Welcome to Season 5 of The Common Bridge as we sift through the political and media chaos with your host Richard Helppie. As we strip away the narratives, we promise to offer our growing audience of over 4 million viewers, readers, and listeners, a fiercely non-partisan perspective on the escalating tensions within the Republican and Democratic parties, the corruption tainting our media, and the looming threats to our justice system. We'll dissect key political figures, from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, to provide a thorough understanding of their roles, behaviors, and fading relevance. This isn't just another political podcast episode. It's a call to action, to tune in, join the conversation, and become part of the solution. Join us on the Common Bridge and let's navigate these turbulent waters together.
Engage the conversation on Substack at The Common Bridge!
Welcome to Season 5 of The Common Bridge as we sift through the political and media chaos with your host Richard Helppie. As we strip away the narratives, we promise to offer our growing audience of over 4 million viewers, readers, and listeners, a fiercely non-partisan perspective on the escalating tensions within the Republican and Democratic parties, the corruption tainting our media, and the looming threats to our justice system. We'll dissect key political figures, from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, to provide a thorough understanding of their roles, behaviors, and fading relevance. This isn't just another political podcast episode. It's a call to action, to tune in, join the conversation, and become part of the solution. Join us on the Common Bridge and let's navigate these turbulent waters together.
Engage the conversation on Substack at The Common Bridge!
Welcome to this episode of season 5 of the Common Bridge, where policy and current events are discussed in a fiercely non-partisan manner. The host, richard Helpe, is a philanthropist, entrepreneur and political analyst who has reached over four million listeners, viewers and readers around the world. With our surging growth in audience and subscriptions, the Common Bridge continues to expand its reach. The show is available on the Substack website and the Substack app Simply search for the Common Bridge. You can also find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. The Common Bridge draws guests and audiences from across the political spectrum, and we invite you to become a free or paid subscriber on your favorite medium.
Speaker 2:Hi, welcome to the Common Bridge. I'm your host, richard Helpe. This is the beginning of season 5. It's a day that I was never confident that we'd get to, but here we are and I'm pleased and delighted to be here. I've got to thank our audience, those of you that are subscribers, paid subscribers, especially. Thank you, those of you that give us high ratings, thank you those that engage with us. Thank you Also.
Speaker 2:This production would not be possible without our wonderful guests our producer, brian Krueger of Stunt 3 Media, and, of course, our operations chief, michelle Dean. Our audience is growing, and why is that? And, frankly, it's because it's non-partisan, fiercely non-partisan, and that's really where 73% of the country is today. You're here because you're one of the vast majority of Americans who see the freedoms, the opportunity, hopefulness and even common sense just slipping away. When I started this program four years ago, I thought there might be a place for people more interested in policy solutions for issues of the day and the opportunities of the moment, and these and other people looking for something beyond the, frankly, the cesspool of modern news as entertainment. The good news is this we've found a lot of people that just want to be treated like adults, who want to have full discussions. Regret. Very few of those people are employed by a major political party or a major, established news outlet. They know how their bread is butter. Our problems are still solvable but, frankly, our political system is just less able. Our polarization is greater, our victim Olympics is more intense and people are by far the buying into mutilating children in the support of their political affiliation something I never would have thought possible just four years ago. All of this, of course, being flogged by a corrupted media ecosystem that's strong on narrative, absent on actual fact checking or fact gathering Just all about clickbait.
Speaker 2:So come and talk with others on the Common Bridge and look, today things are crazier If you look in the news. Today we're on the verge of losing our justice system, the one that protects everyone listening, reading or watching, no matter how much you might hate one of the central players. It's not worth giving up an honest justice system. And look, let's be frank about where the political parties are. All they're trying to do is defeat the other political party because they think there's only room for two. In fact, there's a party right now saying, hey, it would not be in the pursuit of democracy to allow a third party like no names to come in Interesting logic.
Speaker 2:You've got crazy elements inside the Republican Party. They get most of the press and, frankly, cause most of the problem. The Democrats, frankly, are corrupt. They're pressing for a single party power. You see that everywhere. It's evidence. I'm going to talk about that in just a minute. The media infrastructure is more decrepit than it's ever been.
