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"Trump is a canvas for Americans" - Michael Berry
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Drugs in the White House... Presidential court cases... Geriatric party leaders… Eight hour hunger strikes… And the odd attempted ‘insurrection.’ It’s fair to say that we’ve become desensitised to just how strange American politics has become. To help make sense of the madness, host Will Kingston is joined by Texas’ #1 radio host, the ‘Czar of Talk’, Michael Berry.
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Transcript
Introduction to American Politics
00:00:14
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Australiana from The Spectator Australia. I'm Will Kingston. Consider this. The president is seven years older than the average life expectancy for American men, and it shows. His drug addict son is currently on trial for several crimes, and may well face several more. The overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination is going to court next year.
00:00:35
Speaker
He said he's looking forward to what will be, I quote, the trial of the century. Only yesterday, the 81-year-old Senate minority leader appeared to have a mild stroke mid-press conference, and only a day before that, a Democrat representative was, I kid you not, on the capital steps for an eight-hour hunger and water strike. Move over, Gandhi. I think we've become desensitized to just how bonkers American politics now is.
Michael Berry's Background
00:01:02
Speaker
To help me make sense of it, I'm joined by Texas's most popular radio host, the Tsar of Torque, Michael Berry. Michael, welcome to Australia. Glad to be with you, my man. So, Houston is a heck of a long way away from Australia, so not everyone listening to this podcast will know you or know your background. Can you tell us who are you and what's been the journey that's brought you here? Yeah, simple. I grew up in a little town.
00:01:27
Speaker
Two hours southeast of Houston. My dad worked at a chemical plant. My mom's a stay-at-home mom. My brother went on to be a police officer. I went to college on scholarships. There really is a lot of opportunity in America. People say there's not, but we didn't have money. There was so much opportunity for me to go to school and do whatever I wanted. Went to law school from there. Went to England and did another law degree. Came back, practiced law at a big law firm.
00:01:53
Speaker
I opened a real estate company, did some development brokerage. Then I ran for office, got elected, loved it. And I got into media because I was doing a lot of interviews and I found that I love what we do. This was before podcasts. You had to be on a radio station, which I still am. And now, you know, 30 radio stations, but I just loved it. I loved talking about the affairs of the day.
00:02:15
Speaker
You know, I read history. I'd been traveling. I love culture and politics and these sorts of things and history. And it was an opportunity doing what we do. You get to talk about whatever's on your mind. You get to entertain. You get to engage. So that's how I ended up here.
America's Historical Shifts
00:02:32
Speaker
Well, you mentioned history. America's got a very complicated relationship with its past. How do you feel about the way that America is grappling with some of the problems in its history? I don't know a nation that doesn't have a problem with their history. I don't think we're grappling with anything. I think what we're trying to do is appease people who are trying to personally benefit from something that may have happened in
00:03:00
Speaker
My wife is from India and my two sons are from Africa. And we sort of laugh at the family dinner table. My boys say, you know, black people in America claim they're African-American. They've never been to Africa. We're truly African-American. We were born in Africa. We lived in Africa. And we have a lot of friends who are African, particularly a lot of Ethiopians. And we host Ethiopian event dinners at our home.
00:03:26
Speaker
And one of the things that invariably will come up is about African immigrants who come to the United States and they're working in a workplace. And the blacks who grew up in this country will say, hey, you know, we're going to, we're going to sign a letter that says we hate the boss. And these people will say, well, I'm not, I don't hate the boss. I've been given a great opportunity. And you say, see, you're just a sellout. You know, you think you're better than us. You're not down for the cause. And they say, wait a second.
