John Fugelsang

John Fugelsang came back on The Drive with Steve Jaxon last week, to discuss the state of the Presidential election, now that the primaries are concluded and the parties are preparing for their nominating conventions later this summer. Jaxon and John Fugelsang began by sharing their plans to attend and to cover the Democratic Party Convention in Philadelphia. Fugelsang noted, “I’ll be around. I’m touring with Stephanie Miller. We’re doing the Sexy Liberal Tour, we’ve brought that back… Fortunately, politics has decided to be very funny this year.”

Steve asked John about his personal preference in the primary season and John said, “I’m a Sanders guy, yes, but I’m also on the side of anybody who realizes that Sanders and Clinton are kind of on the same side. The magic number in this election is 147, that is Ruth Bader Ginzburg’s age. And everyone has to remember that we are voting for a Supreme Court this time and if you want to be a “Bernie or Bust,” I understand that as a Bernie fan, but just know the Bust means Dennis Rodman on the Supreme Court.”

Steve invited John to share his thoughts about Donald Trump’s comments about the judge overseeing the civil suit for fraud brought against him and Trump University and he said, “Well, it is remarkable. It’s nice to see what it takes to get a lot of our right wing friends upset about racism for the very first time in their lives.

“Newt Gingrich of course very bravely came out and said that it was inexcusable and then went on to excuse it ’cause he’s still voting for him. I kind of want Donald Trump to know that when Newt Gingrich thinks you’re racist, that’s kind of like Keith Richards hosting your intervention, you know?” (…)

“Fortunately, politics has decided to be very funny this year.”

“As well as Paul Ryan, I mean, he said these horrible things. You know, Paul Ryan really proves that Trump supporters are not all racists. Millions of them are just good decent non-racists who don’t mind racism. So, it’s good to know. More or less they’re saying he’s a racist who should be President. This is not the party of Lincoln anymore. This is not even the party of Quayle anymore. You know, Trump said it and he doesn’t understand that it’s racism. Because the thing about ignorant racists, they tend to be ignorant about the fact that they’re racists. And the best part of all is this is it’s got people talking about ‘Trump University’ even more, because that was a scam he used to defraud the kind of people who would vote for Donald Trump until they look into what Donald Trump does.”

When Steve suggested the comparison between Trump and Hillary Clinton, John offered, “If you go by resume alone, I think John Quincy Adams is the last former Secretary of State to then become President. It’s quite impressive. And obviously she’s staging her campaign events in such a way to make herself look way more presidential. Watching Trump’s little speech the other night after the California primary, it was like the perfect storm of Teleprompter and Vicodin. Hillary looked very presidential and she had a great multi-cultural cast of Americans behind her waving flags. Just the presentations show that she’s more on her game. But Donald Trump has got a problem with this judge because he doesn’t think the judge should be allowed to rule on his fraud case because he said so many racist things against Mexicans and his own racism might prejudice the judge against him. And the problem with that is, if they ever were to replace that judge, Trump would also have to make sure that everyone understood that a woman, a gay, a Muslim, a disabled, an immigrant judge, an African-American judge, a Democrat-appointed judge or a former prisoner of war judge would be unfairly biased against him too. So let’s hope Gary Busey is on the bench.”

Steve concluded by inviting John Fugelsang to tell about his show on Sirius XM radio: “We do a show called ‘Tell Me Everything’ on the Insight Channel. That’s sort of like NPR with penis jokes, because we are in an election where the comedians are fighting for social justice and the candidates are telling penis jokes. Our channel is 121 on Sirius XM. We have a mixture of musicians and rock-and-roll stars and actors and directors, authors, historians, comedians, and a lot of politics. My sidekick is Frank Conniff from Mystery Science Theater 3000. The next time you’re in New York, you’ve got to let me know and we’ll get you on the air with us.”

Steve replied by also extending an invitation: “Right on, man. I wish we could have done it last time but again, we’ll probably be there after the convention and we’ll see you in Philadelphia one way or the other. If you’re going to be in the building you’ve got to come by, because we’re going to be broadcasting live the whole week.”

For more about John Fugelsang:

Follow John Fugelsang on Twitter at https://twitter.com/johnfugelsang

Robert Lipsyte

Robert Lipsyte, sportswriter, journalist, author and former ombudsman for ESPN, started covering Muhammad Ali in the 1960s. In this extensive and personal interview, recorded a few days before Ali’s funeral, Steve Jaxon began by noting that it had been a very busy week for his guest, who had a lot to say about Ali.

“It’s been a very busy week, and kind of a bittersweet week. As you know, I covered Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali, for 52 years and his death was not unexpected. In many ways, on the one hand, he really kind of died a few years back when this most mobile and garrulous person on the planet is suddenly struck mute and immobile by the gods. And yet on the other hand, I guess he will never die for so many of us because he was important in so many symbolic ways and his picture will live forever.”

