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All right, boys and girls, we are back with another edition of the Ben Domenech podcast brought to you by Fox News. You can check out all of our podcasts at Fox News podcast dot com. Today, we have a special edition of the Ben Domenech podcast featuring predictions from my crew over at The Federalist. You'll hear from Molly Hemingway, our senior editor, Jordan Boyd, Elle Reynolds, Eleanor Bartow, Madeline or Osborne.
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So, Molly Hemingway, you have some predictions for us for the coming year of 2022. What are you focused on for this coming year?
So first off, I normally don't make predictions. That's one of my keys to punditry is that you can't be wrong if you're not making too many predictions. So mine are fairly safe predictions. And it's an obvious one. And I think everyone is expecting this. But Republicans will have an extremely good November. They will have a massive takeover of the House of Representatives. And
And they're on pretty good footing in the Senate as well. And that's true, even though there have been a lot of changes to election laws that advantage Democrats and that the recent gerrymandering battles have gone in Democrats' favor. The failure of Democratic uniparty control of D.C. is so profound and so undeniable that Republicans will benefit mightily.
I don't think that that will surprise many people. Do you have as a prediction, do you have anything in particular that you're paying attention to or that you're interested in coming out of of this coming year election wise, a race potentially or a factor that could play out across the country?
Not really, but I do find it interesting. I just was thinking about this issue of how Kevin McCarthy has handled his leadership of his caucus versus Nancy Pelosi. And, you know, I'm sure there's plenty of criticism you can make of Kevin McCarthy for all sorts of things, but he really has done a good job of recruiting candidates for districts, of
of knowing what is important for each individual district, managing the caucus so that people can kind of be their own best version of themselves. And I was thinking back to how he handled the first impeachment trial when he had to put together a roster for the impeachment committee, which was being run through intelligence agents.
And he kept everybody on the committee if they wanted to stay on, even if they were kind of of the never Trump variety. He also took voluntary temporary reassignments from some if they didn't want to be on it. You know, he put Jim Jordan on. Jim Jordan ran against Kevin McCarthy for the leadership post, but he has kept Jim Jordan close as an ally, like actually listening to him and his concerns, putting him on government positions.
Reform and Oversight, and now having him as the ranking member of Judiciary. And you compare that to Nancy Pelosi, how she's handling her January 6th Star Chamber Commission. And she actually kind of harmed a bunch of people. There was the Florida rep who was the rising star. I forget her name, who was placed on the committee. And she actually just announced that not only is she not going to run against the
Marco Rubio for the Senate, as a lot of people expected she would, she's not even running for reelection. And, you know, you shouldn't put vulnerable people like that on on a committee. And then she also put it's Luria, I think is her name, who's running, who's in Virginia, whose congressional district just went for Youngkin. She's going to be in a really tough race. And so I'm kind of curious about just those general trends and how those borderline Democrats will fare in November. Yeah.
Well, I know as someone who doesn't normally make predictions, I think you've made a pretty safe one this time around. That's that's that's why that's why you probably are a better gambler than I am. Molly, anything else? Yeah, I just want to say Stephanie Murphy is the Florida rep who announced she's not even bothering to run for reelection. Yeah, I think the Supreme Court will have a very interesting term and.
something that pro-life activists and other human rights activists have cared about for a very long time, which is moving away from the Roe v. Wade jurisprudence that the Supreme Court put the country into in 1973. I think that will finally go away in June when they rule on the Dobbs case. And I think
that is long past due. There were no redeeming qualities to Roe v. Wade, but the one thing that it was supposed to do was keep the court from having to be involved in abortion jurisprudence. And it failed miserably at that. And even attempts to hold on to Roe in recent years thought that it could once again try to keep the court from having to litigate this or deal with this issue every year. And that just continued to fail. And so I think
Everyone on the court understands that a change needs to be made and that a majority of justices will take the constitutional approach of understanding that the court does not really have a role in this and might return it even to the states or come up with something else that will be a better situation than what we've been under for decades.
a long time. That is a momentous change, one that I know a lot of people are eager to see happen, and others are very worried, particularly within the political consultant class, about what it's going to do to royal the elections in 2022. Molly, thank you for your predictions. Oh, wait, Ben, I have one. Oh, you had one more? Okay, great.
I thought you said you didn't do these. Okay, this one's a really important one. I predict Hunter Biden will get off without any prosecution from the feds as part, you know, he's being investigated right now for some of the crimes involved with the Biden family business. And I predict, and this is also a pretty safe prediction, that nothing will be done about it. Yeah.
That does seem safe as well, Molly. And sadly, sadly so, though, I guess we can look forward to appreciating his art for many decades to come. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me. Thank you, Jordan Boyd. Thanks for joining me for this predictions edition. What predictions do you have for the coming year?
Well, after a couple of years of what a lot of people have labeled unprecedented events, one thing I am very sure of is big tech will continue to censor the Federalists, our writers, and other conservative outlets with a vengeance. One thing that we've seen over the last two years especially is big tech and social media oligarchs have not held back when it comes to using their policies and even dredging up
policies to censor and silence conservatives. Um, we saw this with COVID-19, a lot of censorship when it came to, um, where the, the COVID came from the Wuhan lab leak, uh, the treatments that people used, uh, to soothe COVID fears and even masking and other things. And, um,
Another thing that we've seen with big tech is after January 6th, which this year, you know, we've had one year of January 6th insurrection language, is that they will use anything in their power to take down conservatives, Republicans, and anyone who aligns themselves with freedom of speech, honestly. And they are not afraid to create policies to do that. They're not afraid to employ third party fake fact checks to do that.
