Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.

Grab a stool next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America and Jim Garritty of National Review.

Free Martini's coming up.

Hey, so glad you're with us for the Tuesday edition of the Three mar Tiny Lunch.

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And Jim today is technically good, bad, crazy, it's also all crazy in a number of ways.

And for a person we never heard of a week ago, Afton Baine is about to complete the hat trick, and things just get more insane as time goes on.

So I don't know what we're going to get from her by the time next Tuesday rolls around, but I'm a little bit afraid to think how much you could even escalate after what we know so far.

Listeners, you should know Greg and I have a fairly high standard to talk about the same figure two days in a row, unless it's the President or somebody who's you know in the news all the time.

Aften being a candidate and a special election for Congress down Tennessee ordinarily would not be important enough to talk about three days in a row.

But man, you know, we'll talk.

We'll talk more about her in a few moments.

But yeah, this may well become the Afton Baine Memorial Crazy Martini by the end of the year, strong contender for the End of the Year awards right now, putting in a you know, just just just a late season surge on her part.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, just a photo finish here with a lot of other crazy stuff for the year.

But let's start with our first martini.

We're calling it a good but also a decent amount of crazy, and let's head over to the town hall version of the story.

But there was a lot of this over the weekend.

Man, a lot of stuff happened over the weekend, which isn't usually the case.

But Elon Musk decided that on X that they were going to try this new feature that revealed the country of origin for every user account.

And from what I understand, this has been suspended, but I could be wrong about that.

And the reason it's been suspended as everybody's freaking out because the accounts that they purport to be in the Middle East or they purport to be in the United States.

Turns out not to be true.

There's really two types of frauds being exposed here, Jim.

One is people claiming to be America first and hugely promaga.

Turns out there not in the country.

Townhall reports.

For example, an account called at seventeen seventy six General Underscore, which describes the owner as a quote constitutionalist, patriot and ethnically American unquote, with more than one hundred and forty thousand followers, is based in Turkey.

The owner posted that they work in international business and are currently in Turkey, although that claim is unverifiable.

Another account called at American Voice had over two hundred thousand followers, but was found to be based in South Asia.

That owner simply deleted their account.

Other accounts that have claimed to be journalists reporting on the war in Gaza were found to be misleading as well, with accounts claiming to be those of Gaza based journalists being based countries like Poland, Egypt, or East Asia and the Pacific.

And so you know, some people are quibbling that location means that's where you are at this very second, where that account is based.

Others are saying, no, that's not necessarily the case.

And so Jim I think the main takeaway is here, don't put a lot of stock in people who don't use their real names, and people you don't know actually exist and things like that.

But it's fascinating what just a little bit of exposure here on X did.

Yeah, I mean this is a good martini in that people who are news consumer consumers deserve the full picture, deserve to know as much as possible about the person who are coming up in their feeds.

It is still available.

It's on the profile of person.

When you go to the person and the date that they joined, you can twitter back what it was then now called X.

You can click on it and will tell you where account based in.

Now if you look on right now, it'll have a little star, a little shield with an exclamation point.

I use the VPN, and that is you know, but my VPN is based in the United State, you know, currently based the United States.

But you know what, if I want to throw off the Russians or somebody else, I could put it in any country that I like.

That's a nice thing about having a VPN.

Right now, Greg, I am certain that there are lots of young men in Albanian villages that are raising money to buy a VPN so they can put their their location in the United States as possible.

This is, this is fascinating.

Now here's the thing.

You're right.

It has not been anybody whose account is a first name and a last name and you know their face and you've seen them out there.

And by the way, I probably have the person who should not criticize Americans in Turkey we're commenting on American politics because I did that for two years, because I was very open about the fact that I was living over in Turkey back then.

Just as guys, if a really hot woman DMS you out of the blue and says, I've been so impressed with your feed, let me show you my body or whatever, that's not a real woman.

It's some guy in Bangladesh, or it's some guy who's you know.

But I do think that there are some like, you know, eye opening factors about this.

One is there's nothing wrong with fooling somebody who's like, you know, Maga Patriot Warrior twenty twenty four or whatever that you know, But like, if they don't have a first name and last name and they don't ever put any pictures of themselves up on that, then you probably should that.

Okay, I don't know if this person is genuinely an American and if the basically what Twitter and X has done paying people for tweets is perfectly fine, I signed up for that program.

I may probably like, you know, maybe one hundred bucks every two weeks.

It's it's not tons of money, but in Bangladesh, that's a lot of money.

In Pakistan, that's a good living.

So like, if you are a you know, young per if you're at any age in any of these foreign countries, having a Twitter account in which you can put out stuff from Trump is the best.

