He Infiltrated Antifa & CHAZ/CHOP, Plus the Most GOOGLED Republican Presidential Candidate

Alright, Liz Wheeler Show episode 426, take one. 

Joining me today on the show is the host of the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH Radio in Seattle. You know him, you love him. Jason, thank you for being here. I want to start the show by saying one of the things that I really like about you that I think is very unique. I’m not sure anybody, any other conservative in the country, can make this same claim that you can and that is you host a local radio show and yet you are a national voice. Or you can even flip it and say you are a national voice and yet you focus on local politics. And I think that’s one of the most powerful things we can or should be doing in our country, and I think you’re the only one doing it. 

Yeah, I think all of us, it’s really easy to pay attention to some of the national issues because of the way that it gets covered, but I think that on the local level, it’s obviously what impacts us the most. And so I pay attention to that kind of stuff and I find myself in a somewhat unique position because I don’t really like how local media tends to cover anything. And so I decided, hey, let me make that my focus. I can very easily in conservative talk radio, it’s very easy just to do a national show. But no, I focused, I focus a lot of my time and attention during the radio show, on the podcast, on local issues. 

It is. And we’re going to go through your ex-pro profile, formerly known as Twitter because you do, you’re on the ground, you’re reporting this stuff as it happens, not just commenting on it, which adds an element of just like, I mean it’s concrete to your viewers. Then we see this, we know you’re there looking at it. You’ve infiltrated Antifa, you’ve been on the ground at the Chopped Chaz zone. You were just at Target, which is being just destroyed in downtown Seattle by all the looters. We’re going to get into all of that, but also we’re book buddies. Our books are coming out on the same day, September 26th. So congratulations. Your book is called What’s Killing America Inside The Radical Left’s Tragic Destruction of Our Cities. Super cool book cover. By the way, everybody go to Amazon or wherever you buy your books. Get a copy of this right now. 

And you are uniquely qualified to write this book to, I’m excited to talk to you about what’s in it because if you look at the polling data, 77% of Republican voters say that violent crime, especially in our cities right now, is very important to their vote. And this is true of about a third of Democrat voters, maybe up to half depending on if you count centrist as some leaning Democrat voters. But all in all, this is a very significant issue facing our country right now. And you essentially are pointing the finger blaming Democrats. Can you explain what you mean when you say that all of this crime is the fault of Democrat policies in these cities? 

Yeah, I look at a lot of these issues and say that these are the results of choices that are being made at the political level. And it’s not just about crime, it’s about homelessness, drug use, immigration, all of these different issues we’re facing right now and the crises are just growing and growing and growing. And I think most of us have recognized that it’s gotten worse over the course of the last few years. Early on it was really easy for Democrats to blame just Covid, whatever the issue was. They would just do a blanket, oh, it’s because of Covid, but it’s because they passed a lot of laws. They implemented a lot of strategies and policies and initiatives at the exact same time, and we can connect the dots directly to them. And as I was writing this book and I was doing the research and I was going from city to city to city, it was pretty clear to me that basically the same kinds of policies, what’s some minor differences, but the same themes kept popping up and they kept having the exact same results and shocking as it may be. 

For example, when you tell criminals we’re not going to put you in jail, well, guess what? They continue to engage in crimes. When you tell immigrants or migrants from wherever that if you come here, don’t worry, we’re not going to kick you out. Well, guess what? Then they make that journey and it happens over and over and over again. When you tell wealthy people, Hey, we’re going to tax you, and by the way, our definition of wealthy is not quite what you think. It’s covering way more people. Well then they just move. And when you’re seeing that happen in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, dc, New York, the list goes on and on. You can step back and say, it doesn’t have to be like this. We are choosing to go down this path and we are choosing to accept the consequences of those decisions. And the book tells you why people believe what they believe, what it is they’re doing, and more importantly what actually works. So we can push back and say, instead of doing this, let’s do that. 

