us this and we're not going to get anything. The Republicans are going to give us nothing. So the Democrats have to get dirty and nasty over the next four years and try to fight for human dignity and civil liberties. Beautiful. Thank you, Greg. All right, thank you. I'll talk to you soon. Okay, bye. All right, bye. Coming up my conversation with Judy Grunstein, the editor-in-chief of World Politics Review. By the way, at the top of the show, I accidentally refer to it as World Policy Review. It's World Politics Review. And I know you're gonna enjoy my conversation with the brilliant Judy Grunstein. But first, there's a benefit that we are doing for the ACLU. We're very excited about this. John Fugelsang, Frank Conniff, Joe Firestone, David Feldman, and Jordan Carlos. We're all gonna be at Union Hall Wednesday, December 28th, 2016. And we're doing a show, starts at 7.30. It's a benefit for the American Civil Liberties Union. All proceeds go to the American Civil Liberties Union. That's the ACLU. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 the day of the show. If you live in Brooklyn, or you know somebody who lives in Brooklyn, buy tickets for the ACLU benefit at Union Hall, $10 in advance, $12 the day of the show. Go to unionhallny.com for more information or just come by the day of the show. And we'll see you there. And now my conversation with Judy Grunstein, the editor-in-chief of World Politics Review. Joining us from Paris is Judy Grunstein. He's the editor-in-chief of World Politics Review. He has covered French and American politics, foreign policy, and national security for not only WorldPoliticsReview.com, but the International Herald Tribune, the Atlantic Online Politico Magazine, foreign policy, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. If you live in France, you can see them regularly on France 24. Thank you for joining us. Again, Judy. Thanks for having me. Trump, you have threats of nationalism in France, really more pronounced than we had Marine Le Pen and her father. There's been a nationalist uprising going on in France that's been pretty strong for decades now, correct? It's gathered strength for decades. With, notably in 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen made it into the second round of the presidential election here. More recently, though, certainly it's more a fixture of the landscape here because his daughter, Marine Le Pen... Ivanka has... I'm sorry? Ivanka. No, I'm talking about Le Pen. I know, I'm making a joke. Oh, I... Sorry. My bad. Yeah. No, my bad. Go ahead. So his daughter, Marine Le Pen, has sort of engaged since she took over the party from her father in what they call here the sort of a de-demonization campaign to normalize the party.  She's really toned down the language to make the party's opposition to immigration a little less of a dog whistle to the sort of racist, Islamophobic and xenophobic constituencies. And the result has been that the National Front has become more and more a mainstream party and certainly a party that, even as recently as earlier this year, almost won several of France's regions in the regional elections came close, never didn't quite make it in the second round because France has a two round system. But still, she's at 30% more or less in opinion polls. So she is certainly the only candidate for the presidential election that will take place next year that is almost guaranteed to make it into the second round. All of the others will really have to struggle to make it above 15, 20% in the first round. Now, right now you have a socialist president and a socialist prime minister. How are they doing in their popularity? Record lows. I think François Hollande, who's the president last time I saw was at about 5% popularity. And what does that compare to? Was it Sarkozy? Sarkozy was his predecessor, not terribly popular at the end but still ended up with around 20% or 22% of the first round vote in 2012. The problem that Hollande has is that he's basically has no more friends. He took, he campaigned on a pretty traditional socialist platform attacking the financial interests and promising a lot of things that, a lot of policies that appealed to the left wing of the party. And when he won, he governed really as a centrist social Democrat, which in France is sort of an insult. Social Democrat corresponds to the more centrist center left government that tries to reform labor codes that will privatize industries that have been owned by the state in various countries. And the left wing of the socialist party has been very hostile to the kind of reforms that Hollande has tried to enact that haven't really gone far enough to actually give France's economy the kind of oxygen it needs to regain growth. So the upshot is basically that unemployment has really only been marginally reduced. So there's still a lot of resentment over that. There's resentment on the left of the party and the center left of the party, his natural constituency and the party is disappointed because he's been a terrible leader. So basically there's still some question as to whether he'll even present himself, declare himself a candidate. The expectation is that he'll make a decision sometime in December. In the meantime, the field