Friendly Fire: Promiscuity, Newsom’s DEI Insanity & Conspiracy Nuts

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War at war.

We can't travel.

There's a ton of corruption coming out of California.

I weirdly agree with AOC on something and the nation debates whether or not you should

call your wife a whore to strangers on the internet.

This is friendly fire.

I should mention too, by the way, we have coming on to talk about the corruption out of California

with original reporting.

We have the great, the one and only Chris Rufo, who I believe is beaming in from whatever

undercover activity he's engaged in, gentlemen.

Good to see you.

Good to see you.

Good to see you.

Good to see you too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Are we going to be joined by the biblical prostitute Rahab?

Yeah.

We're going to discuss the merits of prostitution.

I wish we were the experience.

The prostitute thing, what I love about it, she wasn't actually prostitute.

She was barely just promiscuous according to this tweet that now has 27 million impressions.

What I love about it though.

27 million.

So it actually gives him context, Michael, so people know what the hell you're talking about.

All right, all right.

This tweet kind of need the context.

It's from a guy named Trevor Sheetz and he's, I'm not going to read the whole thing.

It's just like a manifesto.

But he says, and what's going to viral is, my wife was formerly promiscuous.

I was a virgin.

She was then radically born again, committed to church, evangelized constantly, all good.

Then he goes, Puritan books in her bedroom, okay, that's not a friend of mine said that

Thanksgiving's a real holiday in the UK, because it's when they got rid of the Puritans,

but whatever.

We'll move past that.

Prayer journals, grief over past sexual sin, et cetera, we got to know each other.

We got marriage.

She's purer than most virgins now, because biblical purity has less to do with the

past and with the future.

We're too quick to forget the story of the woman labeled as a known sinner or prostitute.

It goes on and on about Christ's redemption.

We all agree.

That's really wonderful.

Yes, the devil whispers in our ears says, sin doesn't really matter.

The minute we do it, he tells us, we'll never get past it.

We're bogged down in our shame.

We can be redeemed.

We can cooperate with God's grace.

Should you really, should you really call your wife a whore?

You have to tell everybody who your wife slept with, first of all, this girl was terrific,

by the way.

I just was.

I'm glad she's been saved, but I have, I have such fond memories.

He's like, you know, that's why it has 27 million hits.

It's all those guys come in.

Oh, yeah.

And then you put a picture of her up to, which is just terrible, because then it's like,

not only is she a whore.

Here's what she looks like.

Yeah.

That's really, that's quite terrible.

I hate that.

I hate that so much.

Like if she were going to tell that story about how she redeemed herself and it made her

marriage better, you know, pure enough, but like, I'm sorry, dude, unless you got like

explicit permission from your wife to unearth every aspect of her past that she's humiliated

by.

Yeah.

I just can't imagine, can you imagine any other sin where you would just do this to your

wife?

Like, my wife, you know, she used to be, she used to sell drugs to kids.

It's really like the best, like incredible way, just like she picked up for me.

Like, she used to children.

Yeah.

My wife used to do drugs.

But now she still does, but she also used to do them too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do not like, do not like and that's an overshare.

That is a big overshare.

And yeah.

A big overshare.

Yeah.

They put us in the position of being like the older brother and the prodigal son thing where

we're bitter that, you know, she's been forgiven, but we're not.

We just don't know about it.

That's all.

I also, you know, it seems to me, yes, it's good to let people know, especially in our depraved

culture that there's redemption.

You can accept, you know, God's love, cooperate with Christ and that's all very important to

tell people.

But we also owe each other discretion, I think, you know, we owe each other the grace of

moving on sometimes, you know, you owe your children maybe something, your future children

to say, hey, we don't want, you know, you call on mommy a whore on the internet, you

know, like don't we, isn't there really a time and a place?

Isn't there actually, isn't there almost greater sanctity in just carrying some of these

crosses privately?

I get it.

If a porn star or something, repents, obviously this is already public and you can talk

about it.

But if it's just like Shelley was a bit of a bicycle, you know, then maybe just keep

it to yourself.

I don't know.

We keep it a little relatively, totally agree with this, totally agree with this.

By the way, a bit of Jewish law, if somebody converts to Judaism, you're not allowed to talk

about their past before they were Jewish unless they want to talk about it.

You're supposed to be because, yeah, yeah, so when you say that somebody's a convert

to Judaism, you're not even in the community supposed to say they were a convert to Judaism.

That's up to them if they want to talk about it because there's a baseline assumption

that once you hear about somebody's past, you're going to judge them differently in

the present, which I think is true.