Steve said, “As you said, it wasn’t unexpected, and he made it to 74, which is not bad, considering,” and Robert Lipsyte agreed, “I’m really so glad you said that, Steve. When I met him he was 22 and I was 25 or 26, and he was one of those kind of explosive novas, shining stars, you know, I thought that he would never make it to 30. The idea that he would live to 74 and in those final years be such a beatified – one writer described him as America’s teddy bear – you know, such a beatified secular saint was almost amazing.”

Steve mentioned that Robert Lipsyte was writing for the New York Times in 1964 and they sent him to cover Muhammad Ali fighting Sonny Liston and that made the memories come pouring out.

“It’s crazy because, I think that was the fight of the century and of course the moment of the century. That was when the ’60s really began. As we talked about it, what happened was that, Cassius Clay, this nobody who was kind of famous for his poetry and stuff, but he had not made his bones as a fighter, but they needed a box office for Sonny Liston and so he got the fight. The New York Times regular boxing writer did not think it was worth his time to go down for this one-round knockout. So it was suggested that the kid go down from night rewrite. You know, he was not doing anything important. So they sent me down and my instructions were so basic. As soon as I got to Miami Beach, rent a car, drive back and forth between the arena where the fight was going to be held, and the nearest hospital, so that I would waste no time following Cassius Clay into intensive care. God help me, I did that!

“OK, so then I get there, in my rental car, I drive to the 5th street gym, which is in a kind of decrepit building in this slummy part of Miami Beach, which is now the very trendy and glamorous South Beach. And I walk into this gym and I’m told that Cassius Clay has not arrived yet and there’s this hubbub behind me, and there are these four little guys around my own age, they’re wearing these matching white terrycloth cabana jackets, and they had these bad haircuts and British accents. I asked at the door, who are those guys? Oh, they’re some British band is in New York and they’ve come to Miami. And they just went to have a photo op with the champion, Sonny Liston, who took one look at them and said, “I ain’t posin’ with them sissies.

“So they got stuffed back into the limo and, second best, they were sent down here to have a picture with Clay. So Clay is not there and these four little guys are screaming and ranting. You know, they’re trying to get out, so they’re pushed up into an abandoned dressing room. If I had any smarts at all, if I had known who they were or if I had been a teenage girl I would have been much shyer. But you know, what the hell who are these four little jerks? So I kind of pushed my way into the room with them. The door is locked. So these are the 15 minutes, Steve, where I am the fifth Beatle. And I said to them, ‘Hello, I’m Robert Lipsyte from the New York Times, I’m very important.’ And John said, ‘Hello, I’m Ringo.’ This I figured out later. And Ringo said, ‘Hello, I’m George.”

And I said, ‘Who do you think is going to win?’ ‘Oh, Liston’s going to knock that little wanker out.’ And they they started really cursing and banging the walls. They were really kind of tough, nasty little guys. And then, bang! The door opens up and there is the most beautiful creature any of us had ever seen. And he said, ‘C’mon Beatles, let’s make some money.’

“And so he led them out into the ring and if I hadn’t known better I thought it would be choreographed. The Beatles lined up in a row, he tapped the first one on the head, I think it was George… and they all go down like dominoes. And then they kind of create little pyramid with probably Ringo on top, trying to hit his jaw. It’s amazingly hilarious. And they caper around for 5 or 10 minutes then the photo op is over and the Beatles go off to their destiny and Clay works out.

“And then, after he works out, he comes back to the dressing room and I’m in there, waiting to interview him. We hadn’t met yet and he beckons me over to him. ‘You were with those guys?’ I said, yeah. He said, ‘so who were those little sissies?’ So he was as clueless as I was. That was February 18, 1964, and I think that’s the moment when the 1960s actually began.”

Steve Jaxon, awestruck, commented, “Wow, what a story!” and Robert Lipsyte continued, “Talk about dumb luck! That was my start. The next 52 years, we’ve talked about it, it’s been an amazing ride. Right now I’m kind of high, as people often are after a tragedy or a death. It’s interesting that most of the email that I’ve got (I’ve got a lot of email) has either been offering consolation for my grief, as if he were a close family friend, which he was not, or recounting their own moment. And you know, anybody who’s had a moment with Muhammad Ali really remembers it vividly because he had such a kind of humanitarian glow about him. Even if he was across the room, it seemed like he could hug you.”

Steve asked when was the last time he ever saw Ali in person and we heard, “The last time I saw him I was sitting at ringside with Ali and Will Smith, who played him in the movie. And this was in the same arena where he had beaten Liston in Miami Beach. And a high-level bookseller named Taschen had just put out a $10,000 volume of pictures and prose about his life. This was at Art Basel, the big art show in Miami Beach. I remember watching Ali and Will Smith (who did, in a terrible movie which I hated, but did a very credible job of being him) watching the two of them kind of capering like children and I had this amazing thought. Maybe great celebrity athletes and movie stars are basically children and they have to be children.