Yeah. So give me some examples. I think when I think of the West Coast, and maybe I’m thinking mostly of California, I think it goes up the coast as well to the Pacific Northwest. Homelessness is like never before. I mean, I lived in San Diego for 10 years and there were always homeless people probably because San Diego was perfect temperature all year round. So you can be homeless without the weather impacting you there. But the difference between when I moved there in 2013 and 2014 and when I moved away at the end of 2020, the difference was just astronomical. And then after Covid, I mean I go back to visit a couple times a year and it’s just, I mean there’s tent cities everywhere. It’s nothing like it was 10 years ago. Talk to me about the policy evolution that happened that is enabling this or that caused this something that has changed in this space of 10 years. 

So what we are seeing, not just on the West Coast, but where homelessness is at its worst, we’re seeing the adoption of something called Housing First. It is a policy as it sounds, where they focus on just putting someone who’s homeless into a home or an apartment, a hotel, and then only afterward do they go ahead and say, okay, maybe you should get the treatment that you need for the addiction that you’re suffering from or the mental health issue that you’re dealing with. But we’re not going to make that a condition of either getting the home to begin with or a condition of staying in this subsidized housing program. So what ends up happening is you’ve got a whole bunch of homeless people who will then go into areas where they know that this approach is being taken and just basically wait until they’re getting these kinds of offers. 

And in the meantime you have policies that basically say, we’re not going to prosecute you for any of the crimes that you’re engaged in. Sure, we see the fact that you’re addicted to drugs, but we’re not going to do anything either because sweeps apparently lack compassion, which to me is such a horrible argument that the radical left uses. I would argue that a sweep when the intent is to get someone into shelter of any kind is the only thing that’s compassionate. Not letting people live out on the streets surrounded by filth, human waste, use needles, and everything that we commonly see. The problem is that housing first as a strategy does not work. It has never worked. And as I was doing this book, I did not intend to do it this way, but I ended up writing an entire chapter on Salt Lake City and I did that because number one, people seem to think it’s a conservative city. 

It is it a liberal city. It’s not crazy to the left, but it’s a liberal city. And they adopted something called Housing First originally in a significant way. And I was hearing from progressives on the ground in a lot of these Democrat run cities dealing with homelessness that, Hey, look what they did in Salt Lake City. Look what they did there it works. We got to do that here. And so I looked at the data, it did not work. They told us at the time officials there that they got to a functional zero in homelessness where it was basically zero. That was never the truth. They were misleading the public the way that they were interpreting the data. And then over the years since it’s gotten worse and worse and worse and worse, and yet we still are being told by folks on the left that housing first as a model works, the only model that has worked. 

And I cover a lot of examples of how the programs that actually have been successful in the book, it’s a carrot and stick approach. If you don’t have a carrot and the stick approach to what it is you’re doing, there’s no incentive for a lot of people who again, are either dealing with an addiction and they don’t realize what exactly is going on. And I feel awful for these people especially, they just lost hope that they don’t think that they’re going to be able to ever get their life in order again. And part of me understands where they’re coming from because they’ve been told a bunch of promises by lawmakers and activists and the homeless industrial complex that, oh, don’t worry, we’re going to help you. And then they don’t ever actually follow through. And that’s the real shame where you’ve got people who are able bodied able mind, they could actually get on the right path, but they’ve lost all hope. 

And we’re just enabling that kind of self-defeating behavior unless we do something that says, we’ll give you the help, but on the condition of this, and if you’re unwilling to take us up on our offers of resources, but if you’re breaking the law, we’re going to arrest you and no, the prosecutor’s not going to charge. Even if they did, the judge is not going to put you in jail, but guess what, you’re out of jail tomorrow. I’ll be back here tomorrow. And if you’re still choosing not to take us up on our offers of support, okay, we’re going to throw you in jail again and we’re going to do this over and over and over again until you accept the resources because that’s the kind of love and commitment that we have for you. When cities have adopted that as a strategy, when nonprofits have they’ve seen results. 