Like now that you see her walking around church, I mean, don't think of a pink elephant

gang, right?

Yeah.

If she's walking around the church and it's like, well, what do I know about this lady?

Well, I know a few things and she know many things.

Yeah.

It's unfortunate.

Just awkward.

It puts a lot of images in the mind, though I am thinking whenever I really pick the crime,

whatever like the big crime that I commit is, I don't know, whether it's insider trading,

whether it's triple homicide, whatever.

And then I just, I have that pocket Yamaha ready to go and, you know, right when they're

about to give it, I say, no, that was my past life show, oh, we're done with that.

It's Mikael now.

Sorry, Ben, yeah.

Oh, yeah, no, I was actually just going to say this is not the best suite of the week.

The best suite of the week remains that story of the man with no arms and no legs who

somehow was a cornhole champion, but also achieved the signal feed of driving a car and

also shooting a man well driving a car.

And I did tell a story to my kids and I said, kids, don't you ever tell me that you can't

accomplish anything in this life?

It was New York news writing of the highest caliber and whereas you make the point, Ben,

you know, now you got images in your mind of this lady because of what her husband wrote.

I still don't have the image in my head of the quadriplegic, midget murderer, whatever

that I don't, I can't figure out very stupid chicken nugget in my head is sort of what

I'm, anyway, I don't, I don't know if everyone realizes this speaking of religion, but the

passion of the Christ, one of the greatest movies ever made is now streaming on Daily

Wire Plus.

You can watch, this is the movie to watch during Holy Week, we're in Passion Tide, Up

Deaster, with Easter coming up in just 12 days, feels like the right time to talk about

why this film still matters.

So I will be joining my friend's Mount Walsh and Isabelle Brown for a real discussion

about it, what it meant then, what it means now.

I'm afraid the other Catholic, Anglo-Catholic, and Jew of the Daily Wire are not invited.

No, I actually think you might have been invited and just didn't, weren't able to make

it up.

But in any case, a few of you are going to be in the room with us, not just watching,

but actually sitting with us being part of the conversation.

If you join Daily Wire Plus right now, you will be automatically entered, if you're already

a member of congratulations, you are entered, details are at dailywire.com slash passion.

So we bring on, is this enough babbling about paraplegics and prostitutes?

Yeah, is that, can we bring on Chris?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I just have to ask one question, I have to ask

a question.

How was he able to accomplish this if he had already been unarmed?

You can never do that.

You can never do that.

I know you are from me here.

Anyway, thank you all for joining Friendly Fire.

We'll see you next week.

We're joined now by Christopher Rubo, who pains me to talk about something substantive

on this show at all, but I believe you've done some original reporting, Chris, to unveil

left wing corruption.

Is that right?

Yeah.

That's right.

I'm spending the next year plus looking into corruption in California.

So it is a very rich territory.

And to my surprise, it seems like nobody has been looking into it at all.

So we're starting to find some great stories of waste.

They spend $100 million on a bridge for monarch butterflies.

San Francisco is giving money to nonprofits that specialize in providing massage therapy

for black criminals.

A lot of things are happening in California that we're finding out.

Is it more than a year?

You're going to need a bigger note pad, I think.

This is the kind of the follow up to, well, you had uncovered a lot of corruption in Minneapolis.

And then Nick Shirley and other people went really viral going out taking videos of this.

This was a major, major news story.

I thought this would be very helpful in the midterms to Republicans.

Now I'm not sure if anything will be helpful to Republicans in the midterms, but we can

analyze that in a moment.

But I'm not really seeing a lot about this.

I mean, I obviously follow you very closely, Chris, but shouldn't this be a bigger story?

It should, but I think it just really depends on who is able to do it.

So to her credit, Barry Weiss has forced CBS news to do some of this reporting, which

is seems kind of odd and out of place for a major news network to be looking into Democrat

corruption.

There are some people that are looking at it behind the edges, but the reality is that those

of us on the right do not have the same kind of media apparatus that the left does.

And I think, of course, daily wire is adding investigative reporting.

We're adding it at Manhattan Institute.

But it's going to take a bit more to uncover the corruption and turn it into these stories.

The good news is, as we did in Minnesota with the Somali fraud, sometimes these stories

can catch the public imagination in a way that has real political consequences.

And so my own personal goal, I'll share it here, is to do to Gavin Newsom in California

what we did to Tim Walls in Minneapolis.

I think it's possible.

And certainly California is providing a lot of opportunity to do so.