“The reason I thought it was a terrible movie not just because there was a character in it named Lipsyte. And my kids were thrilled because the actor who played the character named Lipsyte was so cute and they thought he was so much better looking than their dad was, they were just thrilled. But he said all kinds of things I never said. What I really hated about the movie was that it gave the impression that Cassius Clay who became Muhammad Ali, kind of emerged as some sort of American and world hero with these principles and these senses of what was right and proper social justice, when the truth was, it was an evolution. When I met him back then with the Beatles in 1964 he was a callow, not very educated, rather ignorant boy who since he was 12 years old had kind of been focused through a tunnel of boxing and really didn’t know too much about the world itself. He kind of evolved. And some of the really most important things that he said he didn’t really come to understand until many years after he actually said it. When he said, ‘I’ve got nothing against them Viet Cong,’ which sounded like a powerful anti-war statement, it was really in exasperation for having been classified as 1-A. That same day when he found out that he could be drafted, his first response, Steve, was, ‘Why me? I’m heavyweight champ. All my taxes buy all of those tanks and helmets and rifles for soldiers. Why don’t they spend time and draft poor boys who don’t give taxes?’ So I mean, that’s not principled. That did not evolve until later. But he got there. And maybe that’s the powerful and important story about how Muhammad Ali and America all kind of changed and evolved through the 60s, 70s and 80s into a higher level of consciousness, rather than this kind of present iconography.

I’m glad you invited me to kind of rant on your show. What really made me so crazy was these obits where he was described as this important Civil Rights leader. He was not a Civil Rights leader. He was against Civil Rights when he first came out. He belonged to this segregationist sect that was making deals with the KKK and wanted to carve a piece of Mississippi where the sect could live until the seven-foot black men in space ships came down and saved the righteous. So I hope that story is not lost as we make him this hero. As Bill Clinton will speak at the funeral and there will be a couple of days of this sort of orgasmic celebration, I hope we don’t really lose the idea that this was an interesting man who kind of became something else in the crucible of America.”

In closing, Robert Lipsyte told Steve how much he liked the new documentary “OJ: Made in America” and added, “The reason why OJ was so promoted is that he was the counter-revolutionary black athlete, in many ways, the counterpoint to Muhammad Ali, to Jim Brown and to Carlos and Smith who raised their fists at the ’68 Olympics,” and they agreed that may be the subject of his next appearance on the show.

For more about Robert Lipsyte:

Search Google Images for “Cassius Clay Beatles” to see the pictures he describes from 1964.

For more from Robert Lipsyte, visit his website, www.robertlipsyte.com.

Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders, Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate, was in Cloverdale last Friday and took the time to speak with us just for a few minutes before his big speech at the Cloverdale Airport, in front of over four thousand people. Steve Jaxon began by asking about the race for the Democratic nomination and whether voter turnout would be the key factor for him.

Senator Sanders replied, “Yes, you got it, in one word. Here’s the story. If there is a large voter turnout, if the people of California understand that it is time to take on establishment politics and establishment economics, and create a government that works for all of us and not just the one percent, and if that turnout is high, we’re going to win and I think we’ll win big. If the turnout is low, we’ll probably lose. So I hope that as many people as possible come out to vote.”

With so many new voters attracted to the Bernie Sanders campaign, Steve asked how they plan to make sure that new voters actually follow through and turn out to vote on Election Day.

Senator Sanders offered, “…we have thousands of volunteers working on that as we speak. They’re on the telephone. They’re knocking on doors. We’re using social media. We’re doing everything that we can to make sure that not only young people but everybody, come out to vote. I think, again, if there’s a large voter turnout from working people, from young people, we’re going to win and win big.”

Asked whether he could have imagined how the campaign would have turned out, back when he started it a year ago, Senator Sanders replied, “The short answer is no. We have come a long way in the last year. I’ll just give you an example. When we began our campaign, we were 50 points down behind Secretary Clinton here in California, in the polls. Yesterday we had a poll that had us one point up. So I think we’ve made some progress in the last year.”

Steve then read a question submitted by a listener on Facebook: “Agriculture is such an important part of Sonoma County and Northern California, in many ways, both economically and environmentally, especially with the recent drought. What role does the small family farm play in growing the economy, in your opinion?”

The candidate’s answer covered some issues that fill in the bigger picture related to agriculture: “To me – I come from a small agricultural state, it’s mostly dairy and smaller family farms – agriculture obviously is essential to the future of this country. We need to make sure that we have a workforce that is legal and that is why among other things I believe in comprehensive immigration reform and a path towards citizenship. I also understand that here in California and increasingly in other parts of the country, a drought is a major concern. And that is why as President, I will be more aggressive than any President ever has been in taking on climate change, transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. Climate change is one of the great planetary crises that we face. One of the differences between Secretary Clinton and myself, I believe in a tax on carbon.”

With less than a minute left, Steve asked Bernie Sanders about how the final stretch of the campaign has felt to him and he shared his personal satisfaction, saying, “It’s been an extraordinary experience. By the time we’re finished on Monday night, I think we will have broken some kind of California record. We will have had well over 30 rallies and will have spoken to over 250,000 Californians. I love that type of campaigning. That’s grass roots campaigning, going out among the people, face-to-face, talking to folks. That’s what I believe in and that’s what we’re doing here and that’s why I think we’re going to win.”

For more information about the Bernie Sanders campaign:

Get complete information about the Sanders campaign at the official website, www.berniesanders.com.

