We then shift gears to discuss the pervasive and intricate debate around free speech. Through a lens of recent controversies involving public figures and media outlets, we scrutinize the boundaries between hate speech and free discourse. Join us as we explore a spectrum of viewpoints, reflecting on what it means to maintain freedom while addressing societal and media pressures.
00:00:06 Memories of Butch Cassidy and Robert Redford
And just like the guy whose feet are too big for me.
SPEAKER 03 :
You always remember maybe one of those first movies that your parents take you to that’s really for grown-ups. It’s no longer a Disney film or kids’ movies. And when it got to be the late 60s, I mean, my parents didn’t take me to The Graduate when I’m nine or anything like that. But they took me to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when I was, I guess, about 11. And B.J. Thomas’ Raindrops playing as Paul Newman’s riding the bicycle around and Robert Redford, sort of a lighthearted moment between bank robberies. Mike Robert Redford has passed away at 89. This is a big one. This guy has just woven through our film history just forever and ever and ever, so…
SPEAKER 02 :
I had the exact same experience. I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as a kid as well and remember that because I remember being impacted at the ending when they jumped off the cliff into the water.
SPEAKER 03 :
Careful, careful, not the ending. No, that’s not the ending. They survived that because they’re up there and they’re being chased and they’re out there in the wild desert. I just love the scenery of this and it was incredible. And they said, look, we got to jump. We got to jump. And Butch says, we’ve got to jump. And Sundance is, oh, they drop a Greg Gutfeld S-bomb. But the thing is, what’s the problem? We’ve got to jump. He said, all right, I can’t swim. You could have told me that.
SPEAKER 02 :
You think about it.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, the end. The end, though. No spoilers. Yeah, they go on the run. And it’s a weird thing. It’s those series of movies and TV shows where you’re rooting for the bad guy. They’re bank robbers. They’re desperados. We shouldn’t be rooting for them. It’s a weird, twisted kind of thing. But no, they meet… For people, I’m not going to give it away. You should go download Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And then maybe The Candidate from 1972. And The Way We Were. And The Sting. And Three Days of the Condor. The Condor. The Natural, not just one of the best baseball movies ever, but I mean, and I know Robert Redford was politically wacky, but he didn’t beat you over the head with it all the time. And he gave me so much joy and so much substance, not just as an actor, but as a director. So rest in peace, Robert Redford. And so we offer that up as we begin our… Our exercise. You have said it all, my friend.
SPEAKER 02 :
I haven’t.
SPEAKER 03 :
Listen, I’ve said it all in the first segment. Are you with me or not? There’s a spectrum of ways to be. I listened to the beginning of the Chris DeGaulle show today. Always great. And he’s expressing a certain caution that we not overplay our hand, that we don’t need to have be going on patrol, looking to shut everybody down. We’re the free speech people. He’s totally right about that. But there’s no free speech angle whatsoever to being hypervigilant to monsters in the workplace. No doctor, no teacher, no burger flipper should harbor publicly these horrific views of celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death. The private marketplace is going to do what it does. But if we say, oh, look what we found today. Boop. Not only is there nothing wrong with that. That may bring an accountability and a reckoning that can actually make the country better. What say you, Mike Gallagher?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, there’s a real interesting debate going on with the MAGA world over Pam Bondi. Pam Bondi made comments yesterday with J.D. Vance in an extraordinary moment, incidentally, in terms of broadcasting. To have the sitting vice president guest host the Charlie Kirk show was a big deal. And, of course, the vice president did that in loving tribute to his dear, dear friend. They were very close. J.D. Vance pointed out that it was Charlie Kirk’s idea to even get Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the whole MAHA movement ingrained into the Trump administration. That was Charlie. Charlie had a great deal of influence in the Trump administration, to be clear. So Pam Bondi said yesterday there’s there’s free speech, but then there’s hate speech. And now you got people. I think it was Eric Erickson out of Atlanta who said, hey, Pam Bondi, you’re a moron. Mary Catherine Hamm is calling out Pam Bondi for that. And, you know, our side typically does not favor hate speech reactions or hate speech normalization or prosecution, I guess I should say.