And so I think that will continue to happen in the future. And hopefully we won't get deplatformed, but I won't be surprised if that happens. I certainly think that what we've seen has been and a to this point unprecedented crackdown when it comes to the past year of of the approach that big tech used. And so I think it's a pretty safe bet that 2022 will see even more of that in an election year. Jordan, do you have anything else for us?
Yeah, and I would say that I do predict that SCOTUS will rule in favor of pro-lifers and handing the life issue back to states. I know that we saw a lot of states take action in the pro-life realm in the last few years. One of the most notable ones was the Texas heartbeat law. And one of the things that I think was the most noticeable about that was not only did it hold up under SCOTUS,
scrutiny, but Chief Justice John Roberts did signal that he would not be siding with pro-lifers when he issued his statement on the Texas heartbeat law. So I think that's something that we'll see. It may be a narrow ruling, but I do believe that Dobbs v. Jackson will pull out some victories for the pro-life community. That's definitely going to be something that everyone's paying attention to when that decision comes down and could have a momentous effect on our politics. Anything else for us, Jordan?
That's it for me. Okay, great. Well, have a great 2022 and we'll find out about your predictions soon enough. Elle Reynolds, what are your predictions for 2022?
Well, I haven't been in political journalism that long, but it's probably still long enough to make me more of a cynic than I am. So maybe I should approach this as more of a hope than a prediction. But I really do think that people are starting to get sick of kind of the what another horrible year blues. And I think that's going to show in 2022. I've seen so many social media posts at the end of 2021 about how, oh, we thought 2020 was awful, but 2021 was even worse.
And I mean, that's not to discount how bad the Biden administration has made things from inflation to Afghanistan to the border crisis. But I've also spoken to people in person noting that they had a good year personally, whether it's getting married or graduating college or having babies. And so I hope people will stop kind of automatically victimizing their year based on the media's doom and gloom.
and instead take a little more responsibility for the fact that 2022 can be just fine. That's a very, very hopeful prediction. I didn't know you were still allowed to get married or engaged or graduate college or have babies. Is that still permissible under Anthony Fauci's regime? I guess we'll find out. Do you have anything else for us in terms of your predictions for the year?
Yeah, I mean, I'm here in Loudoun County and I've seen obviously the whole country has seen what's been going on here. And I really think that the whistleblowing and the revelations about the radicalization of public schools is going to prompt more people to pay attention. And I think that's going to create more opportunities for things to come out about what school boards are doing and about critical race theory in schools and other topics in the public schools. I think we're going to see a lot more revelations about that in 2022.
I think that you definitely are on solid ground with that prediction. Certainly, a lot of people who are very involved in politics expect for this to be an issue that takes on an increasingly national character to it. Anything else that's on your mind about a prediction for the coming year?
Yeah, just one more. I think we're going to see, obviously, the Dobbs decision is a huge one. But I think however that goes, we're going to see a lot more pro-life momentum, specifically at the state level. We've seen coalitions that are already laying the groundwork for approaching the pro-life issue at the state level. So I think that's going to gain ground no matter what happens in the Supreme Court. Yeah.
Yeah, there's either going to be gaining ground because of backlash to the decision or gaining ground because of a response to new things you can do because of the decision. Elle Reynolds, thank you so much for your predictions for 2022. Thank you. Eleanor, so when you look out on the landscape of 2022, what are some things that come to your mind as predictions for the coming year?
Well, if I have one prediction that listeners can walk away with today and it may save your life, this one's a pretty easy one to predict, but there will be a lot more electric vehicles on the road. And so just remember that they're really quiet and forget the whole stop, look and listen. You can't hear these things. You need to look.
That's because costs are down. There's a lot more variety, even some trucks. But yeah, one of the things I know we'll see a lot more of in the news and I think we'll see a lot more pushback with is transgender athletes competing against female athletes. Just last week, we saw a swimming official resign. A lot of people have heard about the first transgender Olympic event
athlete last summer and now in the news is a nza college athlete a biological male competing against women and he has broken one of the ivy league records i think this is one of those issues where the left is just denying science and it it can't go on much longer like this uh it's simply unfair to women this is liberals are supposed to be the ones that believe in women's rights
And there's just such a dichotomy. It makes no sense, I think, to most people because we can just see with our own eyes these male bodies. And for example, men have bigger lungs and hearts, have bigger bones, more muscle, less fat. It's just not fair to women for them to compete. And actually, the International Olympic Committee, they recently announced after the Beijing Olympics, which is next month,
They're going to start doing these workshops with all the different international organizations that govern sports.
And they're going to try to figure out a better policy. Basically, they've scrapped the policy they did have, which was there was a certain cap on testosterone levels that a biological male had to meet in the past. In 2015, up until 2015, males actually had to get genital surgery. So it's like they've scrapped that, they've scrapped all these policies. And then going forward, what are they going to do? Well, they're kind of kicking it back to all these different sports. And so there'll be a debate within each sport.
