On this Salcedo Storm Podcast:
Michael Ramirez is a Pulitzer Prize winner, a three-time Sigma Delta Chi, Society of Professional Journalism Award winner and the editorial cartoonist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Michael is syndicated by Creators Syndicate in over 400 publications around the world.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Where are you in the presidential race? You know, I think it’s fair to say that, since Ronald Reagan, we haven’t had leaders of the Republican Party who seem at all interested in advancing the interests of conservative voters. Now, look, I’ve got to be honest with you. The base of the Democrat Party are our liberals, traditional liberals, many of them still want to be Americans, but their political party has gone full blown, full blown Marxist.
The base of the Republican Party are conservatives, constitutional conservatives who believe in the rule of law, security and prosperity. That’s that’s just who we are the political party that is supposed to represent conservatives, the Republican Party, it has a different idea of what it wants to do.
It wants to placate the nearest Democrat, it wants to get along and undertake bipartisanship with the aforementioned Marxist party. In an effort, I guess, to win over those liberals and those Democrats who still want to be Americans, I don’t exactly know what the philosophy is. But if even if there is a philosophy, because I actually think that these these folks inside of government, they just figure out ways to collude with one another, and to benefit themselves and their class over our people, that there are people who are poor, who deserve scraps, there are people in the middle class who deserve to do all the work and pay the freight of the bills, then there are the elitist to fund our political campaigns and our lavish lifestyles.
And that’s how the ruling class looks at it, at least from my perspective. And not since Ronald Reagan. Have we seen somebody take on the the mantle of We the People like President Trump? So I just I don’t know, I think it’s a fair question to ask those who are listening to the Salcedo storm podcast. Maybe you leave your comments below in the comment section, but maybe give me an idea of where you are on the GOP presidential sweepstakes about the before I get to the polling.
Let me just address the the the GOP so called race for the White House. Fox News has the first debate they got the second debate to now they are decidedly the Never Trump, Karl Rove network. They hate President Trump. They want to see anybody else in there. But Trump because they believe that the best version of the Republican Party is one that puts its lips firmly planted on the asses of any Democrat that can find that a Republican Party that gets up every day and says how do we screw over our voters and placate screw over and lie to our voters to placate Democrats. That’s what a real Republican is, according to Fox News, so they’re never Trump.
So by the way, can I just say, the idea that Fox got the first debate that makes sense that the most watched cable news network that is, at least in the last 2025 years has been fair to Republicans. But the second place finisher is Newsmax but they didn’t get the second debate. Fox Business got the second debate again, Never Trump Network, and their ratings are behind sometimes they’re third sometimes they’re fourth behind Newsmax, which is number two among the cable news outlets that do not treat Republicans like pariahs. All right. So that leads me to the polling and look, I think it’s everybody He looks at the GOP contest.
And most political watchers say well, Trump’s lead at this stage in the game of the GOP primary is historic. He’s it’s his nomination to lose. At this point. Nobody’s watching the debates relative to what President Trump is doing. So now even the biased press is pivoting toward polling, measuring Beijing Biden against against President Trump. And the The Washington Post ABC poll has come out and the Washington Post, got the results and quickly started Pooh poohing their own poll.
Why? Because as Newsmax right, President Trump drew a majority 52% support among registered voters and a hypothetical head to head matchup versus Beijing Biden, whose support has sunk to 42%. In other words, according to The Washington Post, ABC poll, President Trump has a 10 point lead on Beijing Biden, arguably the most inept, lawless Marxist occupier, the Oval Office this country has ever seen. Only because He’s clueless. It’s all Obama, we know Obama’s running this regime. But, you know, Joe Biden is going to go down in history as the man who unleashed on bridled collectivist destructive Marxism on to the country and from open borders to, to lawlessness to Flushing our money down the toilet, to again, you know, Republicans kiss the collective rear ends Democrats, Democrats kiss the collective barons of communists around the globe, China, in particular, in Beijing, Biden is no exception, basically, cancelling out our defense posture, ruining this country in service to placate Communist China, and Americans aren’t on board, American books, the GOP primary isn’t over yet.
And Americans are saying we favor President Trump by 10 points over Beijing Biden. Absolutely historic swing. More on this coming up on the Salcedo strong podcast.
Political cartoonists folks have been around since the beginning of the Republic since before the beginning of the Republic and a way for us to laugh chuckle at at our circumstance often inflicted upon us by a tyrannical government or other issues of the day. Let me bring on Michael Ramirez. He’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, three times sigma Delta Chi Society of Professional journalism award winner and the editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles. So the Las Vegas review journal, Michael is syndicated by creators syndicate over 400 publications around the world. Mr. Ramirez, welcome back.