Speaker 2:But look on the upside. We know a lot about the romance between a football player and a singer. Over on the Republican side you've got Donald Trump. He's still flailing, still failing. He's not a competent chief executive. He is a loudmouth promoter, not a lot of follow up, attacks people as soon as he doesn't think they're in his camp. But if you're wondering what his appeal is, just keep listening or reading or viewing this particular episode and frankly spoiler note his remaining popularity is due to the Democratic National Committee's focus on removing him instead of just running the government.
Speaker 2:Now, of course, this is being a fiercely nonpartisan show. I've got just a few notes here about the Democratic Party. Well, the Democratic Party sided with certified nut job Matt Gates to further disrupt the workings of Congress. But those in Colt Blue could not see the reality unfolding before their eyes. It was just a gleeful way to wreak havoc. They're not serious. On the upside, we went a whole day with no Democratic representative in the US House attempting to halt an official proceeding by activating a fire alarm. Weren't there a whole lot of people that arrested and did jail time for attempting to halt an official proceeding? Seems there are a lot of them.
Speaker 2:I don't understand the crickets now. Look, we have an administration in the White House today that has been censoring using the big tech platforms, and it's not just things they say are dangerous or disgusting, it's just wrong thing, and they've been proven that they've shut down actual science. They've shut down political dissent. We have more evidence growing of Joe Biden's involvement in the family business bank records of payoffs, and the goalpost keeps moving. Come on, everyone can see it, but I think the top are. Today, hillary Clinton, in a CNN interview, called for the formal deprogramming of the MAGA cult because they don't think right in her estimation. So she's saying out loud what President Biden seemed to propose in his infamous Philadelphia speech of September 2022.
Speaker 2:Now we still have the First Amendment at least for a while, I hope and what are we going to be able to do with that? Well, we've seen right now the fusing of this trials by media. It's appalling. The NBC legal analyst apparently can no longer be relied on for getting people amped up. They've had so many actual defeats in the courtroom. But to make matters worse, these legal analysts now are saying you know, these cases that are chasing Trump right now they're not a slam dunk and they're possibly even an acquittal. So in the latest tragedy in our justice system as it dies, the New York Attorney General, leticia James, is tweeting out videos of her spin on the day's events in court in front of a judge who's already ruled on the central issue and that judge not allowing other testimony to come in. It's completely unprofessional. It cements the notion that this is not justice but more of the latest in a made for media charade, and everyone cheering on will be really surprised when they look to the justice system to protect them someday it won't be there.
Speaker 2:Our media model, of course, descended its relentless tribalism, perpetuating the notion that people want to be categorized by their ancestral identities or the pigment of their skin. But we've had other voices in there Adam Coleman, I've talked about the notion of big developments with significant implications and other lies and, of course, ml Elrick on this show this year. In the meantime, our issues remain unresolved and firearms attacking a specific product, one that could be effective against tyranny, versus, you know, like the nine millimeter handgun that's so prevalent in the destruction of urban youth but the common bridge we've had gun experts like Ryan Busey on, and activists that are seeking to quell the root cause of violence, like zoe kennedy and like Adam Coleman. In recent weeks. Abc's David Muir interviewed US Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens, recently appointed, and quote from Mr Owens it's as bad as I've ever seen it. Our system is overwhelmed. Smugglers bring in narcotics, fentanyl, bulk cash, weapons, people of interest, hardened criminals, gang members, convicted sexual predators. Now this sounds like Donald Trump's stump speech from 2016. It's now being uttered by a biden appointee, and we've had immigration experts on the Common Bridge and I think most Americans can see what a fair, compassionate and just immigration solution would look like. And in fact, today Joe Biden has decided that flights to Caracas instead of New York City might be a better way to treat illegal border crossers from Venezuela. And now he wants to build a wall or says he's gotta build a wall because he can't stop a wall being built. Come on, you guys have one job protect the border, geez, as Oklahoma County, michigan Sheriff Mike Bouchard is warning his residents, particularly the wealthy criminals he says are coming from outside the United States to burgo high-end homes. He detailed the crimes and he implores Congress to secure the border, fix the immigration system and quote do your damn job, just do your job. But listen, bouchard is a Republican, so despite his impressive track record as a public servant, his voice counts for little. And Eric Adams is treated as a strange artifact for calling out the calamities in America's largest city due to illegal immigration. The reporting tried to treat him as a Republican, but we know how that works in New York City.