Obviously, with something like rugby, it's just completely unsafe to have, you know, males against females. And so we'll just see a lot more debate on that. And I think people will hopefully just regain a little more sanity and look at the science and, you know,
This issue of more transgender males and females, we'll just continue to see examples of it making life very complicated because men want to be put in prison with females. Or you have kids going to school bathrooms that might have to share them with another transgender kid.
None of this, I don't have any ill will towards transgenders. It's just that when it comes to something like sports, we have to follow the science there. I think we'll see a lot more debate on that. And relatedly, just with transgender youth, we've seen more medical professionals speak out about how it's actually risky, potentially really bad for kids' health to take puberty blockers and to get gender surgery. It can lead to infertility and
and who knows what else uh and yet there are schools that won't won't you know tell parents if their kids are identifying with another gender i think parents will become more aware of how um you know they want schools to share that kind of information and
You know, that's that's just something that we're seeing change throughout society. I feel like, Eleanor, this is a an issue that a lot of people have been uncomfortable dealing with. But in the past year or so, it has really become something that everyone's much more comfortable talking about openly about their troubled response to the issue, particularly perpetuated by a number of these sports related events and just the the imagery of
You know, the idea of of a biologically male swimmer being able to break all of the records held by the likes of, you know, famous female swimmers like Katie Ledecky is an insult to anybody who participates in these types of sports and has worked their whole life to to excel at them. And of course, you know, the parents involvement also proves to be very triggering and frustrating for them. Do you have any other predictions for us for twenty twenty two?
Well, for politics generally, I almost feel like this one's too predictable, but Democrats will continue to just drag on the January 6th select committee investigations. They'll bring that up to the midterms.
One thing that we can just expect to continue is Biden misspeaking. And lastly, one thing that I do hope we'll see is that as COVID drags on and on and more people have their own experience with it, getting sick or knowing people that get sick, perhaps
perhaps even knowing somebody who dies from it, they'll know what the real risks are more than what they're hearing from the biased media and scaremongering politicians. They'll know, you know, that healthy people don't have that much to worry about, even if it can be quite severe. They'll know who are the people that are more at risk and have a better sense of their own risk. We've seen these polls that show that Democrats far outweigh the risk. They think it's much worse and more dangerous than it actually is.
And so they're being fed this misinformation by the media. But after a while, they just start to see it all around them. They know all these people that have had it. I mean, there's millions of cases of it, at least right now in the country. So hopefully people will be less afraid and we'll get back to normal. I think that's a definite hopeful prediction for the year. And I certainly hope that you're right, Eleanor. Thanks so much for running us through your predictions for 2022.
thank you madeline i think you were next hey ben how's it going it's going well uh so tell me a little bit about what your take is for uh 2022 and everything the year has to offer
So I am based in Texas. I'm sorry. I have a little cold right now. Um, so all of my predictions are Texas themed. Um, my first one is regarding the governor's race and the 2022 midterms that are coming up. Um, I predict that Beto is going, Beto O'Rourke, who is running against the incumbent, um, Greg Abbott is going to say, or do something really, really stupid. Um,
And that, but you wouldn't really know it from the media coverage. I mean, I just, I think that's a given. He clearly doesn't have any experience
successful campaign experience. He's never won a state race and he had to drop out of the presidential race, I think, even before Iowa. He's just notorious for sticking his foot in his mouth. So I think you'll probably see him do that several times this year and the media will continue to just kind of play it, laugh it off and play him up as a super moderate, even though we know he's not. There really is a
A bias, I think, there when it comes to their depiction and and love for Beto that has played out over his multiple campaigns and takes. What are some of your other Texas themed predictions? I have two more. The first the other one is that Californians are going to continue to show up.
and file our houses with wads of cash so no Texans can actually afford houses anymore. And I'm sure that will also have some sway on, you know, how the media portrays how well Beto is doing. All the Californians hopping on, you know, with their Beto bumper stickers.
And then my last prediction is that I think this is going to be another interesting year for the king and queen of Texas, Chip and Joanna Gaines. They have, I think they're going to continue to ascend in their power and fame. I just saw an announcement yesterday that they're like launching another cable network or rebranding with the DIY network, even though they already have their own network.
entire streaming network. And I think that also kind of puts another target on their back. Like they've tried to be canceled several times for their more conservative beliefs and their faith. And so I think with that fame and power and money, there will probably be another cancellation attempt this year.
You know, that that does seem to me to be the kind of thing that that people are going to lean into. Actually, can I make can I ask you on the spot to make a non Texas prediction? Do you think that cancel culture to the there's been a lot of people who've been writing recently that it's going to go away or it's going to it's going to diminish that the people are tired of it and and that type of thing?
But to me, it actually seems like that development, while true, is only likely to increase the number of cancel culture type things that go on and make them even more vociferous and particularly targeted at people.
those who are like slightly left of center or somewhat liberal in their views. I think of the whole Patton Oswalt apology that we saw for taking a picture with Dave Chappelle, for instance, that maybe they move on to the people who, you know, less the people on the right of center and more the people who are left of center who feel the need to cower in the face of cancel culture. What do you think about that?