Trump is the worst.

Sometimes it's Jews are the root of America's problems.

Those are the accounts that tend to turn out to be in places like Turkey or Egypt or all over the Middle East.

But I think if you're if you're X right now, you're having a meeting and you're saying, we have created a system which we incentivized foreigners to pretend to be Americans, to post the most divisive and anger generating messages possible.

Is that really what we wanted this platform to be?

Is this what we really set out to do with this?

And I think it's you know, fair to what I think the argument that this information about where your you know, your your electronic signal is coming from should be on your profile page seems to make a lot of sense to me.

I would certainly not mind that.

And then the other question is, you know, should you be able to block people by an entire country and could you say, you know what, I just you know, unless Pakistan is in the news, I don't want to hear from anybody from Pakistan and their thoughts on, you know, on American politics.

That seems really reasonable to me, that that seems like the sort of thing.

And the fact that a good portion of these folks are MAGA or pretending to be MAGA, I think if you're the Maga movement, maybe you need to look in the mirror a little bit and say, why was I so convinced that these people with AI generated avatars?

And you know, why did I Why was I so eager to believe that this person was really that.

By the way, there are also cases on the left side where people who claim to be Palestinians and who are in Gaza and I am suffering and my fourteen children.

There was somebody who said, my I and my children are freezing tonight, and somebody pointed out that, like the low in the Gaza Strip at that time was like seventy degrees, So it's really like, you know, I know they're used to warmer temperatures out there, but it's really tough.

The other thing is, I remember this is a and by the way, this is I was telling this to missus Garrity last night, and I got to genuinely invoke Diehard.

I got to genuinely invoke the German infiltration unit and die Hard with the vengeance who says, man, it feels like it's going to rain like dogs and cats out there.

Like when somebody says something and it doesn't quite sound right.

There was somebody, I think it was Iowahak or somebody pointed out that there was someone who was saying that they were a Texan.

They were a true cowboy.

They'd been their their whole lives, and they raise cows, their cattle.

Cows are for dairy, cattle is for steak and be and so the question is like, if you'd spend your whole life as a you know, you know, would you call it cows in Texan?

That just didn't seem right.

So keep your eyes open for when somebody who you've been following says wording and it doesn't quite seem right, or the spelling is the British one or something like that.

There are lots of little signals like this, and I just, you know, I think it's entirely reasonable for Americans to say I believe that American political decisions should be shaped by Americans.

And it's very interesting that we were told that there was this foreign influence operation in twenty sixteen, which there was.

I don't think it was particularly influential in the twenty sixteen election.

I don't think a bunch of Facebook ads done by Russian trolls had that much influence over it.

But here's one in which is clearly the whole world has gotten in on this, and we as America, maybe maybe we shouldn't take so much of our political perspectives from social media, right, Maybe you know, maybe you should do it from reliable sources like podcasts with two guys who are genuinely in Virginia, yes, and sites like National Review and places like Radio America, places like that exactly.

But people love to hear their own thoughts coming from other people's mouths, and so they get excited about these things.

But you know, there's plenty of maga people you know, are real.

Follow them if you want to know what the maga people are doing in the administration, their allies and the media you.

See on camera therese you've seen at events that like that doesn't see you know, like, yeah, I don't always agree with all of them, but they're real.

Flesh is blod you.

We really should not turn into that woman on the plane.

Who should?

That person is not real, you know.

Unfortunately, unfortunately it's all too true.

By the way.

You know, of course that if anyone says it's really raining dogs and cats out there, your immediate response is to ask what last night's lottery numbers are and.

Also shoot them, and also shoot you hear somebody using that phrase, they're probably a German infiltration unit.

You should shoot them just as.

A precaution, yes, So just be ready for that in case it happiness.

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All right, Jim, Well, we had already talked about who was at the time.

It may still be the leading Democrat for governor of California.

A few weeks ago Katie Porter, who just decided she didn't want to do any more interview.

I'm not doing the same I'm out of here.

Exactly, and so then all the stories came about how she beats staffers and dump scalding mashed potatoes on her now ex husband's head.

Since then, we've gotten some more real winners in the race, and it's almost like a mini reunion of the twenty twenty presidential race.

Tom steyers in the race now, and so is Eric Swalwell.

You'd think basically sleeping with a with a Chinese spy would disqualify you even in California, but no, Polymarket thinks he's probably the favorite for the Democratic nomination, but time will tell.

Meanwhile, he was on CNN with reporter Alex Michaelson talking about a lot of terrible ideas and some ideas which he thinks are innovative and have already been done a long time ago.