Chris, I do have to ask about the mind of butterflies.

Yeah.

What is my question too?

It's my question too.

Yeah, the bridge, so it's something we looked into.

It's actually in Los Angeles, the governor unveiled this splashy project about five years

ago, to create a bridge for cougars, butterflies, and other small critters over the 101 freeway,

over this kind of 10 lane interchange.

And so in other countries, in other states even, these things cost between five and ten

million dollars.

In California though, it's cost about a hundred and fourteen million dollars.

They're behind schedule.

There's really no end in sight.

They put a radical environmentalist in charge of the project who wears like bright pink

construction gear.

She carries around a stuffed animal of a cougar.

And they're doing stuff that's actually kind of amazing.

It's a public-private partnership where they have Native Americans performing sacred

Indigenous rituals for this over gods.

They're actually, they're sacrificing human hair, native tobacco.

They're looking for magical mushrooms.

They dispatch some environmentalists for months and months and months to find seeds in sacred

solitude.

The whole thing is like an episode of Portlandia, but then you realize, no, this is just how

California builds its infrastructure.

Oh, not just a little confused Chris, because I thought all the cougars in LA hung out at

the W Hotel, waiting for those hunky athletes to come on by, maybe buy them a drink.

But you're saying that the bridge is not in downtown Hollywood.

This is somewhere in the hills or something.

Yeah, no, no, it's not the cougars at the Whole Foods in Venice.

This is a different kind of cougar.

It's a mountain lion and even that is kind of amazing.

You actually look at aerial shots of this bridge.

They're building a bridge from this kind of untouched wildlands where the cougar has a natural

habitat.

And then they're building the bridge into a suburban neighborhood.

So in some ways it's like some environmentalist version of the purge where they're letting

these cougars into this neighborhood filled with pets and children and elderly people.

Look, in general, cougar attacks are rare, but they have been increasing over the years.

And there was a story in LA.

They have these inbred cougars in the Griffith Observatory area that have been attacking

pets kind of chomping on, on, on fighter the dog.

So it may be in our future.

It may be some kind of depopulation scheme time will tell.

They're even dogs that actually have a bridge right now.

Do you think that any of this will actually hurt Newsom because I think he's probably

in the lead right now for the Democrat nomination.

He's already leaning in to one of the attacks that we've made about him in recent years,

which is that he looks just like Patrick Bateman and acts like Patrick Bateman and probably

chops up hookers and halves as the minister is allegedly.

I know we have to say allegedly, but he leaned into it and he posted this picture where

it's half the Bateman's face and half his face.

And I don't know, I get the impression that he is now comfortable as the front runner.

So I think you're totally right to do some actual productive right wing operative work

and try to take this guy down because I think he's the biggest threat.

But does anyone care he's such a failure if he's already the top of the heap, it just seems

like nothing's going to take him down.

Look, I don't think a stylistic critique will work.

And in fact, what we're seeing with Gavin Newsom is the same thing we're seeing with

the young looks, Max, or clavicular, where you're focusing on his physical appearance or

his mannerisms or his aesthetic appeal, you're not going to win with Gavin Newsom because

look, we'll admit it, you know, as some four very heterosexual men, Gavin Newsom is

a handsome guy, he's a charismatic guy, he has some kind of magnetic appeal.

And look, like 50 shades of gray is a popular novel for a reason.

I think he'd do very well with the women's vote on that.

But I think what does have a chance to really damage him is if we can show definitively

that what he's done in California is a disaster on an unprecedented scale.

And so my team right now is finishing a report which should come out in the coming weeks

where we're tallying not just billions or tens of billions of dollars in fraud, but potentially

hundreds of billions of dollars that has disappeared from the California state budget.

Enduring Newsom's tenure.

And so look, Americans, they like their Teflon politicians from Bill Clinton to someone

like Donald Trump.

I think highlighting that doesn't work, but I think highlighting and documenting

concretely the disaster that Newsom has yielded in California could be, as we saw with

Tim Walls, the thing that finally kind of tips the public opinion over the edge.

Are you guys still have a question that way, there's one thing I've always wondered,

you know, this happens in California, happened when I lived there way, way back in the day.

They send the money for a bullet train, for instance.

The thing never gets built.

I mean, not a single rail is laid.

Where does that money go?

Where does the money go?

Nobody ever see, there's not a single reporter ever seems to ask the question,

where do these billions of dollars disappear too?

Who is, who's banking them?

It's a really interesting question.

And so there's kind of the direct beneficiary and the indirect beneficiary.