00:03:53
Speaker
I'm from Africa. I'm from one of the poorest nations on earth. And I'm not coming here mad at people. Why are you so mad at people? Truthfully, I think it's unfortunate. I think it's unfortunate that we talk about America's history from at the most recent 170 years ago, instead of talking about America's future, instead of talking about America's opportunity. We don't celebrate in this country scientists and businessmen. We don't celebrate leaders and innovators
00:04:21
Speaker
great teachers. And we celebrate in this country people who are victims and people who can scream the victim mentality the loudest and the longest. That's who we pay. That's who we compensate. That's who we reward. That's who we build monuments to. And so the idea of valor and courage and ingenuity and all of these, they're dying. They're in deep decline. And when that happens, that is a civilization in decline.
Impact of Identity Politics
00:04:47
Speaker
And unfortunately, I fear that's where we're headed.
00:04:49
Speaker
That hasn't always been the case, though. America is built on great men and women, and it's championed all of those virtues that you just mentioned. How have we come to a point where victimhood is not just tolerated, but it is valorized? There is a goodness to Western civilization.
00:05:08
Speaker
sort of a white man's burden, as Rudyard Kipling wrote. And then my life being from India, I've spent a lot of time studying the British experience in India. So let's take a moment and do that. And when you consider the fact that Indian independence was achieved almost exclusively, non-violently, you know, Gandhi, and you mentioned
00:05:29
Speaker
Gandhi's approach only worked because the British were such good and decent honorable people. Was there cruelty? Absolutely. Were Indians repressed to some extent? Yes, absolutely. But the rails were built, the schools were built, the culture was built, and India is thriving today as a result. And the English language that was left behind, I think there is definitely something to be said for that. But there is an idea in America
00:05:59
Speaker
that we're going to help people. And those are non-white people. Those are non-Christian people. Those are non-American people. And some people see in that kindness a weakness and a weakness to be exploited. Well, if you'll help me out a little because you think I'm a little bit poor, what if I tell you I'm way poorer than you thought? Well, you'll give me more.
00:06:23
Speaker
If I tell you that it's been hard for me because I'm black to do well in school, what if I tell you that you're a slave owner and I should be moved to the top of the... So I think that these things sort of, the pendulum swings. And so there is this desire to make right all the wrongs of history in a way that you forget. Well, what about the kid whose spot you took on the team in the school at the job workplace because you were so determined to elevate this? It's a zero sum game.
00:06:52
Speaker
Now you're creating new problems with this kid over here. So it's out of an abundance of goodness to make historical wrongs right that is abused, frankly.
Political Pendulum Swings
00:07:02
Speaker
You mentioned that the pendulum of history swings, and it brings me to the question, will the pendulum swing back to some kind of sanity or will this movement of identity politics and woke ideology that is now embedding its claws into America's institutions, will that just keep getting worse and worse?
00:07:19
Speaker
Well, my kids complain about the Houston heat. And they say, dad, is there anything to global warming? And I say, yes, we have global warming. And then we have global cooling. In the 1970s, there were predictions of an ice age by the same people who were getting rich today predicting global warming. Yes, I think the question is not whether the pendulum swings in the other direction.
00:07:41
Speaker
It's a question of when. During the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes, there were conversations about, you know, well, in the long run, this will happen. And Keynes' response was, he wanted immediate action. He said, in the long run, we're all dead. So it's not a question of whether the pendulum swings. It's a question of how long that takes.
00:08:00
Speaker
You're a student of history. I'm a student of history. You can go back to the fight of the Moors into Spain. You can go back to the Crusades. You can study Kubla Khan and Marco Polo. I mean, if you study history, you learn that there are these very long swings of pendula. You look at the Chinese civilization, they've been up, they've been down, now they're back up.
Working-Class Shift in Politics
00:08:24
Speaker
You look at the Vedic people that are now Indians. You look at Catherine the Great or Alexander the Great or the Russian people. They've been up, they've been down. So I think when you take the long view, you say law worked itself out. We just may be pushing up roses.
00:08:41
Speaker
Well, arguably the biggest swing in at least in American politics over the last 30 years has been almost the complete inversion of support for the major parties. So the wealthy coastal elites may once have been proud Republicans and now they're rapidly Democrat and similarly the working classes swung behind Trump. It's mind bending how this has happened in a relatively short historical period. How has that inversion taken place?
