Charlie Dent
speaker
80 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Charlie Dent’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
They just haven't been able to speak to the economic anxieties of people to the extent they needed to. Like I said, during the Biden administration, there were two Democrats just did not take inflation seriously enough early on. Oh, they said it was transitory when Larry Summers is out there beating the drum, telling him it's an enormous problem. They just didn't do it.
And then I was one of the folks, too, when During the previous race, when it was going to appear that Biden was going to run and Trump was going to run, and I was saying at the time, you know, close to 70% of the voters think one candidate is too old and the other too dangerous. What part of this aren't the parties hearing? You know, especially the Democrats who...
No, I was encouraging no labels at the time to try to put together a fusion ticket. And it was frankly, it was the Democrats or at least people aligned with the Democrats who went apoplectic. They said they're going to destroy whoever runs and. And I would say to them, well, you know, there were, I think that one group called Third Way was one of the groups leading this.
And I said, well, you ought to call it Two Way because they only wanted two candidates. I said, you can't, on the one hand, argue that democracy is at risk, that we're going to lose it and then do everything you can to undermine candidates from getting on the ballot. You're trying to, you know, we need less democracy in order to save democracy.
They said, you know, if there was a third party candidate there, uh, an independent candidate that that would have elected Trump. And I said, well, one, we don't know that. Uh, and two, um, you got a problem with your candidate and you know, what don't you see in this? And they didn't want to hear it until of course that, that debate where Biden faltered badly.
And then, then everybody reckoned, not every, not immediately, but I wrote an op-ed the morning after said that, you know, Biden needs to go. And I got a lot of hate from a lot of Democrats. So we don't need to hear this, that. And then, you know, three weeks later, he was gone. And everybody kind of came to that position.
My quick view on that, though, was that they weren't looking at states like Texas and Kansas and others where that third party candidate might have harmed Donald Trump significantly. They're only looking at battlegrounds.
You know, I'm sure they have candidates out there. You know, you're hearing about Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer. Certainly Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania would be quite formidable. I know Josh well, you know, good man. I think that those three are certainly probably top of list. You're hearing Wes Moore, of course, in Maryland. They have an interesting group of candidates.
I'm not so sure Newsom would be the right one. A California progressive now. He's trying to center himself a bit. You know, Whitmer, I think, has an interesting profile, though. I know she's gotten dinged up a little bit over that White House meeting.
I think so, too, but... But, you know, I think between Whitmer and Shapiro and Westmore, those are probably the three that jump out at me. There may be some others, but those are the three that are just kind of striking me as who could be inside lane. Of course, now you have to watch that progressive wing. What does AOC do? Does she decide to jump in?
She would be a very formidable primary candidate, probably a disastrous general election candidate, but a formidable primary candidate.
What issue makes me rage? Well, I guess if there's any issue making me rage right now, it is this American disengagement, which takes the form of a few issues. It's the tariffs. I mean, tariffs are a form of disengagement. We are walling ourselves off.
What also makes me rage as part of this disengagement is this total rejection of our friends and allies, the treatment of Zelensky in the Oval Office and abandoning Ukraine by the president in favor of Russia. Now, they'll deny that, but it sure feels that way. I mean, that makes me rage that we've also just unilaterally just eliminated much of our soft power arsenal.
in this country, again, another form of disengagement. That kind of makes me rage. And I feel like that, you know, people, this is all happening, and we're pretending that there are not gonna be any geopolitical or economic implications for us, and there will be.
This is so self-inflicted and so unnecessary, where the United States of America is the greatest, strongest, most powerful nation on Earth, and we're not acting like it. We're acting like we are somehow this aggrieved victim. that has suffered all these past 80 years since the Second World War.
My view has always been we've done pretty damn well over the years, particularly since the Second World War. We created an international order. We led it. And now we're walking away from it, trying to blow it up. And many of the very friends and allies who benefit from it are now trying to figure out a way to restore it as best they can because it's meant so much.
It makes me rage that we've decided that Canada is now a threat and that now there's serious talk of annexation. I mean, this is radical. I mean, when Donald Trump ran, he didn't talk about annexing Canada. I mean, I didn't hear any of this stuff. I mean, it's just, I mean, I just think this is very extreme and it makes me rage.
And what was the other, what makes me- What do you think we need to calm down about? I think we all need to calm, you know, we all talk about our losing our republic. And I've, look, I know there are threats to the constitutional order. I get it. But I still have faith in many institutions and that, you know, we do have a lot of folks.
We have strong civil society groups and the courts that I think will do what they need to do at a time like this. Does that mean they're under threat? Yeah, we're still under threat. But I think we just need to take a deep breath and recognize that we are a lot stronger institutionally than we've given ourselves credit for.
Thank you, Jessica. Great to be with you.
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