So let's talk about Medi-Cal, which is California's health care system for the poor.

During his time in office, Gavin Newsom has almost doubled public expenditure on Medi-Cal.

It's something now like $200 billion a year in public spending in California,

which is bigger than the GDP of many, many countries around the world.

We know from government estimates that between 10% and 25% of Medi-Cal is lost to outright fraud.

Criminals who take that money and in many cases send it overseas.

And so you're asking, well, what interest does someone like Gavin Newsom or State Democrats

have in allowing this to continue?

And that's where you get the indirect beneficiary.

One of the most powerful unions in California is, of course,

the union of health care workers, which is trying to pass this wealth tax

which has tens of thousands of members that benefit from the system being

engorged with public funds.

And so in many ways, the unions see this as a form of corruption that simply expands the pie.

And then they get a cut of that.

They forward that cut, part of that cut to the Democrat politicians in the legislature,

to the governor's reelection campaigns.

And all of this money, oftentimes at arms length, not directly but indirectly,

it really pays the bills and greases this corruption wheel.

And the Democrats know that there's no political opposition, there's no media opposition,

there's no activist opposition.

They have virtually total control, like a Mexican one-party state system over California,

that they can operate a massive fraud scheme with impunity.

Everybody gets paid and all they have to do is just keep that lid on the pot,

keep the corruption at a simmer, and hope that it doesn't boil over.

What do you make? So Newsom, I think, is still in the lead.

That's what a lot of this is all about.

What do you make of the other potential candidates?

So like AOC, who I think is seriously talked about as a presidential candidate,

she comes out this past week and says something that a lot of conservatives agree with.

She criticizes all the various betting market sites and even sports gambling,

and just the now very pervasive gambling, even when gambling was very restricted until recently.

And she said, this is sad, I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this.

That's not a left-wing position, it's one that can cross party lines, it's kind of interesting,

it actually deals with moral questions.

Is that, does she really believe it? Is it just a sincere thing?

Is it a cynical play? Is it about the presidential race? What's it about?

Yes, Ben, tell me why you said it's about.

I think maybe yes, but I'd like to hear from Ben.

Okay, so I think that the only reason that she's calling out the betting markets and

the future is markets, right? The reason that she's doing that is because there are prominent

Republican figures who are associated with some of our sponsors and are associated with sites

like, for example, Calgary. That is the real reason that she's doing this.

This is why the Democrats have decided that, for example, Elon Musk was bad, he used to be good.

This is why they've all the sudden mobilized against crypto,

like that that sort of used to be a bipartisan thing crypto and then it turned into Democrats.

Hey, crypto, basically anytime anybody who's a prominent Republican figure is associated with

anything, they suddenly swivel and they turn and they hit that thing.

And so I do not think that a woman like AOC who believes that if we just shovel money at people,

like we just take money and we shovel it at them, that we can't do that because the people are

going to be too stupid and they're going to gamble it. That does not fit within her sort of

purview of how the world works. Name another aspect of consumption that AOC is dramatically

against. There's not a single one that you can name where she says, this is a thing you should,

like prostitution, drugs, alcohol, like name a thing that AOC believes there should not be a market

for. The only thing she believes there should not be a market for is like a prediction market.

And the only reason she's saying that is because of course, Don Jr is associated with prediction

markets. I think it's that simple. Of course, you're disagreeing. Yeah, I mean, I think certainly

that's probably part of it. And what we've seen over the last five years, really accelerating

the last one or two years, is that the tech industry has shifted or at least split. And there are

certain industries, as Ben mentioned, of course, SpaceX, crypto, prediction markets,

in other parts of the tech industry where it seems to be kind of right-coded,

Palantir is another company. And so yeah, would she want to undermine the power of these

cash-generating machines that seem to support her political enemies? Yes. But I think it's also

just a kind of antipathy towards kind of bro culture in general. And so I think there may be some

non-cynical but simply kind of personal and authentic hatred for it because, look, young men and

young white men in particular have been complaining for a number of years, sometimes in an exaggerated

way, sometimes with some reason that they've been locked out of prestige institutions. There was

that great essay and compact, the lost generation about how white men had been frozen from ivy leagues,

from media, from other prestige occupations. And one interesting wrinkle in that piece is they've

found that they can harness their talents, make money, make a reputation in these new emergent

industries. And so I think she does not like the idea of young white men founding companies,

making money, having some cultural prestige, she wants to shut it down. And so maybe there's

a bit of both, but I don't think it's necessarily entirely cynical.