So I used to think that Democrats that adopted policies like this housing first type of thing were just stupid, that maybe they were duped into thinking that this was both a compassionate and a practically effective way to work, and that they were literally just too dumb to see the truth. I don’t believe that anymore. My thinking has evolved. I now believe that Democrats that adopt policies like this know full well the consequences of these policies. So my question to you is, what is the social or political benefit for the Democrats in adopting a policy that they know full well doesn’t work? 

Because the end result of that policy is that they get to basically adopt these people and determine how they live, where they live, how long they can live in certain areas. They get all of the funding that comes in. It’s part of the homeless industrial complex where the same groups continuously fail to actually get us results on homelessness, and yet somehow their budgets continue to grow. They have set up a system in which they are financially secure for the entirety of them engaging in this kind of work. They get in close with politicians who then get to use these programs pretending that they’re a success, claiming that they’re really compassionate, they’re helping people who are homeless. And because local media generally doesn’t do a good job, I don’t think at least, of connecting the dots between these failures and who’s responsible, they end up earning some social currency within the public. 

And then all of a sudden you’re looking at this person who’s saying, oh, they really do care. Look, they’re fighting to get this person a home, and now they’ve got that home. But what they don’t tell you is that home is permanent supportive housing. That’s not a place any of us should want someone to be temporary. Sure. So long as you’re part of a program. But if you’re going to live in a subsidized housing program for the entirety of your life still suffering from that addiction or mental health issue or whatever it is as the underlying reason for your homelessness, I don’t think that that is a success, and I think we have to push back hard at that. But Democrats love to do this because it sends this message at virtue signals basically, that they’re compassionate. Meanwhile, they get to fulfill an ideological position of theirs, which is, yeah, we want people to be reliant on us, and this is the epitome of that ideology in action. I 

Man, this is so fascinating. Some of this stuff I didn’t even know, the intricacies of the homeless industrial complex, how it works. A lot of people are dealing with this in their own cities. I mean, you guys go get his book, what’s Killing America Inside the Radical Left’s, tragic Destruction of our cities. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever you get your books, at least until the radical left discovers that it’s for sale, and then it’ll probably face the censorship that we all face here. So I want to ask you about infiltrating Antifa, and I want to ask you about the Chop Chaz zones, because this happened right in your neighborhood, right where you live. I do want you to give me one more example of Democrat policies and how they’ve impacted a crisis that has touched all of our lives, and that is drug addiction. What are some of the Democrat policies, and maybe they’re not just Democrat policies. I know a lot of Republicans came out against the war on drugs and just stopped fighting this, so maybe this is more of a uni party regime issue, but what are the policies that led to this horrible, tragic, I mean hundreds of thousands of people dead from drug overdoses in our country and no stopping, no end in sight. 

At the end of the day, what we can look at is actually in the Pacific Northwest, both in Washington and Oregon states where we have effectively legalized drugs. They call it decriminalization because that gives it a little bit better of a brand, but we’ve essentially legalized because we don’t prosecute, we don’t jail. And we’ve seen the results in both states. We have had record high fatal overdoses in both states, and each year that goes by, we see that number increasing and increasing and increasing. King County, Seattle is about to most likely in the next two weeks go higher than where we were last year in fatal overdoses. Last year was a historic high, which was higher than the previous historic high the year before and the year before that this is all part of, it’s actually very similar to Housing First. It’s another strategy, harm reduction. 

Harm reduction indicates that we are supposed to reduce the harm associated with illicit substances. And so rather than allow people to use used needles for example, or pipes that have been smoked through multiple times, we give them clean versions of that so that they can continue their drug use, but do it in a technically safer way. And it’s true that you’re cutting down on bloodborne illnesses or bacterial infections when you do that. The problem is you’re just pushing them deeper and deeper and deeper into their addiction while at the same time doing virtually nothing to help these people get into treatment. And there was a local story that I covered not about a month and a half ago, two months ago, locally here in Seattle, where a group that’s getting taxpayer dollars is going around giving fentanyl pipes, and they’re open about not pushing treatment because well, not everyone wants treatment. 