I don't think, I think you're right. I don't think cancel culture itself is going anywhere. I think that's just kind of like a vicious media cycle that we're always going to live with now because it drives clicks and people just love talking about what other people did wrong. But I think we'll see like, if anything, just like the disappearance in the potency of people's ability to cancel other people. So like,
you're still going to have stories of people trying to say, this X person is bad because they said X, but it's not going to necessarily nuke them from the conversation or from their career because there's just so many other streams, places they can go. If they were truly kicked off some kind of platform, there's always a new other one that they could go to and that
people will always be able to access them. So I don't think cancel culture itself is going anywhere, but I just don't think it really has the same chokehold on people's careers like it used to. I think that you might be very much right by that, that there's a possibility where it is something we live with, but perhaps you can bounce back more quickly. Madeline, thank you so much for your Texas-themed predictions for 2022. Thank you, Ben.
It's fun. So Kylie Semple, tell me a little bit about your predictions for the coming year.
Yeah, so my first prediction is about the NFL. I would love to predict a Packer Super Bowl win, but I've been a Green Bay fan long enough to know that they almost always choke and let me down in a big way. So I'm not... Ah, gosh, darn it. I just put a lot of money down on the future bet for them winning the Super Bowl. Thanks a lot. You know, I really hope you're right. I hope my prediction is wrong and that your money bet is right because I would love to see them win. But
I just, I've been let down too much. So I'm hoping that a prediction against them might result in them actually winning. I don't know. No, no, no, no, no. I appreciate your jujitsu because that's, that's actually a major help for me. I always, I always do a future bet at the beginning of the playoffs for, for who I think is going to win. And I feel like,
I feel like this is angry Aaron Rodgers, and that's actually very helpful in terms of his attitude. Have we ever seen not angry Aaron Rodgers? Yeah, but this is like a new... Yeah, that's my secret. I'm always angry. Exactly. I think this is a new kind of angry. It's like...
I mean, there's angry Aaron Rodgers and then there's I'm going to point out I have Atlas shrugged on my on my bookshelf and drink, you know, four fingers of scotch on TV when I have to do Monday Night Football and call I call an MVP voter a bum. You know, like that's a new level.
Exactly. It really is, which leads to my second prediction. So my overall prediction is not only that Packers are going to lose the Super Bowl against what I would wish would happen, but I'm predicting a full Tom Brady sweep. So I'm predicting a Bucs win and that Brady will be MVP after the Rogers-Vax dust-up and just like a lot of fans following Brady and the statistics right now, I'm
I'm banking on bucks taking it because Tom Brady is a 44 year old freak of nature who, despite being slightly lower ranked than others is, is probably going to take it. And same with MVP. So that's my prediction. Well, I'll tell you this, if that happens, um,
uh, the people who will be the most happy with it are sports broadcasters on every network, because that just gave them an argument to have for the next several months, you know, regardless, regardless of the outcome of that MVP result, uh, happens. And, uh, and you have Brady win another super bowl, then it becomes, it's going to be an absolute, uh, uh, monster of a debate. Uh, so, uh, let's, uh, let's, you know, let's see what happens here, but, um,
But I am actually glad that you're that you're you're shading my my Packers prediction, because that gives me that gives me hope it would I would feel I would doubt it more if it was an emphatic support on the on the homer. And any other predictions for us in 2022? Well, I do sense another bachelor controversy coming down the pike. They just started a new.
a new season and viewers dropped by more than a million, which is to be expected. I mean, their viewership has been tanking for a while now. Um, but after 2021, just being fraught with race related controversies and, you know, sexism controversies, and then the so-called racist contestant ending up with the black bachelor anyway, after Chris Harrison got fired, I'm anticipating that we're going to see another round of that because, uh,
After Chris Harrison got fired, they just hired a new white guy to host. And I just don't see things going that well. They're really floundering. And I think it's going to manifest in some more
negativity and some some pretty ugly politics, if I had to guess. You know, it is it does really seem like this type of woke racism conversation has to ruin all the nice things, even even the ridiculous nice things like The Bachelor. Anything else for us for the coming year, Kylie?
My only other prediction is just that Sean Davis is going to get banned from Twitter because all my favorite accounts get banned from Twitter and he's at the top of the list. So I hope it doesn't happen, but I'm predicting it. Sorry. I think you should predict that all
all accounts that are in any way entertaining will eventually get banned from Twitter under the new regime, which it turns out, yes, there can be worse things than Jack Dorsey. So Kylie, thank you so much for your predictions for 2022. Thanks, Ben.
All right, John Davidson, tell me a little bit about your predictions for 2022. All right, I've got three predictions for you. I got a COVID prediction, I got a foreign policy prediction, and I got a pop culture prediction. I'll give you the COVID prediction first. COVID prediction is that we'll probably get a new variant at some point this year, but no one will care.
by then. And they'll go on with their lives as normal, except for a handful of blue checks on Twitter that'll still try to keep milking the COVID hysteria, you know, gravy train. And along with that, we may get a fourth or fifth booster in the course of 2022, but no one will take it. Because too many people who acquiesce to the vaccine and a booster shot are going to say, you know, that's enough. I've done my part.