You know, I wonder too if there's a break in here for just a minute, guys, because I have to say

this, you know, I haven't got much time, so I just want to talk about dying, which I think is

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fire. You know, there's one angle on the AOC thing that I think it might marry this sincere

with the the insincere, which is, you know, gambling used to be a wedge on the right. In many

ways, I think it still is. I was given a speech at an Alabama think tank like six, seven years ago,

and a real hot topic of debate was whether or not to legalize the state lottery. You know,

the lottery used to be run by the mob in New York. It was the numbers game that the mafia ran,

and then in the 60s, 70s, 80s, they started to liberalize it. But I mean, I think it was Mississippi,

I think, only legalized the lottery in 2019. So it's still this live issue whether to what degree we

should regulate gambling. And so if I'm AOC, I'm looking at the right and I say, what's the good wedge

issue going to be? That's one of them that could, even if it doesn't advance me, it can get my

opponents fighting. We on the right used to do that to the left with Israel because Israel was a

wedge issue there. Now, I think the whole left is basically anti-Israel, but a little bit on the

right too. But that was just one where you think, even if, even if I don't want to talk about the

substance of this issue, I at least want my enemies to be fighting each other. I could see a little bit,

I mean, she's a pretty sophisticated operative, even if, you know, she doesn't have a whole lot of

book learning. It's a difficult question because when you, when you ban vice, the mob does take it

over. That is what happens. And the libertarian side of the right is always like, why can't people

decide to gamble? I myself, I kind of edged toward banning vice, you know, I think that it's just,

it's just bad. It's better for society to say it's no good. You know, AOC, she can't possibly be

sincere about this because she's the one who tweeted out to prostitutes, sex work is work,

which is the same thing their pimps are telling them. So I think she obviously does not care about

vice. So, you know, the left is always happy for you to destroy yourself. The only way they want

you to be free is in ways that make you a slave. They want you to have all the sex you want because

ultimately that won't slave you, all the drugs and all of that stuff. So I got to say that Ben

has got a very, very convincing case here on this because I just don't see her being sincere

suddenly about one vice that we shouldn't ban. I'm looking forward to a time when, when both parties

are sort of authentically themselves as opposed to this sort of picking and choosing of the issues.

So, you know, AOC here, I wish the Democrats would just say the thing they mean. The Democrats

are fine with gambling. They're not trying to, like, if you've made the proposal that welfare

dollars come with a proviso that you cannot use them on lottery tickets, which seems to me,

by the way, a totally legitimate proviso. Democrats would oppose that. It would 100% oppose that.

And that's our taxpayer dollars and they would oppose that. So the idea that suddenly she's very,

very anti the, you know, futures markets or whatever. She's very against prediction markets.

I just find that totally unconvincing. But this is kind of where we are in a nihilistic political

world where neither side will just say the thing it actually believes instead they look for that wedge

issue and they just try to ram a fist into the wedge issue without any belief system to back it.

Like, do I really think that if AOC had the power to ban lotteries or ban gambling that you'd

actually do it? Michael, she's opposing it for a very different reason than you're opposing it.

Let's get it out way. I do not trust her motivations there. So yeah, I mean, again, I think that

that is totally insincere. But I think that that is the rules of the road for the Democrats at

this point is utter insincereity on every topic. Yeah, that's true. But, you know, I get it. Look,

yes, I think you're right. I totally agree with you. The problem is, though, wedge issues are a

lot of fun and we all love playing with them. And what's weird today is that like every issue seems

to be a wedge issue, even down, even down to the Iran war, which is we're now in our third week

of the Iran war. The American right is still quite supportive of it. I think it's still 90 percent

or slight, slightly below that support. Nationally, most Americans are against it and seem to be

increasingly against it. I fear that that overwhelming right wing support is soft. I fear that if

something goes catastrophically wrong, it's not going to dip a little bit. I think it's going to

swing very suddenly. Everyone agrees they want this thing wrapped up quickly. And I could, you know,

talk about futures markets. It could really mess up the economy globally. It could really mess

up Republican's chances in the midterms. And I don't really know, you know, the podcast class is

anti-Iran war. The voters tend to seem to be pretty pro-Iran war. But this seems to me like the

biggest time bomb, bomb, I guess, being appropriate here for the midterm elections. I don't

know. Chris, am I, you're the most operative of any of us here? Am I misreading that?

I mean, look, a couple of things. So first off, if they are able to conclude the war and move on

in a matter of weeks or a single-digit amount of months, people will forget by the midterms.