But here's Eric Swalwell's prescription for improving things out there in California.

I want us to be able to vote by phone.

I mean every California vote by phone.

Yeah.

If we can do our taxes, do you know, our make our healthcare appointments, you know, make essentially your do your banking online.

You should be able to vote by phone.

Make it safe, make it secure.

But it's actually already happening all over the United States.

I want us to be a blue state that doesn't do just a little bit better than like Georgia or Alabama when it comes to like voting access.

I want us to max out democracy.

Also as it relates to democracy.

If can you wait in line for thirty minutes or more, if you do want to vote in person, I think you should find every county for every minute that a person has to wait longer.

We have to be better, not just a little bit better than the other states.

The DMV.

I don't think Californians should have to go in person to the DMV anymore.

I think we can do that virtually.

I think you you can have the DMV employees do it virtually.

But that's a lot of real estate.

Is that the most popular position?

Digitize the DMV.

Yeah, we can modernize the state.

And I look forward to, you know, bringing these ideas to Californians.

I don't know where Eric Swawall has been, but you can do most stuff virtually at the DMV.

Some stuff you still have to show up in person for.

But Jim voting by Phoney says this is happening all over the United States.

It's not happening anywhere in the United States because nobody wants to do that.

And then this whole idea of finding counties if you're in line longer than thirty minutes is also insane.

So good to see Eric Swawell starting nowhere near the world of rationality California.

I was hoping for better for you.

It's not looking good here.

Tom Steyer, I will recognize this guy wants the job badly.

Greg tom Styer, who people may remember for being a presidential candidate.

This was the so I know it was a really crowded debate stage last time around in twenty twenty, this was the really short guy.

But the thing is that the way you can tell he really really wants it, he took off the plaid tie.

And my understanding is that Tom Styr had worn that plaid tie for something like forty years, you know, even in the shower, that he just never took it off, and now he's taking because it's California, it's you know, it's casual, it's Silicon Valley out there, so he's taken it off.

By the way, I know you said that Swallwell slept with a Chinese spy, Greg, the proper term is penetrating Chinese intelligence.

Swawoll he was another presidential candidate in twenty twenty.

I know he was in the race for like twenty minutes and people may not remember, but like this was the guy where you're like, out of this entire field, out of all of these you know, Corey Bookers and Kirsten Jill Brands, where Democrats were like really and you know who never got barely got above three percent, Swallwell was the one where like even build a Blasi is like, who is this guy and what is he doing on this stage?

Right?

Like I don't, like, I believe that running for president is really hard and that you really should only run for president if you are a serious person ready to take on a job with such enormous responsibilities, including writing letters of condolence to members of the armed services who will probably die on your watch at some point.

Like if you're like, it's this is not a fun job.

This is not about you know, being popular and hearing hale to the chief when your name, you know, you should be a serious person.

And I don't really think of Eric Swalwell as a serious person.

And I think that when you are a lesser known congressman, I'm sorry, that's not significant executive experience.

You should be a really accomplished person before you even think about running for your party's nomination.

If Swawell is not one of those peoples and I was running for governor, problem number one, Like when he says voting by phone is already already happening all across the United States?

Is he?

I don't mic producing LSD is big out there in California?

Like where is he getting?

Like but the nice job on calling him out on that interview or good job, that's you know, good to notice.

You know, no they're not.

Where is this happening?

Too?

Many states have a variety of you know, a lengthy probably too long a period for absentee voting.

But if you want to go, if you want to vote early, you can do it in just about every fifty states.

So the idea of, oh, voting is so hard, really, I mean, this is a pretty important responsibility.

You probably like, if voting early, or voting by mail, or voting absentee or showing up an election day is that hard, maybe you shouldn't be voting.

Voting is a bigger deal than ordering from Domino's.

But voting is like, like, so the idea of like, oh, I have to go all the way to my community center and vote, well, okay, like you know, if it matters, then you should be willing to do something.

It's really not that much.

He interestingly, he doesn't have like they're legitimate gripes to be made about California.

By the way, greg I noticed he doesn't say anthing about counting the votes.

Right, My big India piece is in the print magazine.

India counted all of its votes with a billion people, never mind like the total turnout Mody's party had close to one hundred million more votes than everyone who voted in the United States in twenty twenty four.

That's how many votes, and they counted them faster than the state of California.

Now admittedly faster than California is not the highest party clear now, but nonetheless, like you know, California has a real problem with vote counting.

Swell Walls not interested in that now, But they're place in the United States where they probably don't have enough voting places and the lines can get too long.