Tommy Chong visited with Steve Jaxon on The Drive last week, on April 22, a mere two days after 4-20, to talk about being out on the road again with his partner Cheech Marin, ahead of their performance at The Warfield Theatre in San Francisco, which took place the next day.

Tommy Chong

Steve began by telling about the time he met Cheech and Chong when he was a student at Michigan State University in the early ’70s, saying, “…you guys mentioned that when you’re on the road, back then, at least, you would go to the YMCA and play basketball and work out.” Tommy confirmed the fact and told the story: “Yeah, I’ve been working out all my life. Before I met Cheech, when I was 16 years old, I discovered weight training. And then I was pretty heavy into it and it kept me healthy. You know I’m almost 80 and still got the body of a seventeen-year-old, you know.”

Then Steve asked what made him and Cheech decide to go and hit the road again and Tommy replied, “…there are so many people that heard about us and never seen us, you know? And we just have a lot of fun on the road. Well, you think about what we do, we just talk about dope, we smoke dope and we go home and watch dope movies… and make dope movies and just have a dope time. It’s really the way to live!”

Steve than asked if there are any more Cheech and Chong movies in the works, with them touring again. Tommy described the reasons why there probably aren’t any coming soon, this way: “You know, I just like to write them, I don’t want to do them anymore, you know? Once you write them and you read it and you think, that would make a great movie, and then I put it on the shelf. I’ve written about five or six good Cheech and Chong movies. We might. Right now it’s not a good time, because there’s really hardly any movie industry left unless you’re Ironman, you know? (…) We could be superheroes but we’re folk heroes, I’d rather be a folk hero.”

Steve wanted to know about Tommy Chong’s new line of cannabis products, which he described: “…we started off with getting strains, but the strains change every crop, you know, there’s a new crop and so rather than try to get different strains, I decided, well, we decided, my son and I, to start a distribution company… So I’m just putting my name on it. You know, I test the product first, and then I put my name on it. I call it Chong’s Choice and it’s available in a lot of the dispensaries now, all over the place. ”

The Chong’s Choice logo.

This gave Steve a chance to mention that he had discussed cannabis legalization on The Drive with many guests including California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom. He mentioned the legalization initiative that is slated to be on the California ballot next November and Tommy gave his take on it: “…the thing is, the government and the straight people are trying to figure out how to get a handle on it, which is why it was made illegal in the beginning, because they couldn’t put a handle on it. You can’t patent a plant. The only way you could control it was to make it illegal. And you can do forfeitures and seizures. It was a real racist law. And now that that law is disappearing, and we’re legal, now it’s going to take a while for everybody to realize that we don’t need laws. We just need to be left alone. Don’t bother us and we’re not going to bother you. And you know, what they’re doing now is a good start. But a few years from now it’ll be a joke, you know? Like, right now, apparently you can grow three plants per household in… California… but who’s going to walk around and count the plants?”

The topic shifted back to the past as Steve asked Tommy Chong to tell how he first hooked up with his partner Cheech Marin. Tommy told the story this way: “We met in Canada. Cheech was up there, he was part of a secret army, made of mostly Mexicans, in case the Viet Cong attacked from Alaska. (laughs) I was running sort of a homeless shelter and topless nightclub, (more laughter) for guys that were up there fighting the war.” As for how the comedy performances started, he told the story this way: “Do you remember a group called The Committee in San Francisco? …well, I was one of them that used to sit in the audience and just marvel at how genius these guys were. And so I started up my own Committee-type group up in Canada with the topless nightclub. And then Cheech joined up as part of the troupe. And then when the troupe broke up, Cheech was the only one that wanted to keep going, and so we teamed up and the rest is history.”

In his characteristic way, Steve did not hold back his enthusiasm: “What you did for our generation, my generation, in comedy especially, back in the day, was just unbelievable, I mean, you guys were superstars!” Tommy Chong easily put it all into perspective for us, saying, “Yeah, well, you know what we did? We did comedy where no one got hurt, you know? There was no moral judgment, it was, guys getting stoned and having a good time and cops chasing them and getting stoned and then they’re having a good time. That was basically our movies. And people related to it, you know, and there was no moral judgment or high ground, you know, ‘if you smoke dope bad things will happen.’ It was the opposite. We showed that, we showed a slice of the lifestyle that was going on in America.” Steve agreed and added, “It was going on big time back then, you know, we couldn’t talk that much about it, it was like, hiding the joint and making sure your parents didn’t find out and we all enjoyed – we were all laughing our asses off! We were stoned and laughing our asses off and then Cheech and Chong came along and proved that we were right and it was all cool!”

For more about Cheech and Chong, visit their website http://cheechandchong.com/ To learn about Chong’s Choice, their website is http://chongschoice.com/

Bill Scheft

When Bill Scheft visited The Drive recently, Steve Jaxon gave him a glowing introduction: “I’m very excited about talking to our next guest. We’ve been hoping to get him on for quite a while. I’m a big fan. He’s a comedy writer, novelist, for years he was David Letterman’s right hand man, and writer for Letterman. Last time we were in New York we were at the Ed Sullivan Theater and I noticed he was the guy standing just offstage and then every commercial break he would go up to the desk and talk to Dave. He’s been on the show because he’s a novelist. His latest novel is called Shrink Thyself.  Great comedy writer, I’m really honored to have Mr. Bill Scheft with us.”