It doesn’t work for everybody. So we’re effectively creating almost these versions, these low level versions of drug dealers. And my fear is that at some point, going to start giving out cleaner supplies of drugs under the exact same harm reduction strategy. Every single place where that’s being used in a significant way, it is failing because again, there’s no carrot or stick approach when you’re not hitting that rock bottom. For the vast majority of people, that’s what they need. When you’re not hitting that well, you’re never going to realize that, oh my God, my life is on the wrong path. When you legalize and you’re not making any arrests, it means police officers have no leverage over the individual to even turn on their drug dealer. And so we see drugs proliferating all over the place. And again, this is a strategy that people don’t even realize is happening in their own neighborhoods. This is in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, all over the place. And yet I’m willing to bet that the average person has probably never even heard of the term harm reduction, which is another part of the reason why I wrote this book. These are policies that are implementing our lives and the lives of the addicts, and people just don’t realize. 

No, I mean the obvious connection between all of those cities is that they’re Democrat run, which is I suppose the point of your book. So an obvious statement to make, but it’s the old principle of if you subsidize something, you’re going to get more of it. This is essentially subsidizing drug use. Of course you’re going to get more of it, and people don’t know exactly how to stop it because the Republican Party, I talk about this in my own book, but the Republican party is very good at pointing at something and identifying what’s wrong. They can say, that’s wrong, that’s bad. That’s immoral critical. Race theory is bad, trans ideology is bad, but the Republican Party is not good at defining what is right. What do we want our society to look like? What is human flourishing? So we’re constantly saying no, but we don’t offer an alternative at the cultural level or at the legislative level, whether that’s local, state, or federal to solve some of these problems. And it’s to our detriment, something I hope that I always hope the Republican Party saves itself from. But as years go by, I get a little more cynical about this. So Antifa and the Chaz Chop zone, tell me about this. You were on the ground with these freaks. I mean, what was that even like? 

It was surreal. You’re surrounded by chaos and violence. And then I look on Twitter. At the time, I watched some coverage nationally of what was happening, and I was being told everything that I was witnessing and reporting on wasn’t actually happening, that the violence that was very clearly occurring was not that big of a deal really. This was just a street fair. And of course, we had our mayor famously point out on C N N that it’s going to be the Summer of love. And of course it was not the summer of love. We saw the murder of black teenagers at an actual insurrection led group of folks taking over six city blocks, all in the name of Black Lives Matter, being okay with the murder of black children in their zone. It never made any sense. And it was so clear that this is where we were going early on. 

It wasn’t just about fighting. There was an attempted rape of a deaf woman who was living in one of the tents in the zone. We had arsonists there. Someone tried to actually burn down a building, and I talked to one of the managers of that shop who was lucky that he arrived in time to stop the place from burning down. We saw all of this happening, and clearly it was escalating. And I was going on at the time, I was on with Tucker and I was talking about this, and I would get tweets from people saying, I’m just making it up. Oh, this is just Fox News, fear mongering. It’s not happening. I’m like, dude, I’ve got video. I’m literally showing you exactly what’s going on only to be told that I’m just making it up. And we’re still hearing that, not even just about Chop and Chaz, but just generally what’s going on in these cities. 

We’re being told that what’s actually happening isn’t happening. And I think people create these little echo chambers that they live in and they never escape, particularly when we’re talking about these large Democrat run cities where they’re just surrounded by people who think exactly the same way they do, and they’re back there amplifying the same messages and they start to believe themselves. They start to believe what is effectively a lie. And I think Chop or Chaz, whatever we want to call it, was a perfect example of how far things can go if it’s driven by ideology, if it’s driven by dangerous and violent activism, and we allow it. 