00:09:07
Speaker
I don't know if it's an immersion or an inversion because what you've seen now, my dad was a lifelong Democrat, a Yellow Dog Democrat, he was a labor worker, he was a maintenance worker at DuPont Chemical. And he was very much a Democrat because the Democrat Party was the party of the working man in his mind. And the Republican Party was the party of the rich people. And so as a working man, you needed politicians who understood the struggle.
00:09:35
Speaker
of the guy that's putting in long hours and wants a shorter work week and wants some job protections and wants social security for when he gets older and wants educational opportunity for his children and wants security in the streets and in the community. And then there was sort of an inversion. So a lot of
00:09:54
Speaker
the Democrats of the 50s and 60s are now Republicans. And a lot of what would have been some form of Republican in those days are now Democrat. Well, that's a more complicated question. And I really think that what you see is where we started our conversation, which is race relations. As the Democrats went from being the white man's party against the black man's incursion, particularly black working man into the white working man's incursion,
00:10:23
Speaker
into their lives as they perceived it, you had the Democrat Party saying, you know what, if we open this up and can get blacks to vote Democrat, which Lyndon Johnson eventually was able to do, famously saying that what I've just done with the great society will make the N-words vote Democrat for the next 100 years. Wasn't a man who loved blacks, although they tell you he did.
00:10:44
Speaker
In that process, what we started doing is elevating race above merit, and a lot of the working class Democrats moved into the Republican Party slowly but surely. And frankly, that had been going on through the 60s and 70s. Reagan managed to capture that in 1980. Do you know what Reagan's slogan was? Interesting fact. Nobody remembers this. Make America great again. Ah, yes.
00:11:09
Speaker
It was the Old World Haggard song, you know, I wish a Coke was still a cola and a joint was a bad place to be. This was sort of middle class, working class, you know, environment and values that Reagan had managed to tap into. Well, now Trump was tapping into that some, you know, 36 years later. It's a very similar coalition.
00:11:30
Speaker
working class southern whites voting Republican. Trump could have run as a Democrat or Republican, just like Dwight Eisenhower, just like Ronald Reagan, I think, and won. But this phenomenon of this white working class voter, white veteran, white law enforcement, white small business owner, and his movement across the parties over the period of about 60 years is the story of American politics during this period.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's
Trump's Political Influence
00:11:58
Speaker
fascinating. You've mentioned Trump. We were always going to get to Trump. No one's cracked how to beat him, in my opinion. I think he beat himself in 2020. In the Republican primaries, he just seems to swallow other candidates alive and conscious early days. But the same thing may be happening all over again. Let's say you're Ron DeSantis, for example. How do you beat Donald Trump?
00:12:19
Speaker
So I was an elected official years ago, and I've been involved with campaigns behind the scenes, helping candidates develop their message, tell their story, present themselves, win over voters, organize their supporters to get out to the polls. And so I like to think I have more experience than most people in doing this. I was very involved with Ted Cruz from his first Senate campaign all the way through 2016 in the presidential election. And we were up against Trump.
00:12:46
Speaker
And Trump is in the purest sense, the word is juggernaut. I have never in my lifetime, and I've studied American politics back to George Washington. I've never seen a phenomenon that rivals Donald Trump. Not even close. You know, they told you that Barack Obama could draw these big crowds, Will. Nothing like this. Barack Obama showed up at the Brandenburg Gate where there were already a hundred thousand people gathered.
00:13:15
Speaker
And they put him up on stage and he spoke and they said, a hundred thousand people came in. It wasn't true. I was not a Trump fan. I watched the Trump phenomenon. And then I spent seven years, really eight, because 15 was where he started to rise, really beginning to understand what drove it. And, uh, you know, you and I talked about the interview I had with Buck Sexton and I made the statement in there and I heard from a lot of people about that. I said, Trump is more than one man. Trump is a phenomenon.