Steve then mentioned his last visit to the Ed Sullivan Theater for a taping of Letterman’s show. “We were there a few years ago, we were in the front part of the balcony we actually had VIP seats. I was wondering, we were both talking, Mike and I (my producer, who was with me) and afterwards we were wondering what you guys were talking about, if it had to do with the show, because you were there every commercial break, talking to Dave.”

Bill explained, “Well, you know, it’s funny, because I described my job back then as that I was more of Dave’s cut man, that I would sort of jump in between rounds, basically I would try to keep him loose during his own show, try to entertain him during his own show. So we very rarely would talk about the show. Mostly I would remind him of old bits of his or other comics. If I told you what we talked about you just wouldn’t believe it. I mean it would be, ‘What was the restaurant in LA that Marlon Brando and Orson Wells used to eat at?’ you know, and then we would spend the whole show, the all of a sudden just as I was walking away I would remember that it was Ma Maison and I would run back and tell him just as the band was playing.

Shrink Thyself, Bill Scheft’s new novel.

“But it would always be a conversation that only the two of us could have because we had so many of the same reference points. I was a comic for 13 years and we knew a lot of the same people and, just like that, it was not this kind of urgent thing that it looked like. I had a lot of friends who came to the show and they could just see me, they couldn’t hear me from where they sat, like where you sat. I would look like I was yelling at him. Somebody said it would look like he worked for me. And it was just to me, being sort of demonstrative, trying to entertain him, that’s all. That’s all we would do. I just tried to keep him loose. We rarely, rarely, rarely talked about the show. (…) Basically, I enabled the people who were actually working on the show to go about their jobs unfettered. I was sort of keeping him busy and loose.

“And I remember one time, I think this only happened once, where I reminded him of something right before he went back on air and he really couldn’t stop laughing. And I never thought he would tell the audience what he was laughing at. I thought that he would tell the band to stop and then just sort of restart it again, which we would do from time to time. And he actually told the audience what I had reminded him of. And the story was, it was the only time he ever called a phone sex line. He told me this story.

“He calls the phone sex line and he immediately sort of realizes how ridiculous it is, what he’s doing. So the woman says to him, ‘OK, so the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to rub oil all over your body.’ So he says, ‘what kind of oil? And the girl says, ‘I don’t know, like olive oil?’ And he says, ‘Well, I’m allergic to olive oil. So it was ten minutes of the girl saying, ‘well, what about peanut oil?” and that was the whole call. Isn’t that great? I never thought he’d tell the audience that, but that’s what made him him.”

For more information about Bill Scheft, visit his website, www.billscheft.com.

Bill Press was back on The Drive last Friday. The author and syndicated radio host told Steve Jaxon about appearances in Point Reyes and Corte Madera, to promote his new book, Buyer’s Remorse, How Obama Let Progressives Down.

Bill Press

Steve began by quoting Bill Press from thehill.com. “…you wrote, and I quote, ‘As an out of body experience, it’s hard to beat, sitting on the couch watching the Sunday morning shows, when suddenly you hear Chuck Todd and George Stephanopoulos hammer Bernie Sanders about a blurb he wrote for the cover of your new book. And he does. He says, Bill Press makes the case. Read this book.’ How did you deal with that?”

Bill laughed and said, “Well, the biggest grief of all that he got, I was actually on the set in New York with Anderson Cooper during one of the Democratic debates shortly after those two Sunday shows, and Hillary Clinton turned to Bernie Sanders and accused him of writing the forward actually to my book, to this book called Buyer’s Remorse. You talk about an out-of-body experience! Or an Oh Crap experience!”

“As to how I reacted, I don’t know whether to be angry at Hillary for misrepresenting what Bernie’s done, or whether I should send her flowers or a fruitcake or something, because it certainly helped sales. I will be forever grateful.”

Steve asked Bill to explain the book’s premise, asking, “You have said that your goal in writing this was simply to tell the truth, because you’ve said before on this show, and others, that Obama has done a lot of good things. Explain the remorse part.”

Bill replied, “I’m glad you pointed that out because I think the book is very fair. I talk about all the good things that he has done, we could go down the list. You and I have talked about a lot of them. The most recent for me is his trip to Cuba and opening up relations with Cuba. Long, long, long overdue and nobody had the guts to do it before Obama. I think it’s going to be one of the signature foreign policy achievements not just of his administration but of any modern president.

“But where I think he has let us down in several ways and a couple of things pop into my head. It’s letting Wall Street completely off the hook. These crooks on Wall Street, they were selling fraudulent investment opportunities and they knew they were and they knew they were worthless, these derivatives, and they brought this country to the brink of economic ruin. Not one of them was prosecuted, not one of them went to jail. President Obama just decided he wasn’t going to go there. As a consequence we’ve got millions and millions of Americans who lost their shirt, and they’re still struggling to get back, loss of retirement benefits, and so many people who are working two, three jobs just to pay their bills at the end of the month. And these… I want to be careful here… these crooks on Wall Street, they’re still there, they’re making more money than ever before and they just got away scott free and I was disappointed with President Obama.