And by the way, I don’t even know why the name evolved from Chaz to chomp or Cho to Chaz. We were talking about this. My team was talking about this right before we went on air. No one remembers why it was renamed and why, and all this resulted in is we now give 

Answer. I give you the answer, 

Give me the answer, please. Because now we always just say both. 

I do the same thing I do Chopped Chaz, because some people know it as Chopped. Others know it as Chaz. 

It’s so dumb, so dumb. So my question about the people that I guess orchestrated Chop, Chaz or the people that were involved in the crimes that were committed, the arson, the violence, the attempted rape, the murder, are these people in prison? 

Some are. Some were never caught. There was an instance after Chop where the activism never really stopped, where you had an individual who was trying to set fire to the East police precinct, which was in the zone while other people 

Yeah, I remember that. 

Yeah. They were using dry cement to lock the officers in while that guy was trying to burn it down. That guy ended up getting caught. You got a very light sentence off the top of my head. I think it was like four to five years, and then compare it to some of the sentences we’re seeing with January 6th. I think that that shows you how politics can sometimes get involved in the criminal justice system. 

Yeah, just a little bit. I mean, that is the obvious connection. It’s the thing that popped into my mind when I was thinking about this. I mean, what did we have these proud boys that they were January 6th defendants that got sentenced to like 15, 16, 18, 22 years. The guy that was sentenced to 22 years, Enrique Tario, he was the former head of the Proud Voice, wasn’t even in Washington DC on January 6th. And yet we have these Chaz Chopped Zone people who were actually staging what I think could be termed as a real insurrection. I’m pretty sure Chaz stands for Autonomous Zone, which means that they were removing themselves from the United States government, rejecting it, trying to in their own weird way, overthrow it. And yet they weren’t ever charged as terrorists. They were just put in prison for a little bit or let go, and no one, I mean, I highly doubt their families are being raided to this day based on what they did back then. 

Oh, 100%. Remember, they were armed at the time that they took over six city streets and police were told, you can’t go in. You’re not making any arrests. There were very few arrests at the end of this, and anyone who did end up getting arrested, the stats are pretty clear. For the most part. They were just released, the charges were dropped. Prosecutors both here in Seattle with Cho Chaz, but also in Portland with nightly assaults against federal building. The federal Courthouse. They just had their charges dropped, and we were told the reason behind that. Mike Schmidt, the Multnomah County prosecutor, he was pretty explicit, basically said, yeah, I understand their political position. I agree with it, so I’m not going to go ahead and charge in some of these cases. And so of course, that only encouraged the behavior to continue. 

Of course it did, because when you allow something like that, it empowers and emboldens people to do it again. So something interesting, another interesting thing about you is you stayed in Seattle in the midst of, maybe this is hyperbole, you can tell me you live there. The degradation of Seattle, I mean, it’s just disintegrating. A lot of conservatives choose to leave blue states and certainly conservatives, and I think liberals too, although they just stay quiet about it, are leaving these cities where prime is just rampant. Why did you decide to stay and what is your opinion on whether other conservatives ought to stay? Stake it out, fight this battle, make sure that we don’t surrender these cities or whether you have to leave. 

That is always up to individual circumstances. I choose to stay and fight because I don’t want radical leftists to tell me where I can and cannot live. I just flatly refuse that. But above all, and what I think is pretty clear from the book, what’s Killing America is that it spreads. You might think that you are leaving an area for a place that’s considerably more conservative, but all of a sudden you’re going to start to figure out that those policies spread. This isn’t Vegas. What happens in these big liberal cities have a tendency to spread. And there are countless examples. Just on my radio show locally, I had people who used to call in and say, oh, I just escaped Seattle. I now live in Renton or Tacoma or wherever. I don’t get that anymore. Now I get, oh my God, what’s happening in my city is now what was happening in Seattle and I can’t escape it. 