for the socialist party's primary is already very crowded. And then his former economy minister Emmanuel Macron just declared his candidacy as an independent, meaning he will certainly be in the first round regardless of who wins the socialist primary. So the outlook for Hollande and that centrist faction of the socialist party is pretty bleak and without going into too much detail, the outlook for the center right party is pretty troubling too because there's a lot of divisions there. So the upshot is basically that whoever makes it through to the second round will face Marine Le Pen who's almost certain to get about 30% of the first round vote. So you might have someone who wins about 10, 12, 15% of the first round vote facing off against someone who has won 30%. Now, just to tie it back to Trump and before that, the Brexit referendum, basically what you have here in Europe right now is this sense that the impossible is now possible and that the inconceivable is now attainable. So all of these parties that have been gaining popularity, especially with in the aftermath of the financial crisis, a lot of unemployment, unpopular austerity measures that did nothing to get back economic growth. The migrant crisis and refugee crisis that has raised a lot of alarm and concern and it tends to be looked down upon or criticized by the left. But the truth is that there's been a huge sort of transformation of people's communities and their national identities in a way that they don't necessarily approve of. And their natural response has been to congregate around the politicians and the parties that are expressing their animosity and their resentments and their hostility to what's happening. And those are these nationalist populist parties, Marine Le Pen here in France, Gert Wilders in the Netherlands and the Brexit vote, for instance, Nigel Farage in Great Britain. And so what you have here now, for instance, is this sense that for Marine Le Pen, there was always this understanding that, yes, she'll make it into the second round, but once she gets there, the entire country will rally around the other candidate to prevent her from winning the presidency. And now all of a sudden, people are sort of scratching their heads and saying, well, wait a minute, that's what we said about Brexit and that's what we said about Donald Trump. So maybe it's not as impossible as everyone says and that's the sort of fluctuating environment that really is to the advantage of someone like Marine Le Pen who really the last barrage was always the last barrier to someone like her winning was this idea that it's not possible. Do you favor TPP or do you not have a position on that? We don't necessarily have a position as editorial line. We've definitely published articles that explain the benefits of trade as well as the disruptions it causes and they talk about how to address the disruptions more effectively. And so just to finish answering your question, we're not necessarily center left and we also do recognize that sometimes in international affairs, the use of force is necessary but ideally we live in a world where there's openness and political freedoms and pluralism within countries and the kind of dialogue and multilateral platforms that manage the transnational problems that no one country can handle alone. So for the American listeners where there's no nuance in our political system, you would pretty much be on the side of Clinton and Obama. Is that fair to say? I know you don't want to be pigeonholed but that is definitely... Is that neoliberalism in America? Is that what neoliberalism is? Neoliberalism is certainly a part of or it has been a fixture of the liberal international order in the sense of trying to lower the barriers to trade. But again, neoliberalism is one approach to that and I think I'm trying to avoid this idea of putting us on the political spectrum because that's not really how I approach this sort of thing. Right and that's not how World Politics Review you don't take money from anybody, right? No, no, we run, our revenue is based on subscriptions. We don't even take advertising and so while we didn't endorse anyone in this election, certainly I was personally, I write a column for WPR and I was personally very critical, not necessarily of the foreign policy ideas that Donald Trump somewhat incoherently articulated because there are very sophisticated and insightful and well-respected analysts that have presented some of those ideas in a much more thoughtful way. So there's nothing, for instance... Well, hang on for one second. I want to get to that in a second. Okay, but just to finish that point, so I was more critical, for instance, of his approach. At the same time, I think there's plenty to criticize in terms of Hillary Clinton's approach to international affairs and foreign policy as well but she definitely represents more of a continuity with the global order and with America's role in it as we now see. So in terms of, for instance, trade, I think that there's a lot of reforms to the liberalized and free trade agenda that need to go into addressing the kind of resentment that we see here in France, that we see in the United States. Assuming Marine Le Pen becomes your next president, should you stop her every step of the way?  