Politics operates on media cycles like up until that last moment. And so, you know, when the

president goes to McDonald's when they have the eating the cats and dogs memes, I mean, we're

talking about the October surprise. And so the public will make a late breaking decision. And if the

war is still in the news then, I think it's potentially catastrophic. If the war is out of the

news, they'll make a decision on a different basis. But the general tide and the general

thermostatic effect of midterms when there's a three-part control of government for one political

party suggests that Trump is going to be, you know, kind of wiped out at least in the house.

I think that's still probably the best bet. But this, and this gives certainly some new uncertainty.

And my big fear is that that uncertainty can spiral out into a number of different directions.

A couple of those would be very concerning that you've outlined. And I guess the other side of

the question, and I've asked this to Hawks over the last few weeks, haven't got a sufficient answer.

But is what does victory look like? How do we know when we've won? And what do we get if we've won?

And is it so kind of clearly and significantly better than the status quo anti prior to hostilities

that voters will reward the president? Again, you should never analyze these solely on political

considerations. But I think both the substance and the perception to me on that other side of

the issue are still a bit hazy. The administration hasn't quite articulated them as I see.

I agree with you with you on this case. I think it's, let me just, because I want to hear you

here, but it's just, I think that the time bomb analogy is a good one. I thought this for a while.

I think Trump is about two weeks, really, to come up with something that looks like victory.

And I think that whatever he does, of course, the press is going to call it defeat if he, you know,

if they actually have regime change and an angel comes in and runs ran in a moral way and turns

over all of their plutonium, it's still going to be some, they'll still find a way to sell it as a

loss. But I think that the one thing that I would like to see and I think that I think he could do

pretty quickly is if he buries even deeper, the buried, you know, nuclear material that they have,

which he could do with a bombing raid, I think that's going to be his last, the last thing he wants to

do. But I think in the meantime, the idea that they're going to get regime change, I mean,

they are hanging people in the streets very tough for those people to mobilize an actual rebellion

with the way they're killing people. The Israelis have done a great job of killing off their

security forces, but still they're just a brutal, brutal, terroristic regime and they're

willing to hold on to it that way. I do not know if we can take control of the

straight of four moves, but I just, it's a nightmare to me to think of our troops going in there.

It is so easy. The thing about the military, love the military. I love the military,

but they're a hammer and everything looks like a nail and they're always going to come back to

the president and say, if we just do one more thing, this is going to be fine. I just think,

I think he's done a noble thing. I think he did a brave thing. I think he did the right thing,

but I think it's a time game. I think at some point the time runs out.

I mean, obviously, I think that everybody has their eye on the calendar and that's what

the polls show is that the American people are supportive of this so long as as Chris says

this last month and it doesn't last four months. Obviously, Chris is also right that if we're

talking about this at election time, it's going to be a terrible thing for the president and

for the party. I think there are a couple things that are happening here. One is a political

thing and one is a not political thing. The not political thing is that I think President Trump

looks at his presidency and he says, this is the last chance for America to actually end this

threat because post his presidency, the chances are very good that whoever succeeds him is going

to be incredibly soft on this issue and then Iran is going to rebuild. It's going to

remobilize. It's going to take additional control. So if you don't like what Iran is doing in

the straight of Hormuz now, wait until they have ICBMs tipped with nuclear missiles.

I mean, like that is the thing that I think President Trump is correctly saying on a moral level,

that's why I think it is quite brave. What are you doing? As far as what does victory looks like?

I think that there are sort of two things that we have to look at. What does not defeat look like?

And then what does victory look like? I don't think those are quite the same thing. Not defeat

looks like the straight of Hormuz is at least relatively open. Even if people are paying small

bribes to the Iranian government to move through, the oil starts moving again. Iranian government

is tremendously weakened. They don't have enough money to actually pay their IRGC members.

Any year from now, the regime collapses, which I think is all very much within the realm of

possibility given the fact that again, the entire top level of the regime has been completely destroyed.

There are missile facilities have been destroyed. Their drone facilities have been destroyed.

Their nuclear facilities will be destroyed before this is over. And so the question is sort of a

timeline one. We may see a delayed victory in that sense. A not defeat would be that we do all

those things. And then the straight of Hormuz is at least passable and that is a not defeat.

A clear victory would be something where we all get to cheer on the streets. And that would be,

for example, the president takes Harga Island, the IRGC completely runs out of money. The people

go out in the streets and they take over, right? That's a clear victory. I think that's like a 20%

possibility. I don't think it's an 80% possibility. I think it's a 20% possibility. I think the regime

being on such unstable footing with the rest of the regimes in the area allied against them.