Those are the messages that I get. And there are example after example, after example, all across the country in which we’re seeing this spread. And it is great right now in certain parts of the country, if you’re living in Florida, Tennessee, Texas, there are places where you actually are free from some of the madness, but even that’s not a promise to stay like that forever. You might love Ron DeSantis. Well, he’s not going to be your governor forever. At some point, someone else is going to take charge, and if we let our guards down, it’s going to be someone from the radical left and they’re going to fundamentally change everything that we love. And then you’re going to find yourself in a position where you are or where you were just a year ago before you moved, contemplating, do I want to stay here or do I want to move? 

Now, if you’ve got a family and you’re living in a place that’s very dangerous, of course I would move if I was in that position too, but I’m afforded a little bit different liberties. I’m single. I don’t have to worry about that at this point. So I’m going to stay and I’m going to continue to fight, and I’m going to continue to put a spotlight on the issues. I do also think it’s important to live close to what you cover and certainly close to what’s happening all over the country. So I think there’s a benefit to that, and I’m probably self-loathing radio guy. So 

No, this is interesting because my husband and I lived in California for about a decade. We moved to the northeast late 2020, like November of 2020. And it wasn’t actually for political reasons, but at the same time that we were moving, a lot of people were moving out of California for political reasons, and I understood why they did it. A lot of ’em had families. They didn’t want their kids in these schools. I mean, you see the laws in California now if you’re a parent or the legislation, they’re trying to become law where if one parent wants to trans the kid and the other parent doesn’t want to trans the kid, the parent who doesn’t want to trans the kid has custody removed from them or doesn’t get primary custody. I understand that. At the same time, I felt a little sad leaving California because I didn’t want to surrender it to the radical left. 

I didn’t want all of the conservatives to leave because California is, I mean, it’s called the Golden State for a reason. It it’s paradise there. We don’t want it to be a communist hell hole. We want to save it. And I just wondered your thoughts on it. So one of the things that you talk about in your books, this is kind of your call to action in the book. You’re not just writing this to infuriate people or to point the finger at the left is you say people need to get involved locally. You are a perfect example of how to do that. You also have the privilege, though, like I do, of this is what we do for a living so we can dedicate all of our time to it. Can you articulate what it means to get involved? Because people want to get involved, but they don’t always know what that means. And your call to action I think is a little bit different than other people’s. 

Yeah, for every individual, it’s going to be different. For some people, it might simply mean you’re making phone calls on behalf of a candidate that you’re backing. For others, it means, yeah, you’re going to show up to that city council meeting at 11:00 AM on a Tuesday. You’re taking some time off of work. It also means getting more involved in school boards. It means for some actually running for office individuals get to decide what it is to give back and actually try to push back. But it means you have to do something. We can’t simply sit back and complain about what’s going on on the local level while seeding all of this power and influence to a small but very vocal group of radical leftists who are showing up to those meetings, who are running for office, who are making phone calls and knocking on doors, and they’re not pitching things in an accurate way. 

In my view. I think they’re doing a lot of manipulation for political gain. Why are we not doing that? Why are we not knocking on doors and explaining this is a policy that is hurting our community? Why are we not having conversations with neighbors and friends, family members, coworkers who won’t rat you out to HR about what exactly is going on on the ground that people are not aware of the policies that we’re talking about? And I guarantee you that the issue that is happening in Seattle is happening right now in New York. It’s happening in Atlanta, it’s happening in Chicago, and there’s someone there who has no clue about the lack of police staff that Atlanta and Chicago are dealing with. I guarantee you that there’s a lot of people who don’t realize that. There are folks in San Francisco who have no clue why it is that homelessness has gotten so out of control. 