I took this reluctantly. I did it because I thought I had to for my job or I was pressured into it by my friends and family, but I'm done now. I'm not going to keep injecting myself with this stuff four or five, six times a year. I'm done. I think something like that will happen this year.
given everything that's come before? Well, I think that you're you're certainly someone you're not the first person to have predicted that that people will be increasingly reluctant to go along with what was initially branded as a shot that would allow them, obviously, to not just be
protected from the illness, but to prevent its transmission, you know, it was certainly over promised to people in terms of, of the result of these vaccinations. And now, you know, the booster schedule, I think has a lot of people tearing their hair out and basically saying, when will this end? At some point, I do think you're right. This will become something that drops off a cliff and becomes more along the lines of whether you've gotten your flu shot or not every, every,
as a seasonal illness. The question is sort of when that happens. Yeah. And it will be, it will be interesting the moment that it does, because I'm sure there'll be a media freak out about it. But then, you know, if people see the results not leading to disaster, then it's going to be, it's going to certainly, I think, have a lot of people going along with it. What are your other topical predictions for the coming year?
Well, I'll give you my foreign policy prediction. I do think this year there's going to be some kind of a foreign policy crisis. It could have to do with Russia and Ukraine. It could have to do with China and Taiwan. So my prediction isn't about what will happen. It's that something will happen, and the Biden administration will very badly bungle it, and they will turn what is a challenge or a problem into
in the foreign policy sphere into a crisis or a full-blown catastrophe. And I say this, I don't have any glee in saying this because I think it will be very bad for the country and bad for the world. But I do think that the revisionist powers out there
have seen the weakness and fecklessness and incompetence of the Biden administration. And I think they're determined to make hay while the sun shines. You know, they're revisionist powers for a reason. They want to revise things. And so what better time to revise them when you have sort of a doddering fool in the White House who has shown his incompetence in foreign policy over the past year since he's been in office, especially in Afghanistan, and
this is the time to make their move. And I think they will be making moves this year. And I think that the response, whatever the situation is, the response from this White House will be catastrophic. That's something that I think a lot of Americans are concerned about in both parties, actually, and worried as they see rising threats in a lot of different areas, and certainly ones that
whether it involves military action or not, could have massive ramifications for our allies, the global economy, et cetera. And with an administration that seems worse than a sleep at the wheel. Tell us more about your other predictions. Well, my last one is a pop culture prediction. It's one that I care the most about by far.
And that has to do with Amazon's Middle Earth Lord of the Rings series that premieres in September. And my prediction is that it's going to suck. It's going to be deeply offensive and enraging to people like me who have a deep and abiding love for Tolkien and his mythology and for the Lord of the Rings.
And again, I take no pleasure in this prediction because you should be able to make a multi-part series, you know, a high budget series.
dramatic fantasy series about the second age of middle earth. That's completely awesome. And the best thing that was ever filmed in the history of television, but this will not be it. And we already know that it's not going to be that because they've broken with the cannon, even, you know, for as little as that's been out there about this series, we already know they've broken with the cannon and we already know it's going to be woke. And it just makes me hate them so much. I just, it's hard to put it into words. Yeah.
OK, so I'm sorry. The thing that I have to ask you about this is, are you going on anything in particular when it comes to this prediction? I don't think of you as someone who reads the Hollywood reporter tea leaves, or are you just basing it on the assumption that just given the different participants involved, there's no way that it's not going to be woke crap?
Ben, this is the one area of pop culture I pay attention to. I've been reading the appendices at the end of The Return of the King at night for the past couple of weeks. Okay.
I am going on something. Okay. For one thing, there, there's only one image they've released of like what, you know, for this series. And it's like sort of welcome to the second age. But there's a glaring problem with that. Okay. In the distance, there are two glowing trees. Presumably these are the trees, Talperion and Laurelin, which are the two trees of Valinor. Okay. And there, these are the trees that, that, you know, the Valar created and they lit the world and they were destroyed by Melkor and
obviously from whom Sauron has descended. The problem is, this is supposed to be set in the second age. The trees of the Valinor were destroyed in the first age, okay? Thousands of years before this happened. And the other thing is that they've cast a bunch of hobbits, of old multiracial hobbits. They have black hobbits and Asian hobbits and Maori hobbits and all these different kinds of hobbits.
Well, I'm sorry, but the hobbits didn't appear until well into the third age, thousands of years after the events of the second age. So already those two things, if they're willing to break ranks on those two things, and the one thing for the purposes of having like woke hobbits, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I'm not optimistic about this series. That's fantastic. So they're Jurassic Parking it. They're putting all the dinosaurs from the different eras together and just pretending like it works. Yeah, I mean, the next thing, they're probably going to put like a young Aragorn in there too. I guess he's 3,000 years old.
It's just ridiculous. And when you look at like who's in charge, it's like, oh, you know, don't worry because we have experienced, you know, hands of this. You have, you know, these guys who are behind. Oh, looks like, you know, you know, Disney's Jungle Cruise. The Jungle Cruise guy is behind this. Come on.
You know, that's well, at least at least Jungle Cruise increases the likelihood of a rock appearance at some point in this, which I'm sure will definitely be meme friendly. He's going to be the Maori Hobbit. Yes. Yes.
The primary focus, obviously, of these multimillion dollar projects now is memes. John, thank you for your predictions for 2022. I hope you're wrong about Lord of the Rings, but I hate to say it sounds like you are probably right. Thanks, Ben. More of our predictions right after this.