Speaker 2:On to other things. We're confusing this shit out of our youth. For God's sakes, let them have teen angst and navigate puberty. The notion that sex assigned at birth is a capricious choice, and not doctors, nurses and others with science credentials determining what that sex is. It's just utter nonsense. Look, the rare cases of hermaphroditism are easily distinguishable from the mass sudden onset gender dysphoria. And beneath the wave of imaginary gender dysphoria is a sea of autism, depression, anxiety and other treatable mental and emotional disorders. Yet our government ignores the people and pivots to permanent destruction of the victims without their parents' knowledge. Now, look, you can't blame people for challenging the obvious, like sex and gender. We've just got more information, evidence that Dr Fauci was frankly just making up things and calling it the science.
Speaker 2:This is getting very little attention. The efficacies of mask none. The actual benefits of the mRNA vaccines and the obvious origins of the pandemic seem to be topics that are out of bounds, and that's why people don't trust those folks that we've elected. But they keep pushing the button for the Democrats or the Republicans and they keep consuming the same media sources. Now do we need another phyledomide crisis or a round of lobotomy butchering to get us off this train? Come on, we're better than that, and just recently there was a recruitment at a Grace Hopper event. Grace Hopper, of course, had Icon and Early Computing. It was to give women opportunities with some of the big tech companies. That was invaded by men who said, hey, we're non-binary, so we belong here and, frankly, nobody could question them because we know, we've been told, gender is fluid, so they wanna get in the door. They're non-binary. Tonight buying cocktails, maybe they're male, who knows?
Speaker 2:So what are we gonna do about this at the Common Bridge? First of all, we're gonna go deeper on topics, on critical issues like housing, crime, education and opportunity. Probably fewer episodes, but more intensity, and our intensity is gonna go to our humanness, our spiritual base that unites all human beings. We're calling out the nonsense. I'll be spending some other time with projects like audiobooks and connection to the wisdom of indigenous peoples. We're gonna keep up our analysis of voting systems, abuse of power and election coverage, and we're gonna try to do that without being one more partisan voice.
Speaker 2:There will be the popular analytical pieces. We'll raise the curious questions, like I'd like to know why did the Ukrainian president, whose people are getting killed in large numbers by one of the most powerful armies in the world, use his time at the United Nations to talk about uniting the world to fight not the Russians, but the climate change? There might be a good reason for that. I don't know. I haven't found one. Maybe there is one, but right now it looks like the best way to fight climate change is to get on a private plane, fly halfway around the world or get on a yacht and burn a decade's worth of carbon while telling other people to stay home and stay cold. I think that's the formula right now. We can do better. We can get to renewable sources, but I'd like to see the answer. I want to see the plan. What's the plan to get there? How are people going to be able to afford it? What's life going to be like? What can you do?
Speaker 2:Reject the false binary of Democrats versus Republicans. Let the professional politicians and those people that are the fan boys and girls, or van people, decide whether John Federman or Mitch McConnell is more cognitively compromised. Demand policy answers. Reject the horrible scare tactics that pass for reporting, whether it's on some media outlet or on a social media platform, and reject fact checking that is really thought, compliance or opinion, and finally be unafraid to speak up. It's going to be okay. And when you do speak up, do it with love, do it with concern, do it with care for your neighbor, for care for your country, care for this world. We can make this a better place if we unite in discussion, and that's what the Common Bridge is about. I look forward to season five. Again, I thank you for your listenership, viewership, readership and especially your subscriptions. We do appreciate the support for the costs that go into making this program and, as we look forward to season five of the Common Bridge. This is your host, rich. Helpy signing off.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us on the Common Bridge. Subscribe to the Common Bridge on substackcom or use their Substack app, where you can find more interviews, columns, videos and nonpartisan discussions of the day. Just search for the Common Bridge. You can also find the Common Bridge on Mission Control Radio or your Radio Garden app. I hope you have a great, wonderful weekend and carefully just relax for a few minutes and bye.