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, correct. Is hate speech protected? Of course it is. I think Pam’s error is she’s sometimes a bad communicator. I don’t think Attorney General Pam Bondi is going to be locking up anybody for what they say or bringing government consequence for what they say. But at a government university, a government job, where it’s the government’s job just as it is a doctor’s office or a school’s job to determine who works there, they absolutely have that decision to make. But that was a bad moment of communicating. There’s free speech and there’s hate speech. To be clear, to Pam, to everyone, hate speech is absolutely protected under the First Amendment and our proper reaction is, is to recoil and offer speech of our own.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I’m really, really intrigued by this whole approach the left is taking now. Here’s the New York Times headline, Silencing Kirk’s Critics. Critics? Wait a minute. Critics? We’re not talking about people critical of his policy. We’re not talking about jokes. The right is coming after people who are telling jokes about Charlie Kirk. Jokes? Laughing and mocking and threatening his wife and children, saying that more conservatives need to be killed. There’s a prominent influencer, somebody named Destiny, who basically said more conservatives have to be killed so that they’ll all be afraid to show up in public. Things like this are happening in real time. And for the New York Times to suddenly… clutch their pearls over silencing Kirk’s critics. I think you have a right to celebrate and gleefully be joyful over Charlie Kirk’s murder, I guess, but then you have a right, then the company that you work for has a right to fire your butt.
SPEAKER 03 :
Bingo. It’s freedom breaking out all over. That’s it. It’s only a First Amendment issue when government says it’s against the law for you to say X, Y, and Z. That’s right. We’re not talking about that.
SPEAKER 01 :
Out in these parts, some folks call it radio. We call it the last campfire of the American spirit. Stoke the fire of freedom with American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avalone and Stephen Parr. American Ground Radio, planting seeds, growing freedom. Listen wherever you get your podcasts and visit our website at AmericanGroundRadio.com.
SPEAKER 02 :
Nobody’s saying lock somebody up. That was why the Pam Bondi remarks were rather problematic, because nobody wants to prosecute somebody for reveling in Charlie’s assassination. But a company should be protected from saying, I don’t want somebody that’s that sick and twisted working for me. Thank you. And I’m glad that… J.D. Vance said it yesterday. Companies should be on. They should absolutely be reading out these awful, awful people. Because make no mistake, these are awful people. These are awful, terrible, horrific people. Now, I was ready yesterday. Jessica Tarloff over at The Five has been off all week. Now, I knew, and I think she was off for a reason.
SPEAKER 03 :
Did you see her in Gutfeld yesterday?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, that’s why I’m bringing it up, of course. Jessica Tarloff was off all week, and I think they did that for a reason. I think it was just too much to bear to have us grieving Charlie’s murder and then all this Harold and everybody else. But I think they didn’t want Jessica throwing fuel on the fire like she did yesterday. And like she said to Greg Gutfeld, the whataboutism, and Greg Gutfeld had it. Greg Gutfeld said, nope, we ain’t doing this today, lady. You’re not going to sit there and start doing the whataboutism. We watched them assassinate the biggest… most prominent conservative influencer in America. And spiritual leader, too. Correct. Which is why they killed him. But we watched that. We saw it. Spare me the whataboutism right now, said Greg Gutfeld. And man, was I standing up and cheering for him. It was tremendous.
SPEAKER 03 :
And he said, that S is over. And by the way, everybody said, oh, can you get away with that? Is there a fine? It’s cable. You can say whatever you
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, you can get away with it on cable, and he apologized for the cursing, but nonetheless, and we’re going to bleep it when we play it today.
SPEAKER 03 :
And for being not too aggressive toward her, because I think he gave her exactly what she deserved, but he expressed a little understanding that you were gone for a week, and maybe you’re coming in with a lot of hot, stored-up opinions, blah, blah, blah. It’s funny.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s not good. And there’s a cruelty here to this, Mark. Jimmy Kimmel last night mocking Trump.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, no, no, no.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, mocking Donald Trump. But can we just talk about this on a human level for a moment? I know Jimmy Kimmel’s a husband, a dad. He’s got plenty of dear friends. Does he not have any appreciation that Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk were friends?