Yeah, yeah, think you know, so the right answer there is for that county or that locality to say, you know what, we need to find another polling place.

Let's see what elementary schools available, Let's see what community center, government building, whichever place they they actually they do it in a church where I live.

And then nobody's really griped about separation of church and state for that.

By the way, Greg, when you were going to school as a little in Miami, in Michigan.

I know it's an m one that's definitely not Miami.

Did they have like so like in elementary school, did they have like polling places in your school?

Absolutely?

All right, So do you think about it?

We look back at you.

At that time, it was fairly normal for those of us in Generation X.

We had like dozens or hundreds of strangers come into an elementary school during a school day, yep, and just walk around and often see down the hall and wave to the kids and all that kind of stuff.

Now the kids, at least here in Fairfax County get off for election day.

And I kind of understand why, because like anybody could vote, even weirdos and creeps and psychos, and you know, we don't necessarily want the water around the halls of an elementary school on every Tuesday in November.

So but there aren't genuine, you know, ways we could improve that.

I notice Swallowell doesn't mention any of those, and instead he's got this idea of let's vote by phone and somebody said, you know what, let's just decide our count let's decide our national policies by Twitter polls.

At this point, absolutely no.

Not only did they have it in my elementary cool, I used to get in line with my mom when I was obviously far too young to actually vote.

And then you get in there, and back then it was the levers you know, and the big close to the curtain and everything, and of course I was so into politics and I knew I wasn't like contradicting her vote.

I'm like, all right, here we go.

She's like, slow down, slow down, I want to make sure that we've got everything.

And it was so much fun and you learned a lot about the process doing it that way.

Now, like you said, it's like a four day weekend because they're off Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Tuesday's usually the end of a marking period or something, so it's a teacher work day officially.

But you're not gonna find counties.

You're not going to vote by phone.

I mean, just the amount of fraud you could potentially perpetrate by that is just insane.

So Eric swallwell, if he's trying to get the head start on the lunatic fringe of the party, which is not that small, he's probably doing pretty well.

Tom Steyers probably seems the most sane, but he's an environmental wacko.

And then you got Katie Porter, so it's all big time winners out there.

California.

Thanks, you're poison, you know.

Do you want crazy ideas or do you want environmental regulations of your drive out even more businesses.

Good luck California.

Yeah, somehow you're gonna be worse than Gavin Newsom if if one of those people win, which is probably the case.

Unfortunately.

All right, Jim, time for the hat trick.

Afton Baine take a bow.

Although it's not for the reason you would probably like.

This is one of those candidates Democrats would not love to be the only campaign going on and having so much national attention, with all this stuff blowing up.

They'd much rather bury her when all four and thirty five seats are on the ballot.

But Afton Baine, just to give you an idea of how crazy this Democrat is, Jim, I had to delete my cuts from yesterday that were labeled aften Baine yelling and aften Baine shrieking to aften Baine screaming, so you know, totally different.

But let's start with other policy issue.

Yesterday we talked about her tweets that she would not retract or clarify when it came to defunding the police I'm sorry, abolishing the Nashville Police and celebrating the fact that some she found allegedly said that a majority of Americans supported burning down police stations.

She's also speaking out now against the horrible, horrible idea of young women becoming mothers.

My therapist always asks me to transcribe my dreams when they happen, and the recurring dream I've had is standing up in a cafeteria full of women, I don't know why I was there or whatever, and saying I don't want children, I want power, and just screaming it at the top of my lungs.

And for someone who grew up with my mother telling me, never have kids, because you will.

You know, you'll have to give up a lot, You'll have to sacrifice professionally, which is what she's saying.

And where I am now with seeing the consequences and the ramifications of women having kids and being in the political field and what they're able to achieve because we offer you know, it's like the political field hasn't met the challenge of working moms.

They really haven't.

But also the deeply patriarchal structures that these women are are involved with because they've chosen marriage and they've chosen to raise children.

And I think in the South, it's incredibly difficult to shake those especially if you've grown up here and that's all you've been told is the definition of success, the metrics of success.

How many kids you have, the bigger, the square footage of your house?

Yeah?

And where your kids go to school?

Yeah?

How dare young women have a desire for marriage and family?

That's so patriarchal, Jim.

And she doesn't just scream in her dreams, although that's disturbing enough.

She's also screaming again in protest.

I don't know if this is the same day of the clips we had yesterday where she was screaming at the state legislature.

This time she's screaming as she's getting yanked out of the Capital office of Tennessee Governor Bill Lee.

At the beginning of this clip, the officers are racing in and then she gets dragged out.

Will Okay, sorry, that was completely unnecessary.