“…we’ve got to make sure they really do deliver on the progressive agenda, whether it’s Hillary or Bernie.”

“I was disappointed when he walked into the White House briefing room one day when I was there and said, ‘Hey, I’ve just made a deal with John Boehner, we’re going to cut Social Security benefits and we’re going to cut Medicare.’ Well, fortunately that deal unraveled, but it wasn’t what we expected from him.

“And I think the third thing I get to is the NSA and the spying on us, on our phones and on our emails. It’s out of bounds. President Obama, when he was a Senator, he and Ron Wyden from Oregon were the two chief critics of the NSA at the time. And when he was campaigning he said,'”we’re going to stop this practice, we’re going to rein in the intelligence agencies.’ And instead once he became President, President Obama just looked the other way. And these guys are out of control today.

“The main point of my book is, looking ahead, we’re going to have Hillary or Bernie as the next President of the United States, and the point I make in the book is, we have to do our job the next time. Elect one of these great people, then, don’t walk away and say, ‘OK, you’re on your own, have a good time.’ No. We have to keep on their butt and we have to hold their feet to the fire and we’ve got to make sure they really do deliver on the progressive agenda, whether it’s Hillary or Bernie.”

Every Monday on The Drive with Steve Jaxon, on our “Mondays with Lanny” feature, we visit with Lanny Davis, longtime Washington DC attorney and in this primary election season, prominent Hillary Clinton supporter. Last Monday, Lanny gave us his perspective on the Democratic primary race on the day before the Wisconsin primary. Bernie Sanders was favored to win in Wisconsin (and he did, as the results are now in). Steve began by asking Lanny to explain whether the Sanders campaign has a reasonable case to ask the Democratic super-delegates to support Sanders over Clinton.

Lanny Davis

Lanny Davis began by pointing out the popular vote totals that both candidates have won. “After thirty-five primaries and caucuses, Hillary Clinton, steady, factual, talking solutions, not promising things she can’t deliver like free medical care for all, free public education for all, no tax increases, the revolution is here. After all is said and done after 35 out of 57, so we’re more than half way done, she leads, 2.5 million more votes than Bernie Sanders. And what’s remarkable to me and I wrote the column for this reason, is how many people are shocked? “Oh she doesn’t lead by that many?” Because if you follow the media you would actually think that Bernie Sanders has more votes, because he’s the populist, he’s the “feel the Bern” candidate. That’s a lot more votes, by 2.5 million. So there’s no argument for any super delegate to switch along the lines of the Sanders campaign to “follow the popular will.” which is an expression that Senator Sanders used on a Sunday show. It’s exactly the opposite. You should be for Hillary Clinton if you’re following the vote, by 2.5 million, that’s a lot of gap. That’s 56 to 44 percent of popular vote, that’s called a landslide.”

Steve pointed out that last week, Lanny had mentioned that Sanders would need 67 percent of the remaining delegates, which is a lot. Lanny then explained his take on the super-delegates and the case that a candidate needs to make to them.

“The only way he can do this is by converting pledged super-delegates. Who are they? Democratic governors, Democratic senators, Democratic members of Congress and party officials elected by their Democratic members in each of their states. So somehow Bernie Sanders wants to convince us that a Senator who wins 2.5 million votes to win an election is less democratically representative of a diverse population than, let’s say, 60,000 people in the state of Utah (hasn’t gone Democratic in a long time) who turned out for the caucuses, and Bernie Sanders won a net 21 delegate victory in Utah, with 65,000 votes, compared to 1.1 million votes that turned out in Ohio which Hillary Clinton won by a landslide and only gained 19 delegates. 1.1 million turnout in the swing state of Ohio which she won by a landslide, 65,000 votes in the red red state of Utah, which Sanders won by 21 votes gap. Now which is democratic, small D.”

He went on to explain the diference between open and closed primaries and how the results in these different states also favor Hillary Clinton. “Among Democratic voters, Hillary Clinton has led by 10 to 20 percent in every single poll, in every single exit poll. So if the remaining contests were mostly open to Independents and Republicans then at least Bernie Sanders would say, ‘I’ve got a good calendar left,’ but in this case the calendar favors Hillary Clinton, since the majority are primaries for Democrats only, which is, in my opinion, what primaries ought to be.”

Bill Press

Steve Jaxon welcomed frequent guest Bill Press, political commentator, member of the White House press corps, author, syndicated radio host, and a friend of the show, on to The Drive last Monday, to talk about his book Buyer’s Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down, and about the current state of the presidential race.

When Steve asked how everything is going in Washington, Bill replied, “It’s crazy,” and went straight to current campaign news. “I was just watching Donald Trump speak to AIPAC, the first time ever he actually read a speech from a Teleprompter. I think people told him, you better not wing it in front of this crowd or you could get into some serious trouble!”