SPEAKER 03 :
No. Do me a favor. I guess it’s a favor. What did he say?
SPEAKER 02 :
He mocked him by saying that Donald Trump is mourning the death of Charlie Kirk. I forget what the phrase was, the way a child mocks the death of a goldfish. Now, there’s a cruelty to that, Mark. Doggone it. I mean, whatever you think of Trump, I don’t care if you hate Trump. He’s hurting, too. They were friends. Charlie Kirk was largely responsible for Trump’s victory. Trump had deep admiration and love for Charlie Kirk. Why would a comic on late night TV be that cruel? And I think the answer, we know the answer, because they are. It’s who they are. These are mean people. These are nasty. Trump derangement syndrome takes nice people and makes them mean. Mark’s TDS axiom number two, it makes nice people mean. And help me understand something. Kash Patel is getting beat up. He’s going to go off and testify on Capitol Hill. And the legacy media is saying, ooh, ooh, he’s going to really get it, you know, really going to really go after him. They’re claiming that he misstepped in the Charlie Kirk thing. The Charlie Kirk assassination and the Charlie Kirk response, because evidently Cash said early on, we have somebody in custody. We have a suspect in custody. And then, of course, that was before they made the arrest of the 22-year-old, whose name, by the way, and I’m going to ask you to indulge me on this. I’m never going to mention his name again. That’s my jam.
SPEAKER 03 :
I mean, the day it happened, when the discovery of who he was is the news story, you say it, and then you say, that name will never escape my lips again.
SPEAKER 02 :
Never again. I don’t care about him. And frankly, I don’t care about anything about him. I don’t care about his boyfriend. I don’t care about his life. I don’t care about his parents. I don’t want to talk about him. He did what he did. May justice be served. I hope he gets the death penalty. When Kash Patel said there was a – you remember the guy, the 71-year-old man who screamed immediately after Charlie was shot? I shot him. I shot him. Now shoot me. Do you know about this guy? I don’t know that I do. All right. There was a man right in the front who was screaming, I shot him. I shot him. Now shoot me. And they put him in handcuffs and they let him away because there was such confusion and pandemonium after Charlie took the bullet to the neck, right? Mm-hmm. Well, this is the guy that Kash Patel was referring to. And this is the man that the legacy media said, oh, he wasn’t the shooter. Well, yesterday, he has been arrested. He has been charged, and he has been arrested on suspicion of obstruction of justice. Do you know what his jam was, to quote you? What? He was screaming, I shot him, now shoot me, because he was so in favor of Charlie being killed, he wanted to be a distraction to help the actual shooter get away. But the point is, Kash Patel was right. They had a suspect in custody. So what am I missing here, Mark?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, A, not only are you not missing anything, you’re guiding us directly. This is going to be RFK Jr. on steroids, where a figure sits down and Democrats are going to do nothing but beat him up in order to score viral moments.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s all it’s going to be.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s not going to work. It’s going to be terrible. And we are here every day to show the difference.
SPEAKER 02 :
We’re all Greg Gutfeld now. We don’t care. I am Greg. No S-bombs. I’m not.
SPEAKER 03 :
We can’t curse because we’ll get fined. In fact, in that same block, Jesse, and I’m going to play a little bit of Jesse, saying we’re coming for you. We are absolutely coming for you at your jobs, in your workplaces, on social media. If you try to get away with stuff like this. And look, we’re not coming for you with bullets. We’re not coming for you with anything except bullets. the sunlight, the disinfectant light of attention, and then let the marketplace do what it will with these monsters. I love you, man.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hey, man, I love you, too. Happy Tuesday. Happy Tuesday. Are you back? Are you still in South Carolina? No, no, got back. Oh, no, I haven’t even got to tell you yesterday. As if this week hasn’t been enough? Yeah. You ever heard of a runway incursion? Tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. That was my landing yesterday.
SPEAKER 03 :
Mike’s travel stories continue.
SPEAKER 02 :
Full throttle, circle around, plane on the runway when we were landing. I kid you not. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. Goodbye. There’s a thousandth reason to listen to Mark and Mike tomorrow.