No, it was completely necessary because you were in the office and obviously causing a disturbance.

And you could tell Baine's done this before because she did the whole going limp thing and the officers had to drag her out.

So Jim, again, a lot to unpack, Grey what you got.

Well, Greg, we should remind all of our listeners that today's coverage of Afton bin is brought to you by Betterhelp See a Therapist so that you don't turn out like Afton Baine.

Now I'm going to rip into her shortly, but I will just make one observation in that first clip that you played there, it's really terrible to tell your kids don't have kids.

And suddenly like that explained some things, and I'm really sorry that Afton Bain heard that from her mother.

That's like, look, I also believe it if you're running for Congress or any public office you buy and large should let people make their own decisions with their lives, whether they want to get married, whether they don't want to get married, whether they want to have kids, whether they don't want to have kids.

I think you and I would say that fatherhood has been one of the great joys and most fulfilling things and most important jobs we're ever going to have.

And so like, I'm very pro parenthood, but there are people out there who are like, I don't want that.

Fine, go right ahead, don't do it, But I don't think your job as elected.

We do not have a shortage of problems in this country that we don't need somebody running around saying yes you should have kids and yes you should not have kids.

And again in the backhanded compliment category, I suppose we should give her some credit for saying that in her dreams she screams I want power.

I look at that, and I'm like, Ah, that's that's something what somebody say, I want power, I don't want children.

Well, you probably don't want to give that person any power.

You probably don't want to let that person operate heavy machinery.

You probably want that per like.

It's good that she's telling this to her therapist.

I think that therapist has gotten some more work.

And honestly, this is a backhanded endorsement of betterhelp.

Like when you talk to your therapist, that's between you and the therapist.

It's not something unless you say you're gonna harm yourself, you're gonna harm somebody else.

They're gonna keep everything you say within the cone of silence, and it's between you, and it's your choice to decide whether or not you want to share that with the world.

I think if you have dreams about how you're screaming at women, how you want power, maybe you keep that one to yourself.

Maybe you don't need to put that out there, and so I just want to say it to Tennessee Democrats.

Just take the l sometimes there's some addition by some dress.

You do not want this woman in Congress representing the Democratic Party and saying something crazy all the time and shrieking.

By the way, the shrieking as she's getting arrested.

It reminded me Greg of Alvin Green, the infamous senate candidate who kind of got nominated by South Carolina Democrats by accident, and everybody's like, who is this guy al Green?

Maybe some people thought it was the singer, you know, like it was kind of funny.

And then a television news crew went to his house.

He told them to go away and leave alone.

They you know, they wanted an interview and he wasn't interested, which again, when you're running for senate, traditionally you want to do interviews.

Traditionally you want to talk to the media.

But so they do the live stand up outside of his house and in the background you can hear Alvin Green howling like a dog or a wolf howling, And at that point the story kind of stopped being funny and it started being Alvin Green had some real problems and you really wanted him to see him get that kind of help.

I don't know if Apston Baine is quite in that category, but we're getting close to it.

This is somebody who does not belong in Congress.

This is someone who clearly has some real issues going on, and it'd be better to just you know, it's an R plus ten district, just nominate the Republican.

Try again next time, Democrats.

There's another election in November twenty twenty six.

I also have to say hats off to Matt Van EPP's team, or maybe it's National Republicans at this point who digging through all these old podcast interviews that cannot be pleasant to listen to all this stuff and finding this insanity on so many different levels.

But as we saw yesterday, she's still shooting herself in the foot even in interviews today.

So again, Lesbie, you should have hired these guys.

Exactly worth pointing out that the rest of the week will look a little bit different, but we will have shows for you every day this week.

Tomorrow are the things we're politically thankful for.

So that's the Wednesday edition.

Thursday, on Thanksgiving, we'll be with our families, and so that will be a replay of one of our favorite episodes.

In fact, it'll be the one of Jim's trip to India.

And then on Friday it'll be the Black Friday Gift Special, where Jim and I pick out gifts for political figures heading into this Christmas season.

So Jim, have a great day, and technically i'll see you tomorrow.

Officially, i'll see in a few days.

I was gonna say for everyone, let's say it's Black Friday and you're throwing elbows left and right at the shopping mall and you've just shoved some grandma into traffic so you could at the last cabbage patch doll.

I know they don't really sell catch whatever, whatever the hot toy is this year.

Take some time listen to our political gifts.

It's funny and we had a lot of fun taping it.

If everybody else out there, have a happy Thanksgiving and we'll see you soon.

Absolutely, Jim Garretty, National Review.

I'm Greg Corumbus Radio America.

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