You have to fight it. You cannot give them any quarter here in America. There are people like me who are saying you cannot, I've said on this show that if Donald Trump announces a $3 trillion moonshot to cure cancer, we say no to him. You say no to him on everything and now Bernie is saying, well, if Bernie Sanders is saying, well, he's got some infrastructure plans and Schumer's saying, we'll work with him on trade, we'll work with him here and there and my reaction is give him nothing. Am I wrong? First of all, I'd say you're wrong to say I'm more educated than you are for starters. But beyond that, I think that to begin with, the threat represented by Marine Le Pen and the National Front is a different category. This is an established political party that is, for most of its history, made direct appeals to racism and anti-Semitism and that doesn't make any qualms about wanting to completely overturn the entire order upon which Europe is now based, exiting the European Union, which after Brexit would essentially be the end of the European Union. And they're professional politicians with organized party structures down into the regions and into the villages of France. So it's a different threat. Now, I'll sort of paraphrase what I just wrote in my column this week with regard to Donald Trump. I think first of all that there's a lot of uncertainty about what he'll do certainly in international affairs and that what's really called for right now, especially in domestic affairs, is vigilance. I disagree with this idea that he's a threat to the Republic. I think that exaggerates his strength in a way that plays into his hands. I think we need to be vigilant. I think we need to really pay attention to things like the political instrumentalization of the prosecutorial powers of the U.S. government. I think we need to... Say that again, please. Say that again, please. I would say, for instance, pay close attention to his use of the Justice Department to make sure he's not targeting political enemies. Pay close attention to corruption, sunshine laws, and scrutinize all of the dealings and contracts that are going on because given him, his business background and the people that surround him, go ahead and nail down the furniture in the White House to make sure they don't sell that. Right. All of these things, yes. At the same time, the institutions in the United States are very strong. They've managed to either contain or remedy a long list of infractions and abuses, whether temporary ones like McCarthyism or Nixon, for instance, or much longer and durable outrages like racism and sexism and homophobia. I think that the instruments are there to contain the excesses. In the meantime, the question of how to align oneself politically in terms of the projects he may or may not try to implement, that's a really complicated question. It's a difficult one. The danger, obviously, is in making him a successful president in spite of himself, right? But at the same time, if his excesses can be constrained and if his sort of vacuity, right? He's basically vacant politically. He's got these sort of instincts and these very almost reflexive tirades that he goes off on, but ultimately you see that he doesn't really have a guiding ideology or any sort of political fiber. If that sort of vacuum can be molded into something or in a direction that helps the American working class, that helps the middle class, even though his tax program and tax cuts don't seem like that's where they're directed, why not? You were wrong about Trump, I assume. No. You knew you thought he was gonna win. I did not think he was gonna win, but I've got email threads saying as far back as before even the convention, the Republican convention, saying that the Democrats are making a big mistake underestimating the kind of appeal that he'll have to what my generation grew up knowing about as Reagan Democrats. I've known Trump as a public figure since the 80s. I grew up in New York and I saw him. I used to read Sidney Schoenberg's columns about him. I was hating Trump before the rest of the world was. But one thing I'm sure you noticed because I did, which was always really hard for me to understand. Anytime you would see Trump going on his job sites, the guys working on his job sites loved him. And so there's this leftist, there's this left idea that class interests will make workers and blue collar people dislike someone like Trump who was obviously born with a silver spoon in his mouth and is part of the system that he basically criticized to win election, right? But it's not the case. He has that kind of blue collar boss like persona that a lot of working class people identify with and they wanna be him. They don't wanna take him down. They wanna be him. They wanna live like he lives. So I didn't underestimate that. I didn't underestimate that. That's part of a game plan with fascists. I mean, Perone, it's the cult of personality. But if we were wrong- The personality and that sort of strongman ability to talk in the language that appeals to that electorate without question. And to love your abuser. You know, the other thing is too, 50 million, what is it, 50, no, 60 million people voted for him, right? So