Because that's actually what's happened right now is the entire Gulf region is now against

the Iranians, all of them. And so because of that, Iran is now more isolated than it literally

ever has been. They have less revenue coming in than they literally ever have. They have less

control on a street by street basis than they have for 50 years. They have less weaponry in

terms of forward mobilization than they have in 50 years. And they have fewer terrorist proxies

capable of doing serious damage than they have in 50 years. Is that a victory for the United States?

It is a victory in a broader sense. Is it the kind of thing where you can like run around with

a big newspaper that says, you know, we win? I don't think so. But again, if we get that latter

situation, which I think is probably like a 75% possibility, actually, if we get that and then

president Trump walks away, I think that's a win for the United States. I think it's a win for

the world. And even if he doesn't get the political credit, he deserves for it. He will get that

credit, or he should via history if the regime ends up falling a year or two years from now.

But then Ben, to Chris's point, if he says, all right, you know, what can we bring to voters

to say see the intervention was worth it? If the real victory here, you know, we install

Mark, I told Rubio and he, you know, he takes over and it's all great. If you say that, look,

there's 20% chance that that happens more likely. But, you know, probably best case scenario,

we just have not defeat and we can go to voters and say, hey, look, we went into Iran and we blew up

a bunch of stuff. But then they closed the straight-of-war moves, which could have been a complete

disaster in perpetuity. But we got the straight-of-war moves reopened again. And your gas prices

are going to come down hopefully before November. Please reward us at the ballot box. Is that,

I don't think it's, I don't think it's, so this is what the thing. I think that what Trump is doing

is a thing that nobody has recognized in American politics for literally decades. He's doing a

politically brave thing. Yes. I know the one I'm allowed to talk about politically brave things

right now. Yes. But this is a politically brave thing because what he is doing is he is saying,

listen, even if it costs me at the ballot box, even if my party doesn't do as well, if I get this

threat neutralized for the foreseeable future, that is worth a few losses. And to me, that makes it

more brave actually than, because here's the problem that I have with this sort of logic, Michael.

There is literally no war that you can fight short of a full-scale regime change war.

Short of that, there's no war that you can fight that resonates to the American public as a victory,

which means that you end up in a position where you're gradually seating territory to literally

every enemy because we're not going to regime change China. We're not going to regime change

Russia. We're not even regime changing really Venezuela. We kind of regime behavior changed

Venezuela. And so if the idea here is that the only way to win a victory is to win a full-scale

victory, the result of that will be a breaking of the American hegemony over the rest of the world

in the name of political gain. I think President Trump is actually fighting back against that.

And so even in my 75% scenario, that is what's best for America, even if it's not what's best for

the Republican party in the midterm elections, by the way, again, I think if we get that 75%

scenario, that's assuming the war is going to be over in the next six weeks. So I don't think that

that's the thing people are talking about in November anyway. I think they're going to be talking

about the economy. Speaking of which, will he visit Iran before the end of the year? This is

the open question over at Kalshi. Kalshi has a shock shockingly apparently 11% of people believe

that President Trump is going to visit Iran before the end of the year. That would be a midterm

campaign stop for sure. They're one of our sponsors obviously. They also, by the way, are saying

Tulsi Gabbard out as Director of National Intelligence 60% prediction. She does not make it

into August. I thankfully agree with that. I think Tulsi Gabbard is on her way out as DNI,

especially given the shenanigans of Joe Kent, who's making an absolute ridiculous fool of

himself right now. Anyway, back to the conversation. Well, actually, the Joe Kent,

at all does kind of tie in. But yes, Drew, you were making a point.

Yeah, I want to say that I think that what Ben is saying about the courage of Trump, the political

courage of Trump is absolutely true. And I think it is incredibly frustrating to have a press

which, as Chris says, still has a lot of power, more power than the right wing rebel media.

Selling this is if it were some kind of military catastrophe. And it's almost

comical to read. I read The New York Times every morning from my sins. And it's gotten to the point

where it actually makes me laugh out loud to watch what they call the news over there,

which is just one defeat for Trump in Iran after another. But still, still and all. I mean,

that is part of, you know, that is part of the way the electorate feels. And we do have to deal

with that because the people who are in the Democrat party are no longer the Democrat party of old.

They're no longer people who want to push the ball a little bit left of the 50 yard line.

They are full-scale anti-Americans. And it's, I feel like some kind of right wing nut when I say

this, except they keep proving it. There is nothing they will not do that puts this country last.