They just know that it’s gotten out of control. And I think it’s on all of us to be up to speed as to what’s happening, why it’s happening, that’s incredibly important, and then stepping forward and doing something. And for some it means you’re having one conversation, one conversation that you didn’t have before with someone about something incredibly important that’s impacting our communities because that person, if you’re doing it the right way, will then be inspired to talk to someone else. And before you know it, you’ve got this nice group of folks who you can now count on and work together and network with to actually raise these red flags when they’re so clearly there. They’re just waiting for someone to raise them. And it can’t just be on people who work in the media and it can’t just be on a small group of conservative activists. We all have to take on that role. And if we take on that role, I think we’re going to start winning a lot more of these battles and ultimately we’re going to win the war. 

Man, I hope your book sells like crazy, because I think one of the things that people want, especially when they don’t work in the media or politics, is they want a handbook to tell them like, okay, you didn’t know about this housing first policy. You didn’t know about harm reduction. Let me tell you about it because you can fully understand it, and here’s what you then can do about it. And it’s not just these two topics, guys. We didn’t get into all of the different things that are impacting inner cities, but go get what’s killing America inside the radical left’s tragic destruction of our cities. We’ll link it on all the platforms that you’re watching right now. If we could, I want to bring up your X account too. Jason. There’s a video on here if we could show this on the screen. This is, I’m scrolling down a little bit. This is Target. This is from about 18 hours ago. You posted, well, I guess this episode is going to drop on Friday, so it’s from a couple of days ago if you guys want to go look at it yourself, but this is what you posted on X. You said, I visited the struggling downtown Seattle Target. Wow, crime continues to surge and it’s so bad that Target now puts a ton of its products behind a locked case, and they’re not even done in electronics. They keep almost everything in a back room. This cannot continue. 

I mean, this is really eerie looking at this video because it looks like something that you would see in North Korea where citizens aren’t allowed to access stuff that it’s just doled out by the government. But how is this going to be sustainable? How are they not going to end up leaving downtown Seattle? 

I don’t know how it’s sustainable. And that’s the concern. This is a large company, so they’re able to sustain some of the financial hardships that they’ve had to deal with. There was a point last year where almost all the shelves were completely bare because everything was getting stolen. It was really truly that bad. And ironically, as I was there over this past weekend filming that there were people still trying to steal. They were just trying to steal some of the things that weren’t held behind Lock and key. These are almost all homeless people who end up using whatever it is that they steal to sell on the streets, use that cash for drugs. This is happening, but not just a target. It’s happening on the small scale to the local businesses. And we have lost so many local businesses, and it’s not even just, again, it’s not a Seattle thing. 

Look at San Francisco. This is a one’s world-class city, a gorgeous city that I fear is dying in real time. It’s dying right before us. And while they’re starting to make some changes and we go through some of the changes they’ve actually adopted that have been successful in the book, but I don’t know if they did it soon enough. And I fear that a city like San Francisco that could have very easily been saved, it’s too far gone. And I fear that from my own city here in Seattle. I fear it for all of these other cities around the country. And again, we’re making choices. We are choosing to allow this, so let’s choose not to allow it, take things back and actually start winning some of these arguments again. 

And what’s terrifying, you bring up San Francisco. This is the same week that Nancy Pelosi announced that she’s running for reelection at age. She’ll be 84 at the time of the election. And her selling point, at least according to the post on X that her team made was she wants to import or she wants to export San Francisco values all around the country. Can you imagine turning the rest of the country into San Francisco? Holy moley. I mean, she basically wrote the campaign ad against her. It’s totally not. It’s totally nuts. Guys, I’m going to say the name of the book one more time. What’s Killing America Inside The Radical Left’s, tragic Destruction of our cities. And Jason, my last question is 2024, the presidential race. What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen with DeSantis? What’s going to happen with Vivek, with Trump, with Biden, with Kamala? What are we going to see in the next year? 