Hey, Chris, great to talk to you right back at you. I want to get to your offerings here in a minute but I I’ve got to start with The US government losing an F 35. Fighter. It’s just you know, it’s 80 million $80 million. And.
You know, 70 70 million 250 million depending on which jet it is what it’s equipped with. Yeah, one good thing I can say about that, Chris. At least we proved that it is stealthy. A tough time finding it.
That’s right. It’s so stealthy folks, not even our own government can find it. Yeah. But this thing is, and I would tell them, I was telling the the folks about this, that the F 35 is just packed full of technology. I mean, and some of it works well together. Some of it doesn’t work well together. But gee, it’s the most technologically advanced aircraft we’ve got. But you know, a lot of it doesn’t work. And they don’t even have the transponder, which is the most basic part of the aircraft doesn’t work.
Yeah. You know, it’s amazing, sophisticated that jet is I mean, they keep on getting reports where it is so advanced. Everybody wants this technology, but then they kept keep on crashing. So it’s, it’s amazing the financial burden for each one of these planes. But apparently, they’re just so sophisticated. They can shoot anything out of the sky within 100 mile radius, including itself.
Well, the word DeLorean keeps on springing up and into my head when I think about the F 35. Including, especially considering the F 22. Raptor did meld high performance with great technology and air superiority. And of course, that had to go because it didn’t pad the right pockets. It’s don’t get me started.
You know, the problem with this, Chris is that they keep on wanting all this kid stuff in one strike fighter, and where the Raptor was just a great fighter aircraft. And let’s face it, we’ve got more enemies around the world. China, for instance, China’s Navy right now outnumbers our Navy, and they’re developing more ships. And yet, with all these challenges, our military budget because inflation is actually going down. And the one thing our government is supposed to do is to protect our nation, if we don’t make these kinds of investments in getting aircraft that actually don’t crash. But these frontline fighters, which we have very few, we’re not going to be able to protect our homeland in the best way. You know, I’m a big Reagan guy. I believe that the best defense is a strong offense. Amen. If you can intimidate your opponent, then you don’t have to go to war.
Yep. The idea is to make yourself so strong that nobody wants to go to war. It’s a cost benefit analysis. Yeah, we can go to war of the United States, but it’s going to cost us dearly. You want to make sure your enemy knows they will pay a heavy price. And that’s the best deterrence. Speaking of our enemy, the number one state sponsor of terrorism, Iran. Well, we just concluded a prisoner swap five Iranians presumed terrorists for five American citizens who were kidnapped. And then the Joe Biden regime said, You know what, and we’ve got to free up $6 billion. So the the number one state sponsor of terrorism can can be well funded. Because apparently, apparently, there people are. They have better negotiators over Iran? I don’t know. But what what was your take on this? Because even the press which is, which are Die Hard Democrat fans, even they were asking questions, wait a minute, it was five for five that seemed to be a good swap. Why did you have to Why did you have to give $6 billion to the number one state sponsor of terrorism? What’s your take on this?
Well, Chris, I’m a free market capitalist. And so the going price when American hostage these days is $1.2 billion. The problem that I have with these exchanges that are done and you know, first, let me say I’m glad that these families got their the these hostages back 100 problem. You know, the humanity of it, of course, is obvious. But the long term consequences of doing deals like this, is that you put American travelers, American citizens on the open market. And what it does, it’s a signal to all the bad actors out there to say, look, if you need money, just pick up an American hostage, and we will pay for it. And that is not good for any American that’s traveling abroad. And you know, they say well, they this building is going to be used for humanity for humane humanitarian purposes. So what they do is they shift the money that they’re putting into terrorism to it to other means. And then they take that money, replace it with the money they’re going to use for terrorism and use it for terrorism anyway. And this is, this is a nation that’s on the cost of finding nuclear technology. And the consequences of that are enormous. I mean, it’s a huge domino effect, if you can imagine, you know, the 12 nuclear nations right now. But Iran gets a nuclear bomb, than Saudi Arabia has to have one to compete. And then all the other countries in that area have to have one. So you’re going to double the number of nations with nuclear weapons. And the fiscal, the style material is going to be given to their bad actors that they hire as terrorists. And when you blow up a nuclear weapon in a big city, you end up with a lot of dead people. And who do you point the blame to? Because it’s not those government? Is the agents those governments are sponsoring?
It’s really hard to hold accountable robe terrorist regimes that are financed by by a state sponsor? Absolutely.
Are you willing to pull the genie out of the bottle, the consequences are going to be enormous. But why help this government that we know is the bad actor, and he’s been the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world in any way toward these kinds of malicious goals?