00:13:44
Speaker
that just his name is attached to, the same way his name is attached to a hotel, but you're not staying in a hotel, it's just his name. Well, Trump is a canvas upon which many Americans thrust our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our insecurities, our optimism, our patriotism. So Trump becomes so much bigger.
00:14:06
Speaker
And people who get angry at Trump over a particular policy, why didn't he fire Fauci? Good question. Why did he do this? Why did he do this? Why didn't he fire Christopher Wray? Why did he bring in Jefferson? You can't beat Trump on policy issues because people who love Trump, who truly love Trump, they don't care about policy issues.
00:14:29
Speaker
Trump stands for something that is bigger than that. And he has reached a point where being a Trump supporter is part of your identity. You see it on Twitter, it's an easy way to say it, but you see it on shirts, you see it on caps. Make America Great Again is not so much a statement of, I wish to make my country wonderful again. It is a statement that I'm part of team Trump. I'm a Macadonian. I'm part of this. So Trump really represents
00:14:59
Speaker
people, the way a child would say, you know, would wear a Superman cape. It's not about Clark Kent. It's not about that character. It is, I am imbuing myself with the things I like most about him. And that is what Trump has become. I don't see a road for, I don't see a lane for DeSantis. You know, DeSantis sort of
00:15:20
Speaker
first came out as you know I'm this governor of Florida and look at this great record I've had in Florida of all the successes and people said huh he has and he has he took on Disney took on woke he took on the schools he took on Black Lives Matter he he did all these things and that mattered for about 10 minutes until he said oh and I'm running against Donald Trump whoa it doesn't matter what you've done so
00:15:45
Speaker
Trump, we're not going to let you. And it went from best governor in the country to the most sellout, Rhino, awful human
Trump's Election Prospects
00:15:53
Speaker
being. That is a phenomenon, the likes of which we've never seen and anywhere close Reagan wasn't in that realm. And, and so. What I'm hearing from that is no Republican challenger could possibly beat Donald Trump. There's nobody alive. I've run in my mind who it can be.
00:16:13
Speaker
You know, Chris Christie, this just bloated, bloviating bastard who I can't stand. He hated Trump, ran against him. Trump dismissed him, made a fool of him. And then he gets right under Trump's armpit and hopes that he'll be the attorney general. Actually, he was going to be the vice president, then the attorney general. It doesn't happen. And now he hates Trump again and he spends his whole life criticizing him. Mike Pence, who was his vice president. Mike Pence.
00:16:36
Speaker
The idea that Mike Pence could ever be president. He's running for president. It's just a joke. He has no support. Or it's the Hutchinson or any of these guys. None of them has even the slightest chance, right? And it's all for the same reasons. They don't have a base. They don't have a group of people who believe in what they stand for. They're having to tell you what they stand for. Trump has this body of work.
00:17:01
Speaker
that is so much bigger than any words he expresses. Every time they indict him, he goes up in the polls. You'll never see that happen again. Every time there's a supposed scandal, he becomes more popular. He becomes what the media is out to get, therefore will support him. He becomes what the liberal Democrats in the Department of Justice and the FBI, they're trying to bring him down, he goes up in the polls.
00:17:26
Speaker
It defies all logic. It's an amazing thing to see. I'm 52. I think when I'm 82, and he's long gone, I'll be talking about the Trump phenomenon. And at least then, with some perspective of time, we'll be talking about something that we cannot believe happened.
00:17:42
Speaker
I love that concept of him being that canvas that people project onto. And obviously there are aspirations that are projected onto him and there's also a great deal of hatred. And for that reason, the narrative in America at the moment seems to be, well, he'll run away with the Republican primary, but he can't win a general election.