So I am in that small but growing group of people who don’t think Joe Biden is going to be the nominee. I think at some point he’s going to, oh, 

Spicy. I 

Know, and it’s unlikely still. I’d prefer he stay in. I want a referendum on him, and I think any candidate on the right can beat him, literally any candidate on the right. Clearly where we stand right now, Donald Trump is going to be the nominee, but I do think that there is a risk in not going to debates and allowing other candidates to shine because here’s a very compelling argument, and I’m someone who I like Donald Trump, but here’s a compelling argument. That guy can’t get elected because of all of this nonsense that the deep state that the D O J politicization of the criminal justice system is bringing upon him. It’s unfair, it’s disgusting, and I guarantee you, if you elect me, not only will I pardon him, but I will make sure every single person, every element that is responsible for this clear abuse of power goes to jail if they broke the law and is out of a job the second I take office. That is a compelling argument, and if you’ve got someone on the debate stages delivering speeches that has that message, I think clearly Vivek is getting a lot of attention. I think Nikki Haley is a clear threat, and of course, Ron DeSantis, if they take that message, I think it poses a potential threat to Donald Trump, and frankly, I want to see him on a debate stage. I want to actually see him debate. I actually think he’s great at it, and I would love to see him mix it up. 

Me too. I was actually disappointed that he didn’t participate in the debate, although for I understood his reasoning, right? He didn’t want to cave to the RNCs ridiculous rules. He didn’t want to give Fox ratings. But me personally, just my selfish enjoyment, I wanted him to be up there because I think he just shines on debate. So entertaining and the debate that we saw was kind of boring. I think there’s another debate the day after our book comes out. Our books come out on September 26th. The debate is September 27th, so you guys don’t have to watch that debate. You can read our books, which is a much better use of your time. Let ask you about Vivek though. Let me ask you about Vivek. So I like what he’s saying. I think he actually, if you just analyze the words that are spoken by all of these candidates, he’s actually speaking to what I want to hear the most, but I worry that that’s exactly what he’s doing. I worry that he’s speaking to what he thinks people want to hear because the things he’s saying are pretty contradictory of the positions he’s taken in the past. I mean, as recently as last year, do you struggle with any skepticism or any trust issues with him, or what do you make of it? 

I don’t know if I would characterize it as trust issues. It’s in the back of my mind. He’s saying a lot of things that I like. He’s saying some things that I don’t necessarily like or agree with, which is totally okay. The problem, I think that what you’re picking up is something that I think I’ve been picking up is he’s too polished. He’s responding such a clear and concise way that it sounds like it’s scripted. It’s not so much just that he’s flip-flopping on some issues and everyone changes their minds. That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. But when you’re doing that at the exact same time where you’ve got what seems like scripted messages because you’re just very good on your feet like that, it gives off an impression of being phony. And that’s actually what I think is benefiting the opposite, is benefiting Rhon DeSantis and Nikki Haley who come off as authentic because they’re not perfect communicators. It’s just a weird sort of dynamic that I’ve personally been picking up. If it’s vi vague or anybody else, with the exception of a handful of the candidates, I think we have a really strong chance of taking back the White House. I see. It’s ours to lose at this point, but that’s never a good attitude to go into anything with. So I want to all act like we’re down by 20 points. 

Yeah, I don’t jinx it. Jason, come on. We got to win this. We don’t want it to be Jinx. Okay, guys, one more time. It’s called What’s Killing America Inside the radical left’s tragic destruction of our cities, written by our friend Jason. Oh, you brought the book. Look at you holding it up in everything. You’re a pro. It’s heavy written by our friend Jason Ran. It’s heavy. How thick is it? Show me. Show citations. 

This is a thick book. 

Oh, that’s a good one. 

I don’t recommend doing this, but if you were to toss it at the head of a radical leftist, it would knock them out. Don’t do that though. You should buy it for them. 

Not unless you’re in the chopped zone. Then you might have to do it in self-defense. You can bring it as your defense. Defense weapon. Okay, Jason, thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. Guys. Also follow him on X. I think your handle is just your name, right? Jason ran. 

Jason ran, yeah. 

Yeah, at Jason Rant. Easy to find. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Guys. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. I’m Liz Wheeler. This is the Liz Wheeler Show.