Steve then asked, “I saw one thing he said, about the US should rethink our position with NATO? What the hell’s he talking about?” Bill told that, “Yes, he said that earlier in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. He said it was time to pull back our troops from NATO and I guess let Vladimir Putin run over as many countries as he wants.”

The conversation turned to Bill Press’s new book. Steve said, “I heard someone on TV saying something giving you a little grief about having Bernie Sanders on the cover of your book, saying, ‘Bill Press makes the case… read this book,’ and it’s called Buyer’s Remorse, How Obama Let Progressives Down.”

Here is the complete audio of the segment with Bill Press:

Bill’s reply was swift, “Well, that was Hillary Clinton who gave Bernie grief about what she said was writing the forward to the book, which he did not do, he simply wrote a blurb to the book, a blurb, by the way, that says nothing about President Obama at all…

The cover of Buyer’s Remorse.

“It just says that the next president, whoever he or she is by the way, has to use the bully pulpit, go out and rally progressives to put pressure on Congress to put pressure on Congress in order to get change done. Maybe President Obama should have done a lot more of that. (…) [The book] talks about the good things that President Obama has done, but it also points out there are ways where he’s let us down, as Progressives… I just think I put out the good and the bad, it’s what we ought to do with any president, including one of our own.”

Asked for some more insight into the book, Bill offered, “People ask me, why did you write a book that is in any way critical of the Obama administration, with less than a year to go. And my answer is, because President Obama asked me to. What I mean by that is when he was running for office, and in the White House, I heard him say several times, ‘I want you to hold me accountable,’ and that’s what I did. And when you look at his record, you’ve got to agree that the really good things. Where he is today, this opening to Cuba is incredible!  It will be one of the great hallmarks of this administration. I believe the Iran nuclear deal is a great foreign policy achievement. You know, he saved the auto industry. He did bring us back from economic ruin.

“At the same time, he’s done some things which as Progressives, if George Bush had done, we’d be raising holy hell about them.” He went on to mention the NSA, Wall Street getting off the hook and weak parts of Obamacare, explaining, “I try to put it in perspective. And the main part about the book is, calling on Hillary or Bernie, …that they’ve got to recognize that the American people really do want to focus on the working class Americans, middle class Americans, the Progressive agenda, minimum wage, creation of jobs, climate change, the whole progressive agenda. And they want to run with it full bore and not be too willing to compromise with Republicans, which I think Obama was, too often.”

Steve mentioned that they were talking to Eric Boehlert of Media Matters, last hour, who wrote that Meet the Press isn’t going to let Trump phone it in anymore and Bill had this to say about Trump:

“Let me tell you, it is outrageous the way the media as sucked up to Donald Trump. They have let him get away with everything… They figured it out, 6 billion dollars worth of free media. The media created Donald Trump. And allowing him to phone it in to the Sunday shows, …they’ve never allowed before. As if he were a statesman, but he’s not, he’s a clown.”

Bill offered this additional observation. “I’ll tell you one thing I find really funny now. The Republicans realize, ‘Oh Jesus, we might end up with Donald Trump as the nominee, we can’t let that happen.’ So suddenly they’re scurrying around and they send Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan out to attack him. And they’re creating super PACs, they’re raising money and they’re running ads. You know what? It’s too little too late. They created Donald Trump, they’re stuck with him how, as far as I’m concerned.”

“As a Democrat, and a former Democratic Party Chairman of California, I’ve never enjoyed politics so much, in this sense. For too many years I’ve watched Democrats eating their own and forming the circular firing squad. It’s fun to watch Republicans doing it, for once.”

Steve asked who is this group. “There are about 30 of them, who met last week, the so-called Republican establishment, which is also a joke, because Trump’s success is running against the Republican establishment. The more the Republican establishment tries to take him down, the better it is for Trump! But they’re clowns. These are the guys who supported Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio and all those people, ask all of them how well they did against Donald Trump… They had a chance to stop him, early on and they did not do so. It’s too late now.”

This brought him to an important point for his own party. “By the way, what I think is a very sober lesson for us Democrats, which is, don’t take this guy for granted, don’t underestimate him, don’t ignore him, don’t be nice to him. I think what Democrats have to do is define him early and destroy him politically before he gets a foothold.”

In closing, Steve asked, “What do you think is going to happen to the Republican party?” Bill Press replied, “I don’t think it will be the end of the Republican Party, but it will be the end of the Republican Party as we know it, which was imploding pretty fast anyway and throwing anybody with any common sense or any sense of decency out the window anyhow, which is what led the way to a demagogue like Donald Trump…  It’s unbelievable. This billionaire flies in on his plane with Trump all over it, and stands in front of his plane and says, ‘I’m the candidate who’s going to take care of the working class and the middle class’ and people believe him!”

“As a Democrat, and a former Democratic Party Chairman of California, I’ve never enjoyed politics so much, in this sense. For too many years I’ve watched Democrats eating their own and forming the circular firing squad. It’s fun to watch Republicans doing it, for once.”