American Division and Character
00:17:59
Speaker
Do you buy into that? They said that in 16. I said it in 16. I believed it in 16. And so, you know, like any country, just like Australia, you've got people
00:18:11
Speaker
You don't have the presidential process we do so that everybody has to vote for that one person. But if you think about, you've got Republicans over here, you've got Democrats over here, and everybody thinks that's what our nation consists of. But it's not. It's really partisan hacks, and then they have branches. Some of these people over here on the Republican side don't even like Trump. And then you've got the Democrat side, and some of them don't like Joe Biden. And then you've got this vast mass of people, right? Just like swing states in our electoral process.
00:18:40
Speaker
You got this vast mass of people in the middle. And the question is, where do they break? Who do they go for? And nobody believed they'd go for Trump. But what the media and the Democrats and the insiders and the influencers did not understand is the sense of uncertainty and uneasiness. We don't trust our media any longer. We don't trust our schools any longer. We don't trust our FBI or Department of Justice. We're frustrated by our military having grown men run around as women in bikinis and say, now I feel happy.
00:19:11
Speaker
And that level of discontent, Trump became a guy, everybody understood that voting for Trump was burning down DC. Most people didn't understand is how many people wanted to burn down DC. And so they brought in a hatchet man because they wanted this thing chopped to the ground, right? If your favorite soccer team in Australia hasn't won a match in three years and you go, well, we could bring in this coach, but if we bring in this coach, he's going to fire the whole team. Yeah. Bring in that coach. Cause I think we need to fire the whole team.
00:19:39
Speaker
Well, extending on the analogy, the coach was sacked. He didn't perform. And then the team has had regrets and they want him back. I guess what I'm saying is he didn't end up draining the swamp last time. So how is he managing to play that same card again? It's a great question. You know, part of that is threading the needle in a way that Trump does. And part of that is really a statement not about Trump. It's the depth.
00:20:08
Speaker
of the core of the Trump supporter. And that's where terms like cult are used. And, you know, the DeSantis folks, they go after the Trump voters and they say, you know, vote for DeSantis, not Trump. DeSantis is better and Trump can't win.
00:20:24
Speaker
And the Trump supporter says, screw you, I'm staying with Trump. And they go, ah, you're just in a cult. The moment you're telling people that you want to vote for you, that they're in a cult, you're losing, right? You're never going to get their vote. Now you've written off their vote and you're just insulting them. That's not a good strategy. And that's what the DeSantis votes are trying. When you begin to understand, and this is not a criticism, this is an observation. When you begin to understand the depth of the Trump support, you realize
00:20:52
Speaker
He can do no wrong. And part of that is because he earned his stripes. I mean, you know, he pulled us out of the French Accords, which were horrible. He took on the media. I've been to Trump rallies where they put the media out in front of him at some distance and they put him up on a riser. And somewhere along the way, he looks out at the crowd and he points to the media and he says, ah, look at them. They're going to say horrible things about me.
00:21:18
Speaker
And the crowd turns and boos. You wonder, you know, are they going to rip the media down from the riser and shred them to pieces? No, they're not Democrats. But you do start to wonder, you know, how does he get away with this? And the media needs him. And when you understand that and when you understand that he understands that.
00:21:35
Speaker
It's this incredible phenomenon. It's really been interesting to watch. I'm fascinated because it says a lot about the American people. Alexis de Tocqueville came to the US, I think it was 1836 or so, maybe it was 1824. But anyway, it's about that era, somewhere in there. And he went through the American countryside and he wrote about American democracy. And he wrote things 200 years ago that are still true about our character as people. I mean, look, the Australians have a character
00:22:05
Speaker
of, as a people, there are things you know about them as people, right? Americans are just the same way. The English are just the same way. And when you understand the character of the Trump supporter, then all of this begins to make sense. But it's not easy to understand because it's unlike anything we've ever seen before. That's what makes it so fascinating.
00:22:26
Speaker
That's really interesting that you say there is still an American character. It's a cliche now to say how divided America is as a country. Are there common threads in that American character today that bind together New York, California, and then everything in the middle? With some of the people, but most of them, no. I mean, look, I told you a little bit about my family at dinner every night.