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Tristan Justice, tell us a little bit about your predictions for 2022. Well, I have a couple and a couple of different categories here. One, I think censorship is going to we're going to see new levels of censorship this year come from Twitter and Facebook. The same media platforms already started off the new year the same way they started last year, censoring prominent politicians and public figures. And so especially in an election year, we're definitely going to see heightened censorship this year. I also think it's going to be a bad season for wildfires again.
It seems like every year we have this routine coverage of mega wildfires just ripping across the American West. And, you know, where I'm at in Denver, in our suburbs last week, we had nearly a thousand homes burned down. And so but the real culprit of these wildfires, you know, everyone likes to say climate change, climate change, climate change.
um it's really bad land management and we really haven't made much significant progress on that front over the winter months um since that's going to take a couple of years so we're also going to see more wildfires um i also think when it comes to covet we're going to see enhanced federalism um i think blue parts of the country are going to remain locked down and cling to their pandemic measures i think there's a certain level of risk that different parts of the country
are going to assume. And I don't think we're going to come out of that this year unless the virus goes away, which isn't going to happen. And then in space, I think it's going to be another big year for space. I think we're going to see, there are three main areas in space that we're going to see some big developments. I think we're going to get some of the first pictures that come back this summer from the James Webb Telescope.
And then China is going to finish its space station. And then the DART mission is going to set to explode in September. And we're going to find out if we can survive in Armageddon, which is the double asteroid redirection test.
So how does that play out, Tristan? Well, the double asteroid redirection test, it quite literally does follow the movie line that you saw, I think it's like 15 years ago. It's a project from NASA. And what they're actually going to do is they're actually going to explode a bomb on
on a binary asteroid system to see if they can actually redirect the asteroid. Since the theory is if they can just redirect it just a little bit and throw it off course, it'll miss the planet. - I definitely look forward to seeing the results of this test. And I wonder how much attention it will receive. Do you have any other predictions for us in 2022, Tristan? - No, I think it'll be a good year.
That's good. That's a good prediction. That's a good prediction. Except for the wildfires and except for the censorship. Except for all of those other things and learning to live past them is a test for us all. Tristan, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. Thank you.
Emily Jaschinski, thanks for joining me. Tell me a little bit about your predictions for 2022. Sure, Ben. I'm thinking about China in particular, but in two very different issues. The first is when it comes to the Olympics in Beijing, which are actually set to begin a
week or a month from this week, which is sort of remarkable to think about because nobody's talking about it. Nobody's talking about the fact that we're about to send our athletes to participate in what is essentially a major propaganda event for the Chinese Communist Party. And my
prediction is that this is not going to go as well as the CCP might think that it's going to go. NBC does have literally billions of dollars on the line, as Rebecca Heinrichs pointed out on Federalist Radio Hour this week. But I do think the cracks are really starting to show in the so-called mainstream press. I think there's been a lot more conversation about what's happening
I think the CCP will still sort of confidently claim this as a propaganda victory, but I think you will see more and more mainstream voices being very, very critical of the Chinese Communist Party over the course of the Olympics, of their human rights records over the course of the Olympics, and I think that's
actually going to amp up the pressure. This is weirdly optimistic, but I think it's actually going to amp up the pressure on corporate America, whether that's the media or the business community, although those are the same in many respects, to be way more wary of their entanglements with China than they already are. You know, so that's an interesting prediction for a couple of reasons. First off, I think that, you know, we've seen in recent months
Certainly an increase in awareness and reporting about some of the activities that China has been engaged with during the course of the pandemic and even extending before that, that were questioning things, questioning the.
the relationships that corporate America in particular has with them. I mean, you even saw Jake Tapper making a big stink about it, you know, at one point and you have additional reporting from the New York times, the wall street journal and others about,
activities in Hong Kong, the unwillingness of the IOC to engage on questions about forced labor. But the fact remains, China is still the big dog in the room when it comes to driving what Hollywood does, what so many different
athletic gear companies and sports leagues do. And certainly, you know, it's made its power known in a lot of different ways. Do you feel like it's going to be a situation where more Americans wake up to the reality of that influence and that corporate America has to respond in some way or are there going to be other factors that drive it?
Yeah, one of the things I should have mentioned earlier is that we've seen more companies and they've taken heat from China for doing this, but we've seen more of them start to be careful about their supply chains because they've realized, I think, how bad the publicity is for them here in the United States and that they're obviously
moral quandaries when it comes to sourcing material in their supply chains from, say, Xinjiang. So I think it's, on the one hand, it is going to be some posturing and there are going to be some sort of performative denouncements of China from people who still depend very heavily on
China. You know, there's only so much that I could hear from, you know, some of these business executives or corporate journalists until, you know, you have to realize how deeply in bed with China their entire business model is. But I think that sort of performative outrage actually has a value, even if it's hypocritical and limited in some sense. And I also think there will be some
small ball structural changes that do have a big effect and would in the aggregate have a pretty big effect like companies being more and more pressured to be very careful about forced labor in their supply chain and saying, you know, maybe it's not worth the headache
to source so much from Xinjiang, from China in general, and maybe we can actually even get good publicity for taking some jobs back to the United States. CNN had a great write up actually of Dylan Radigan, of all people, who started a
factory that actually manufactures gloves in America. He's doing it in an empty or an abandoned cat apparel caterpillar warehouse outside Chicago. And I think we're starting to see some of that slowly, slowly build up from the supply chains to things like, you know, actually domestic manufacturing. And that's sort of why I'm thinking and I'm predicting that this won't be quite the propaganda effect that the CCP hopes it will have.