Yeah, I’m with you. And you know what Iran could credibly say that if they were to launch a successful nuclear attack or a successful terrorist attack, and you know, the regime would point to them as being responsible, Hey, you’re the one who gave us all the money for this, you know, Michael Ramirez, a Pulitzer Prize winner, folks. And he is a political cartoonist whose stuff I know that you’ve seen all over the place. Let me just talk to you about one of the political cartoons you put out, because this has the attention of a lot of people. Because Joe Biden’s economy sucks. so badly, inflation is so out of control. Of course, everybody wants more money to be able to, to handle all of the the pricing that government is, so benevolently gifted us. So you have you have depicted a race car, that that is at a pitstop, and they’re trying to put the United Auto Workers demands onto this race car, it’s a massively huge tire, that is not at all going to fit on the car. And that’s pretty much indicative in my mind of of these demands of the UAW 40% increase, they want to work 32 hours to get paid $40 or 40 hours, and they only want to work four days a week.
You know, once again, Chris, I’m a free market capitalist, I think the consumer is very, very smart in finding out what the median pay out to be, what products they want, what is the most efficient. You know, I originally had done a cartoon last week on on the UAW and their initial demand, your initial demands, I think were 46% increase. On top of that, I had read an article in the Wall Street Journal where the the average pay for these guys are about 33 bucks an hour. Some as high as $66. And in our ones are banding about are the initial workers, you know, when you when you get temporary part time job. So I’m not, you know, I think the market should bear with the market to bear. You know, obviously, I’m not a great fan of corporate capital, I mean, crony capitalism. And I think some of these CEOs probably get paid a lot more than they should. But they’re getting paid what the market can bear. And when they’re advancing, there are companies toward these huge game as far as productivity and fail, than they deserve to be compensated in some way. Maybe they’re being over compensated. But what the UAW is basically going to do is they’re this is less investment in their workers and a more of an investment in robotics. You know, if you if you kept the pay at a rate, where you cannot compete with your foreign competitors. This is why we’ve lost so many manufacturing jobs and Right, right, so you’ve got an automation, not because it’s necessarily going overseas. But if you price yourself out of the market, so the your workers are paying twice as much as everybody else, for instance, Tesco workers, get half of what these guys are getting right now.
And what are these union bosses care? You know, the union bosses are there to get more money so they can donate to Democrats so they can have their seat at the table. I mean, if it’s not the United Auto Workers, once they priced themselves out of a job, they’ll move on to some some other industry, you know, these these union bosses, it’s just chew them up, spit them out, and then get your get your, your graft and then just move on. And that’s and that of course leaves workers unemployed, industries shuttered and destroyed. And it’s the Democrat way. And that kind of leads to my next question.
Because they don’t, they don’t have a real sense of economics of how basic economics work. And I did the cartoon where I had the union leader sitting, we demand a 46%, pay raise five days of pay for only four days of work. And then I’ve got one of those sign language interpreters on the side. And she’s translating it. And she’s saying, we want to drive us auto manufacturing overseas, and replace your jobs with robots. It’s perfect. It’s perfect, long term. What’s the long term consequences of these things? What do you want? I think, a 20. year if I got a 20% Raise, or 21% Raise, that’d be a pretty good deal. Yeah. Who was it Thomas Sol, who said about mostly the left, they can go to Step one, but they rarely go to steps two, three and four, about the ramifications of their policies. And that leads, of course, to detrimental outcomes.
You know, that’s the perfect, that’s the perfect book that everybody should read basic economics by Thomas Sol. Yeah, but they understand the fundamentals of economics and how these things work. I mean, it’d be great if we could pull money out of the air. But that’s not the way it works. There consequences of that. And when you look at this administration, and how much debt we’ve accrued, in the last five years, for this, including the Trump administration, as well, in the last five years, the government has spent more money than all the wars and also social programs combined. If you’re getting found, the amount of spending that we have right now is incredible. And you wonder where inflation comes from? Well, that’s where it comes from. Yep. Well, kind of giveaways without consequence.
Michael, the last question I have is political. But it’s, I saw a meme. I want to put a caveat on this. I haven’t verified all the information. But the meme compared what Nancy Pelosi did with a very narrow margin of Democrats. And her last term is speaker, and what Speaker Kevin McCarthy has managed to do in the first eight months of his term as as speaker. And the comparison was that Nancy Pelosi got all this socialism, all this left wing extremism all the stuff passed and done. And all Kevin McCarthy has done as has agreed with Democrats at every inflection point, whether it be debt ceiling or or what have you. So that that that led to this question. Do Democrats know how to wield power and Republican just simply don’t?