00:22:50
Speaker
and we talk about we're gonna have the next night so my wife can cook it. And one kid wants pizza and one kid wants hamburgers and I want pork chops and she wants vegetarian. We are divided, but at some point we will sit down and eat together, right? So we do coexist as people. You know, there's this idea of it's America united or divided and we all need to be united. There's a very naive notion that a lot of people in this country have. And I just want us to be united. Well, let me ask you this.
00:23:19
Speaker
If somebody says, I believe that children at six years old, a little boy at six who says, I'm a girl, not a boy. I've come to this conclusion because my teacher was talking about it. I would like to have my wiener cut off and three of my classmates have had their wiener cut off. And so, um, I would like to have this happen. And the teacher says, I'm for it. And the.
00:23:42
Speaker
School counselor says, I'm for it. And there's a doctor that says, I'm for it. And the mom says, I'm not for it. Should that still happen against the wishes of the parent? The polls will tell you that some number of people believe that the teacher should be able to help the child get his wiener cut off. That's irreparable, irreversible. That can never change. If you believe that's the case,
00:24:06
Speaker
I can't unite with you, right? If you believe that an adult can have sex with a 12-year-old child and that that child can consent to that sex, I can't ever find common ground with you, right? We have an immigrant community that is large, just as you do, who come to this country and continue to feel fealty and loyalty to the country from which they came. Some of those individuals, Ilhan Omar,
00:24:36
Speaker
have risen up in our government and they'll tell you that America is a trash country and the country they came from is great. I can't find common ground with that any more than I can find common ground with a Somali. I don't have to kill them or they kill me. But if you come to this country and you claim this is a terrible country, the country you came from is great, but why did you leave? We can't find common ground. So I think you exist, but you don't unify. Yeah, that's a really good point.
RFK Jr.'s Democratic Challenges
00:25:01
Speaker
I want to turn to the other side of the House, the Democrats. What do you think of RFK Junior?
00:25:06
Speaker
He's an interesting guy. Look, 60 years after John F. Kennedy's assassination, he still, the specter of the Kennedy name, my mother who's 80, sorry, my mother's 78, my dad's 83. My mother can tell you where she was, what class, Coach Anderson's class at West Orange Stark High School, history, third period, whatever the period was, fifth period, when she got the news, they came over the loudspeaker.
00:25:36
Speaker
That Kennedy name and Camelot and all that, it's a myth. It wasn't reality. I mean, the guy's screwing around with every woman he can get a hold of, and there's a lot more to that. I actually don't think he was a bad president. He certainly wasn't a modern day liberal Democrat. He was a much more conservative Democrat. RFK, I don't think was ever going to be his father, was ever going to be his brother. I don't think he was ever going to be the popular figure, his brother. He didn't have the skillset that his brother did.
00:26:02
Speaker
But all that being said, that Kennedy name is still very powerful. And that is first and foremost, the allure of Robert F. Kennedy. And he looks like a Kennedy. He's got the jaw, he's got the rugged good looks, he's got the, he's sun kissed, he's, you know, he has a spasm in his throat. I don't know if you've heard him speak. I was at the town hall where he spoke with Hannity the other day. Okay, yeah. So you, I'm sure you noticed it. It's, it's, it's distracting and it takes a while to get past it, right? There's a certain shock factor.
00:26:32
Speaker
And it's unfortunate because he has this terrible neurological condition, which makes him not a good speaker. But once you get past that and you stop wishing he'd clear his throat and speak better, and you listen to the content of what he says, he's the best Democrat out there. I mean, for pure content.
Australia's COVID Response
00:26:47
Speaker
Now, I get frustrated at Republicans who want him to be Donald Trump's running mate because he gets 23% of the vote. And a lot of those are independents. His position on gun control and a lot of my core issues are just wrong.