I certainly hope that that's something that comes to fruition, Emily. What other predictions do you have for us for the coming year? Well, I was going to say, one of them is sort of related to that. I want to talk about Hollywood. On the one hand, I do think that
Some of this is going to make Hollywood sort of memory hole its relationship with China. And, you know, because part of that is they're just not getting these films that they have made with China in mind and to cater to Chinese audiences. They are not getting these films shown anywhere.
in China. They're not making the money they expected to from China. And I think that in combination with the clear publicity problems is going to make them suddenly act as though, you know, they are deeply outraged about the human rights abuses in China more and more. I don't, again, I don't think it's going to be this like widespread thing. I just think we'll see more of it. And secondly, my prediction about Hollywood is that they're going to have a deceptively good year at the box office. I think there's going to be a swing back
at least after Omicron dies out. There's some big movies coming out in 2022, even ones that have been delayed, like Top Gun, that I think people are going to see in large numbers. I mean, we saw that with a couple of movies over the Christmas holiday that did really well at the box office. People went and saw these big budgets
movies. And I think we are going to see Hollywood feel a little bit more comfortable than it should about the state of the theater and about the kind of money that they can gross on big budget films by getting butts in the seats at actual physical movie theaters. So I think it'll be a decent year for Hollywood at the box office, but I don't think that'll mean much in the long term. You know, Hollywood is really in a bind in so many different areas. I'm curious about
uh, your perspective on one thing, just to put you on the spot. Do you think that 2022 is going to be a year when people start finally start to question the, uh, quality of some of these streaming programs, the plethora of which that are out there and maybe ask whether, you know, uh,
more is less in terms of the, the, either the shallowness or the drop in quality that goes along with creating so much for an, you know, an unfillable law of desire for constantly new streaming content.
I hope so. And I hope we can start rethinking the unfillable mall of desire for just material possessions in general. And part of that is the China connection, right? That we are able to buy so much cheap nonsense on Amazon and able to stream so much lower mid-budget nonsense on Netflix and on Amazon Prime. And actually, we've seen some people come out and say, if you have the budget for four
I think this is the number in the quote, 14 mediocre movies. Well, maybe we should make 11 good movies. I think the attitude is shifting a little bit. I think bundling is really frustrating consumers. I think they're starting to pay just about as much as they were paying for basic cable with audio.
all of the subscriptions. I mean, you have to have Paramount Plus to watch the most popular show, the most popular drama in the country right now, which is Yellowstone. And so I think the adjustment is going to be similar to what you're saying, that there will be a real rethinking of the
quantity of content that's being pushed so that they can tighten up these streamers and make them feel if you're bundling Amazon and Showtime and Amazon Prime and Showtime, that people are really getting their money's worth and aren't just having the sex lives of college girls dropped on them. You know, mediocre sort of fare that's not super expensive to make, but is, you know, treated as though it's some sort of prestige television. You know, Emily, I think that that
is something that I certainly hope for as a consumer. And I hope that people will get back to it. Anything else for 2022?
No, but I think it's interesting that both of those are sort of somewhat related to China. I think the country is really rethinking its relationship and the sort of material wealth that it's brought us. But, you know, there's a question of quality. And I hope that that will I hope that will transpire in constructive ways in the year to come. Thank you, Emily, for taking the time to join me today. Of course. Thanks, Ben. Chris Bedford, thank you for joining me. Tell me about your predictions for 2022.
So I think this is going to be a big year for a couple of things where Republicans and Democrats are really going to be called out in some of the things that they've both been promising. One of the big things I expect is this to be a thousand paper cut year for big tech. The American people have largely given up on them. The left and the right, both sides, no longer look at them as something that's just got a happy face that brings everyone together, that connects you to grandma, that connects you to your great aunt.
That whole myth is over. The right and the left have completely different ideas about what exactly they're going to do with that, but
both know that something ought to be done, both are angry. Now partisanship, of course, could get in the way of this. I mean, Republicans have different ideas than Democrats, but there should be the ability to get on antitrust, on Section 230, some kind of pull together that is actually going to do a dent to them. I think that their days of being the invulnerable superpower that they've become are at an end. And at the same time, they're going to see competition starting to rise up that's more and more serious.
You know, that's something that a number of our folks have talked about today. One thing that I wonder if you can give us a prediction about is, you know, there are all of these nascent and in-process projects that are out being announced across the country with regularity, where different people are moving to different platforms, new people are trying to start things up. But obviously, that's an ecosystem that is
It's infancy and just learning to walk. And there are enormous barriers against them taking hold in any way approaching the kind of scope that the existing platforms have with potentially, I would say, the exception of Twitter, which has far less scope than people actually think it does.
Tell me about your feelings about what 2022 will bring when it comes to these type of early startup attitude of people trying to build their own things, having become disgusted with what big tech is offering them.