not all of those people are working class people. Not all of them are racists. Not all of them are xenophobes. A lot of them voted for him for other reasons. And I think that, and some of them, here's the other thing. They voted for him because we live in a culture where gambling is the norm. And a lot of people decided to roll the dice. There, well, listen, you know, the other thing is look at what, look at, I have a lot of respect for Hillary Clinton in terms of her capabilities, her credentials, her preparedness, her competence. I think she would probably have been a really good president. At the same time, she was a horrible candidate. She doesn't really connect that well. And the truth is, if you look at what the Clintons represent, you talk about loving your abusers as a progressive left person. Look at what the Clintons represented in terms of what they did to the Democratic Party. And in terms of what they represent as being part of the system, that really is rigged. We know that. We know it's rigged. Trump is an awful compromised messenger. But can any of us really say to the people in the Rust Belt or the people out in rural America that anyone was taking them seriously? I mean, look at how we reacted to Trump's election victory. We didn't just despise him or disrespect him. It's almost as if the nerve of these people to interrupt us while we're governing in our own self-interest. But that's what democracy is. It's a battle of interests in the political arena. And these people have interests that are legitimate. And so for me, the idea that, I don't see Hillary Clinton as being a knight in shining armor. To me, it's part of a system that is somewhat compromised.  And I had been saying the same thing, that everybody was celebrating Charlie Hebdo's freedom of speech when in fact they were fanning the flames of racism and that jokes, words have consequences. Words have consequences. And in America, the president has a bully pulpit.  I'm not arguing with you. I'm just discussing. No, I agree with that. And you're able to live in France and you're not seeing the faces of Hispanics and Arabs and Muslims in this country who here on the television, a president-elect saying that we're going to deport you and he is surrounding himself with people who... I don't mean to, I'm not in any way condoning that or saying that that should be normalized or accepted. Don't get me wrong. Right. I believe that Trump is a horrible, compromised messenger. Absolutely. So you're saying we have to understand how we got... You're saying basically we have to understand why he got elected. To begin with, because honestly, isn't it unconscionable that a charlatan like Trump managed to ride these grievances to the White House instead of a progressive Democrat? Well, yes. He basically stole the progressive democratic constituency right out from under the party and he did a hostile takeover of the Republican Party in terms of the Tea Party to do it. So he basically managed to create a coalition of the angriest parts of the country but part of that anger is democratic constituency and the Democrats never responded to it. They never addressed it. Because we voted for the Clintons because most of us don't like the Clintons but we voted for... An election is always a choice between what's on offer, not between one candidate and an ideal. Yeah, right. I reluctantly became a Bernie Sanders supporter because I wanted to be... Originally I wanted to vote for Hillary because I wanted to be the adult in the room but then I realized, you know what? The Clintons, they're really not looking out for my best interests but eventually you vote for a Clinton because they know how to win. That's the only thing that a Clinton can do is win and slow down the Reagan revolution.  Yeah, the idea is they're gonna win.  They know which battles to pick in Washington and how to manipulate the machine to scratch around at the edges and win some concessions at the margins. That's great but this was an election cycle when people wanted to blow the system up. They didn't wanna put someone in there who knows how to operate it better. They wanted to blow it up. She would have been a good president though. She would have been a good president, I think, in this sort of day-to-day bureaucratic administrative sense, whether she would have had the kind of vision that would inspire us, who knows, whether she would have gotten us entangled in foreign interventions because of her instincts. Who knows? My big problem with this election cycle was I knew when I voted in the primary that I was gonna feel essentially ashamed of myself no matter who I voted for. I'm almost 50 years old. I'm a little tired of the baby boomers. I'm a little tired of fighting the battles of the 60s and I feel like basically we had the first round between Hillary and Bernie, which was essentially a sort of postscript to how the Democrats and progressives should respond to the McGovern loss in 1972 by pushing further to the left or going reformist. And then in the second round, we had basically a fight between, who knows, Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. But basically these were like 60s era, it was like these 60s era standoffs. And one of the things that I