You know, I think the biggest problem we have right now is very narrow margin. The Republicans have, I think the unfortunate consequence of this kind of conflict, conspiratorial populism that’s going on out there. The problem with Republicans is they don’t have enough numbers. First things through without being affected by, you know, a small group of the Coalition, in contained within the Constitution. And Nancy was very good at wielding power, unfortunately, is the difference in philosophy. As conservatives, we believe in individual liberty. You know, the Democrats, on the other hand, like to band together on these certain the certain vehicles, and then just push it through without thinking about the outline voice. Republicans today, I think are so disorganized, because they’re looking backwards and forwards, you know, this last election cycle that we had, it should have been a red wave, but it ended up being what I call red tide. Because instead of focusing on Reagan value, you know, and our constitutional Foundation, they’re fighting these kind of conspiratorial battles. And in nobody wants to because we don’t have the numbers when it comes down. It comes down to numbers, right today. There are Republicans constitute about 24% of the electorate. I think independents around 41%, Democrat, there’s 33%. And a third of the Republicans are diehard Trump supporters, which means they constitute about 8% of the vote. Now do the math. You cannot win elections with 8 percent of the vote. Now, I think America right now wants a Reagan conservative revolution. They’ve been ready for the last 12 years. But instead of focusing forward and saying, you know, these are the principles that we want, God Family freedom to led to constitution, adherence to the law, knowing the difference between right and wrong, individual liberty, individual responsibility, less government a strong national defense, low taxes, free market economics, fiscal responsibility being a beacon for freedom in the world to justice in the American way. They’re focusing on this other stuff that basically just just takes our group and Republicans only when when they all show up to vote and divide them up. Here’s the good news. 1980. America was 45% Democrats, 29% independents, and Republicans only constituted 23% of the electorate. But Reagan won, he won 85% of Republicans 27% of Democrats, and 56% of the independents, these independents matter. And the truth does as well, we stick to these conservative policies which work, right. That’s the bottom line. This is where we have the edge. I think these work and progressive policies do not.
Yeah, you said it in the beginning. Because it was because there’s another side to the Trump wing. There is the Mitt Romney wing, the John Cornyn wing of the Republican party that wants to find the nearest butt cheek of the Democrats to firmly place their lips that a Democrat can do no wrong, that that, that the Democrats must be accommodated and appeased. There’s also that wing of the Republican Party. And I think what happens is you’ve got a democrat party, as you pointed out, unified in collectivism, government power, they’re whatever gets them to that goal. They have a unifying principle. There is no unifying principle in the UK, you can’t find me universally something that every Republican opposes, or supports, that just that issue doesn’t exist. And I think that’s the party a party with a problem, don’t you?
Well, it does. Absolutely. That’s because I think we’ve gotten away from looking at supporting the fundamental principles that make conservative you know, people, every time I do at Trump cartoon, they call me a rhino, I admit it, I’m a Republican in name only. I’m not tied to a party, I’m tied to conservative principles, and supporting and defending liberty and the Constitution, and preserving the fabric of America. Those are the things that I think fundamentally, should be all the things Republicans should support a man made the difference between our party and the other party. Exactly. Those are the things that we can win with, because not only Republicans support those issues, but those independents, at least 50% of them are ex Republicans or conservative Democrats, or a constitutionally supporting individual. This is the bottom line, Chris, you have to win. In order to be able to push your your issues and your points of view. It’s great that we have these these things that we support, absolutely. But if you support unelectable candidates, then you do not win. If you do not win, you end up with a large and like we have in the house right now where you can’t get cake get anything done. Instead of focusing on what separates us. There’s much more that unites the Republican Party and they need to focus on those things, because that’s what everybody wants. I were tired.
I think you’re I think you’re right, I would hope that those in so called leadership would be focused on those who are doing the real damage to this country. And that would be the other side, the Marxist, the leftist, the socialists who run counter to Americanism. But I don’t see that commitment. I think that those inside the Republican Party leadership’s see a greater threat in their mind. It’s not true, but it’s a greater threat in their minds to this go along to get along. us versus them government versus the We the People mentality that I just as a conservative, can’t subscribe to Mr. Ramirez. Like I’m running a little longer. I got to cut our conversation there. Michael Ramirez, everybody give give the website where folks can go to catch up with you and what your latest offerings are?
Well, you can always go to Las Vegas review journal.com Or you can go to Michael P. ramirez.com. In the Washington Post, I’m in the post giving the conservative view on Tuesdays every Tuesday.
Amen to that. Great to spend time with you again. And right back at you, my friend. That’s gonna do it, everybody for the Salcedo storm podcast. Do me a favor, visit Texas scorecard.com Texas scorecard.com The big news happening in Texas surrounding the Great Texas heist orchestrated by pro Democrat Republicans to the latest on the special session of Congress. Go there. Also check out Chris saucedo.com That’s where you’ll find me on AM 700k SCV, the voice of Texas and On Newsmax TV, until we visit again my friends remember this a society’s worth is not measured by how much power is stolen by government. It’s measured by how much power is reserved for we the people stay safe out there my friends.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