I think you're totally right. There are huge amounts of pushback. I mean, anytime you launch a new application, it's going to have so many different bugs, whether it's a website overhaul, even something as simple as that. And when people start doing this against big tech, they're automatically in the crosshairs of hacking groups, of left-wing journalists, of all the people who are for the control economy that big tech has created.
that combined with the trolling that goes on, combined with the idea that, you know, at the end of the day, you really do need to make a good program for it to be successful and you need to advertise it correctly, you need to get the right influencers on there. It's going to be difficult and there are definitely going to be charlatans. There's going to be a lot of folks who just take a MAGA sticker or a Freedom sticker and slap it on some kind of poorly put together product that otherwise they don't really care about. The places I expect that are really going to be successful are the places that have attracted some serious professional attention. Right now,
there's an actual need for conservative or center-right or just freedom-loving, bill-of-rights-loving banking, for example, credit card companies, different MailChimp replacements, the replacements for different email services like that, the replacements even for
The swiping, your ability to swipe a card or take a donation, all of these companies, the payroll companies, all of these are examples of companies that threatened and cut off Republican and conservative voices after the January 6th riots or have said repeatedly that they're not on their side.
Those are the companies I think that are going to have the much more immediate success because like you said Facebook's, the Twitter's, the old day MySpace's, those are going to be harder to replicate and attract attention with a couple key stars like Joe Rogan's and Donald Trump's they could be successful but I think the real important stuff is going to come on the infrastructure which is actually the most important to us, financial and email and how to run your business.
Do you have any other predictions for us for 2022, Chris? Anything that's either not political or something unrelated to the world of big tech?
Outside of the world of big tech, I guess it is political, though. A friend of mine asked me on the way over here where I thought Joe Manchin was going to be in the new year, and my guess was on television. That's his favorite place to be. And I don't think that there's... I have a prediction here that there's going to be a big push to get rid of Kamala Harris and to start to replace her by Democrats, which is going to be difficult because she's not going to put the interests of the party before herself. She's not just going to leave office, and she's been elected. And I think that there's going to be...
The Democrats are going to be unable to really accomplish anything, and we're going to see some real infighting and some real civil war. And as far as this COVID stuff goes, which I guess is not political but also at the same time is political, I think that the game is up. The polling is in. You see mayors from Chicago to New York City saying, teachers, you better get back to work. Washington, D.C. right now is one of the very few holdouts where teachers are still on the cusp. They didn't even tell parents if they were coming back to work until around 9 o'clock last night.
Now, I think a lot of this this jig is going to be up for people and folks are getting real tired of it. Yeah. And I think that you see that in the in the response from Mayor Lightfoot and others with this feeling of frustration that the teachers unions that have so dominated local Democrat politics, state level Democrat politics.
for so long are now putting them in such a difficult political position that those poll numbers have to be absolutely horrible. Chris Bedford, thanks so much for taking the time to join me to talk about 2022. Thank you, Ben.
No predictions episode would be complete without offering a few of my own, and I'm happy to do so. One that's definitely front of mind for me is that in November, we're going to see a real swath of new Republicans coming into office in Capitol Hill and across the country. But I think that one of the things that people underestimate about what's going on within this whole development is that as we saw during the rise of the Tea Party, you're going to end up with a lot of people winning elections.
who really come out of nowhere. They don't have any real background within elected politics. They weren't previously a state rep or a state senator. They're new to the whole fray, and with that, they bring with them a lot of passion for what they do, but also not necessarily a willingness to go along with the way that things have gone in the past. That's always something that riles up Washington and certainly scares the elites. I think you're going to see that come November.
In terms of other predictions, I think that this is going to be a year where we see really a test of the plethora of new streaming services that are out there.
Emily Jashinsky and I talked a little bit about that, but I think that, you know, we we've had so many of these streaming services crop up that they're really too many for, uh, for people to organize and to, uh, and to, uh, view with any kind of regularity. Uh, you end up paying for something, even if you're just paying for it to watch one show essentially. Uh, and then you forget about subscribing to it. That's the whole kind of test of what is going on here. And now people who
are consuming a lot of these different shows end up paying perhaps more than they ever were for their cable bundles altogether. And that's something that I don't think is going to hold. People have been confined to their homes or certainly spending a lot more time at home than going to the movie theaters and going out to restaurants and the like over the last two years. But I think that as that changes, people are going to drop off from these streaming services. And I think you're going to see more bundling, more combinations, and more of an effort on their part
And one more thing that I think that people should be cognizant of in this 2022 conversation.
is that I think the likelihood of having a major international event that pulls in the United States and our allies in a really negative way is very high. People talk about the possibility of China going after Taiwan. I don't think that it's potentially that scale.
But I do think that we've gone on too long without something like this happening and with such tension building in places around the world that it seems inevitable to me that 2022 is going to contain a foreign policy crisis that is going to test the Biden administration's approach and also lead to potentially our allies getting involved in a way that America may not be the leading name in the mix.
And that's going to be something that I think is going to be criticized from a lot of different perspectives, but it's also going to be a test of America's willingness to take a step back and maybe not get sucked into conflicts that turn out to cost a lot of money, resources, and lives. I'm Ben Domenech. You've been listening to another edition of the Ben Domenech Podcast. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.
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