was most enthusiastic about when Barack Obama won was finally we're gonna get a generation of leaders who aren't fighting these old battles, but somehow eight years later, we just hit this regressive cycle where we're back, we basically just found ourselves back in 1972, it seems like. George McGovern, who I think was one of the greatest candidates for president, the Democratic Party ever ran, he wrote a piece in the nation, I don't know, about 10 years ago saying that even though he lost big time to Richard Nixon in 72 was a landslide, I think, I don't even think he carried his home state. I think he won one state, but I'm not, I'd have to check on it. Yeah, I think he won Massachusetts and maybe DC, I think, or maybe I'm thinking of Montel, but McGovern said, you know, there was a big angry fight in the Democratic Party back in 72. And he wrote, maybe I didn't win the presidency, but I won the cause because within four years, Richard Nixon, within two years, Richard Nixon was forced to resign and then Jimmy Carter was elected president. I don't wanna get too sidetracked on history, but I don't see how he won the cause because the Democratic Party basically became the Reagan, the Rockefeller Republicans. Because they took, because there isn't a healthy, free market place of ideas within the Democratic Party because they've demonized McGovern so much, they're so afraid of 1972. So that's possible. And so what happens is that when you see somebody like Bernie Sanders and you see the strain within the Democratic Party dating back to Eleanor Roosevelt, in the end the Democrats are frightened by that and they squash it and the Republican Party continues to thrive because they have a healthy debate of ideas and they're not afraid of a civil war and they fight and they fight and they argue and they argue and that's called competition. Well, I think also. And that's healthy, that's healthy for a party. There's no debate within the Democratic Party. I'm not sure I'd agree with that. I'll say this though, you know, I think it's important not to exaggerate also and over learn the lessons of the election. What are we like? 10, 15,000 votes in Michigan, 20,000 in Wisconsin and 50,000 in Pennsylvania from having this exact conversation about how the Republican Party is in disarray. You know, so I wouldn't necessarily go that far. What I would say is this. I think that in a lot of ways it's very obvious here in France and in Europe. And I think that in some ways the Trump's success speaks to the same story in the US that we're locked in this outmoded and outdated way of thinking about politics along a left-right spectrum, right? And so in the Democratic Party it's left and center and in the Republican Party it's right and extreme. At this point there aren't very many centrist Republicans left. At the same time what you see really generating the political energy and momentum in all of these places is a vertical division. And by that I mean. Yeah, explain that. By that I mean you have urban, cosmopolitan, globalized elites, college educated, somewhat more affluent who have traveled more perhaps, have either personal connections or business connections in other countries or with a wider variety of people. And then you have people who are a little closer to the ground, less mobile, less traveled, less educated, less affluent and who have enjoyed to a far less degree the fruits and the benefits of the kind of openness and liberalization and globalization that I talked about earlier. And those are the people who are really being driven in their political activity by affect, by emotion, resentment, anger, fear, hostility. They're people who are sensing a loss whether it's of economic security whether it's a loss of identity. And I think that we don't take that seriously enough and to our peril. I think it's important to understand that those kind of grievances are not inherently illegitimate. Right. The difference between you and me is I immediately go to anger. And I think the way to co-opt his movement is to skim off the anger, to take all the angry Americans and leave Trump with all the hateful Americans that. I think we're saying the same thing, though. I don't want to appeal to racist or xenophobia or racism or xenophobia or Islamophobia, but that anger, that class-based anger, that economic-based anger, yeah, I agree.  Judith Grunstein is World Politics Reviews Editor-in-Chief. Everybody should go to worldpoliticsreview.com. He's a great mind, a great writer. Been a great pleasure. Thank you very much. That's our show. Special thanks to Greg Fitzsimmons. Go to Fitzdogg Radio. Go see Greg Fitzsimmons wherever he's playing. He is just an amazing stand-up comic. And Judith Grunstein. Go to World Politics Review. Read Judith Grunstein and don't forget, we're doing a benefit for the ACLU at Union Hall in Brooklyn, Wednesday, December 28th. Show starts at eight o'clock. Doors open at 7.30. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 the day of the show. It's a magnificent stand-up show featuring John Fugelsang, Frank Conniff, Joe Firestone, Jordan Carlos, and David Feldman. Please friend me on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter. 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