For more information about Bill Press, visit https://billpress.com/

We’re proud that The Drive with Steve Jaxon has been named in The Bohemian’s Best of 2016 edition as the Best Reason to Listen to the Radio.

Here is the text of the write-up in the Bohemian: “Radio is mostly bad music and too many commercials. One exception is ‘The Drive’ with Steve Jaxon on KSRO, 1350-AM and 103.5 FM. Tune in from 3 to 6pm on a typical weekday and you’ll get an interview with a local newsmaker, some laughs from one of Jaxon’s comedian friends, a chat with a winemaker or chef and choice words from elected officials. Jaxon, with more than a little help from producer/rainmaker Mike DeWald, creates a distinctly Sonoma County talk show that’s essential North Bay listening–and not just because he features me and my fellow Bohemian editors on the “Boho Buzz” on Wednesdays at 4pm.–S.H.”

For more from The Bohemian, visit their site at http://www.bohemian.com/ Here is an image of the article that appeared last week in the March 16 issue:

Mike DeWald and Steve Jaxon pictured in The Bohemian’s Best of 2016 issue.

Ben Cohen, businessman, activist and philanthropist, joined Steve Jaxon on The Drive last Tuesday, calling in from Iowa where he was stumping for Bernie Sanders with his friend and business partner Jerry Greenfield. With the Iowa caucuses a few days away, Steve started by asking Ben how he feels the campaign is going, from his perspective.

Ben Cohen began, “Jerry and I are both here. It is a neck-and-neck race between Bernie and Hillary. It’s amazing how passionate the Bernie supporters are, but we need all the help we can get. Time to suck it up wherever you are, contribute some money, volunteer some time, phone bank, whatever it is. Bernie is the most incredible politician that I’ve ever been in contact with, and, you know, Jerry and I have been his constituents for the last 30 years. We’ve never gone out campaigning for any other Presidential candidate. I mean, this guy is the real thing.”

Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.

When Steve said it sounded brilliant, Ben replied, “Well, I don’t know how brilliant it was, but it turned out to be!” Then Steve asked Ben to tell all about the new ice cream flavor that he created.

Ben explained, “It’s called Bernie’s Yearning. When you open up the pint, take the lid off, what you see is this huge disk of solid chocolate that covers the entire top of the pint, and below that is plain mint ice cream. And that huge chocolate disc represents all the wealth that’s been generated since the end of the recession that has gone to the top 1% of our country and the mint represents the rest of us. And the way you eat it is, you take a big soup spoon and you whack that big chocolate disc into a lot of little pieces, you let the ice cream soften up a little bit, and you mix it all around and there you have it, Bernie’s Yearning.”

The Bernie’s Yearning package.

With the ice cream news covered, Steve asked how long he planned to be in Iowa on the campaign trail. Ben explained that he and Jerry would leave Thursday for Minneapolis, to ride on the Bernie Sanders float in the big winter parade and carnival there, and then they would head to New Hampshire.

The Steve asked how far back Ben and Jerry go with Bernie, which is quite a while: “We were in Burlington about 30 years ago when he ran for mayor, and everybody said this guy’s never going to get elected, and he won. And we were there when he ran for Congress, everybody said the same thing, he’ll never make it, and we won, same thing in the Senate. It’s amazing to have been represented for 30 years by someone that actually represents my views and what I believe in, and essentially what that is, is the vision of fairness and equality and justice that we all heard the country was supposed to be about in public school and he’s really making it happen. If you look at his votes in the House and the Senate and the bills that he’s introduced, he’s not the usual politician. He’s saying we’re the richest country in the world and our people deserve what other advanced democracies have around the world, which is universal health care, college education regardless of your income, paid vacations, medical leave, parental leave, and he’s offered ways of financing it that make this revenue neutral just by cutting all these tax loopholes on the corporations and the ultra-wealthy.”

Steve asked what Ben thought of Bernie’s chances. “Things are getting better and better. He is surging. If you look at the trend, Hillary’s going down and he’s going up. So right now it’s all about Iowa and New Hampshire. If he wins one and does great in the other, even if he doesn’t win, he’s off and running.”

Steve mentioned that he was looking at an article about the ice cream on Politico.com with a great shot of Ben in his kitchen actually making the ice cream, and Ben suggested, “Yeah, you should check out the video, there’s video of it too. A friend of mine did it.”

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Ben repeated his tweet, “What I’ve said is, there’s nothing so unstoppable as a flavor whose time has finally come. That’s the way it is with Bernie’s Yearning and that’s the way it is with Bernie’s campaign.”

In closing, Steve suggests listeners can go to the website to sign up to win one of the few pints of Bernie’s Yearning. Ben agreed, saying, “…get a pint, sock it away, put it in your freezer vault for a few years and sell it on eBay and you can be part of the 1% yourself!”

For more information about Bernie’s Yearning Ice Cream and to watch the video, visit Ben Cohen’s special website http://www.berniesyearning.com.

Follow Ben Cohen on Twitter @YoBenCohen.

Here is the link to the story on Politico dot com, which Steve mentions:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/bernie-sanders-ben-and-jerrys-bernies-yearning-218185