00:27:01
Speaker
But what I love about the guy, and this I do like, is he is a believer in conversation and in disagreement and in facts.
00:27:09
Speaker
I share his absolute cynicism of the Covidians and their fake science and their lockdowns and their authoritarian state, which by the way, when all that was, I've been meaning to ask you this, Will, when all that was going on, I was getting reports on Australia and I'm thinking, if Australia is a harbinger of what's going to happen in the United States, this is very disturbing.
00:27:32
Speaker
Because i think of australia as a freedom loving people that welcome immigrants but won't tolerate nonsense you know a shared political tradition i think about you know rugged out australia is more like texas than it is even england and i'm watching these lockdowns how in the hell did that happen i just turned the interview on you but how the hell did that happen.
00:27:53
Speaker
Yeah, COVID was the moment in Australia's history where we realized that the brand of Australia actually was very different to potentially who we are as a people today. And it was really shocking. I think it showed this instinct that Australians maybe aren't that carefree, irreverent, larrikin nation that you were led to believe they are watching Paul Hogan. And they're actually very comfortable with this. Do I need to look that up?
00:28:19
Speaker
Larrican is a very uniquely Australian word. It means a cheeky bugger, basically. It means suspicious of L-A-R-R-I-K-I-N. Hey, boys. Often badly behaved young man, James was something of a Larrican. Like a maverick. Oh, my goodness. I'm going to use this. This is great.
00:28:40
Speaker
Larrick is a great word. It would be the Australian equivalent of maverick. So I think what it revealed was, and I've heard you talk about this before in some parts of America as well, I think a lot of people now are very comfortable being told what to do. I think a lot of people are very comfortable having their freedoms taken away. And given for a lot of the 20th century, many people died for those freedoms. It's a really troubling, sad element of, I think, the Australian character now, but I think you could apply it to most countries.
Conversation Wrap-Up
00:29:10
Speaker
So it's a real, real shame. Did it surprise you? What happened surprised you or did it just surprise the outside world? I think the severity of it surprised me. So for example, if you live in Sydney and you try to get a beer after 10 o'clock, it's incredibly difficult. If you try to get into a bar and you've had one beer, you call the drunk and you're not allowed in.
00:29:32
Speaker
you're not wearing a helmet when you're riding a bike, you will be locked up. It's a very authoritarian moment in this country. It didn't surprise me, but I think this was the culmination of a trend that's been probably playing out for the last 20 to 30 years in Australia. What's interesting about that, and look, as you mentioned Crocodile Dundee, that had such an effect. The outback
00:29:57
Speaker
The image of Australia, particularly in the United States, Texans particularly, we sort of gravitate to the Australian people and the Australian mindset and these rugged people and these, you know, this barren land and they're tough. And then when you study their history and, you know, these are really the toughest people leaving England and, you know, off to, and there's kind of an outlaw, but in a charming way. And then you see this and, you know, it went from kind of these,
00:30:27
Speaker
is sort of Ruby Ridge folks. It went from kind of isolationist, rugged outdoorsman to what we would expect as a New York City resident wanting big government to solve our problems. That was a shock to me. That was a disappointment, but an absolute shock to me.
00:30:46
Speaker
I'm going to round out the conversation there. We're at time, Michael, because I think that is a really powerful message to leave Australia on, that what happened during COVID really did have an effect, and I think it's something we need to think about very carefully as a country. Michael's show is a great way to stay abreast of what's happening in American politics. If you follow the Michael Berry show on your podcast app, listen to his full daily shows, as well as these short bite-sized summaries of the breaking news of the day, which I absolutely love. Michael, big fan of what you do. Thank you very much for coming on, Australiana.
00:31:14
Speaker
Thanks for letting me talk. I appreciate it. Wow. Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Australiana. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review. And if you really enjoyed the show, head to spectator.com.au forward slash join. Sign up for a digital subscription today and you'll get your first month absolutely free.