And they're attempt to destroy ice so that they can keep all the people that they came into the

country under Biden. The fact that they won't cover the murder of a young woman in Chicago by an

illegal alien because they don't want to put illegal aliens in bad, you know, odor. The fact that

they won't point out what Zora Mamdani is doing in New York. I mean, one of the most evil politicians

I've ever seen in this country because they're afraid of its being Islamophobic. This is a

party that is not for our country. And we have to keep them out of office as much as

is in the body. I totally agree with this. And obviously, you know, the political considerations

do matter. And I will say that what I'm afraid of is broader than just the Democratic party. I

think there is an America last segment of the body politic that I do think has infected a segment

of the right. I don't think it's a huge segment of the right, but it's certainly infected a segment.

I don't know what else to call it when Tucker Carlson is having on full-scale Chinese propaganda

to discuss why America needs to seed power to China. Well, this is the schmuck who's going around

declaring that the Illuminati run the world. I mean, this is literally who this guest was.

The kind of the rise on the right of this America last ideology where America is in a

various force in the world. And thus, its impact must be minimized. I don't want to conflate people

who are, you know, asking, I think, serious and decent questions about the war and where it ends.

That's a normal thing to do. And of course, we should do that because it's all a risk-reward scenario.

And how do you think it's going to turn out? That's a different thing from the idea that America has

done something morally evil in what it is doing right now, and that America, in joining with Israel,

to take down Iran's ballistic missile and nuclear facilities is doing something quite terrible.

And actually, what we really need is sharia law in American cities to make them cleaner and better.

Right? That seems to be a very different thing. I'm trying to believe that Ami Kozak has just

perfected his Tucker Carlson invitation. And that's, and there's no longer actually Tucker talking

to chapter. There's always been this kind of American opposition to America, probably the

clearest example is Jane Fond is sitting at the anti-aircraft in Vietnam. But you would sometimes

get some of that on the right now. Maybe it's a little more pronounced in more public aspects of

the right, even though it's a relatively small percentage. But the question that I have to ask is,

if I'm not trying to examine motives, if I'm not trying to get into the psychology of what's

prompting these kinds of attacks, is there a legitimate, is there a sincere reason that someone

would say, hey, we actually do have to seed a little bit of our international ambition.

You know, China's gotten too strong or America's lost the heart for these protracted military

conflicts because of Iraq and Afghanistan. Or we need to rethink how we do regime change.

So maybe we need more of the Venezuelan model where it's where you're not uprooting the whole

civil authority, but you're just putting a gun to the vice president's head and saying,

do what we want or will shoot you. You know, which I think has actually worked out very well.

Is there, sure, there are, there's always going to be a hanoi jane. But is there a sincere

and even admirable or respectable kind of restraint view on foreign policy?

Well, I mean, I think you can, I think you can make the argument that the sort of restrainer point

of view, which is, yes, America is losing ground. And therefore, we need to reconsolidate,

we need to restraint. And then we can try to reestablish a Germany because the world actually

is better with broader American power, sort of a more in sadness than in pleasure,

perspective at the possibility of multi-polarity. But that's not what I'm seeing from

what he's saying. That's right. And by the way, and by the way, I will say that, you know,

I don't want to get into psychology, but some of these people just appear to be nuts.

Okay, Joe Kent appears to me to be a nut job. Okay, Joe Kent is like how that schmuck ended up

at the national center for counterterrorism. Is the director of it? Is absolutely beyond me.

And I can do two things at once, totally respect his military and CIA service, and also believe

that guy's a cook in a nut and a schmuck. Because I mean, today he literally apparently said

that he would try to help out the defense of Tyler Robinson if called upon to do so in the

shooting of Charlie Kirk. I'm sorry. That's crazy. So he believes that is crazy. I haven't

followed it that closely. He believes that it was, he doesn't think that Robinson was the shooter.

Obviously, he thinks it was a foreign op. He thinks that there are nefarious outside actors.

And then there was this whole story about how Andrew Colvet of TPSA had texted him messages

concerning Israel and Charlie's relationship with pro-Israel donors. And he had texted that

to Joe Kent because they, they, he thought maybe it was relevant. And then somehow Candace Owens

ended up with those magical messages. And no one knows how, but it certainly was not from Andrew

Colvet. I mean, like the fact that he's under investigation, Joe Kent, for now leaking information,

classified information, which I almost certainly went to one of these podcasts,

you know, that, that is the part that's astonishing to me. I do think that we have to talk again.

It's not a podcast war thing to say that people who have high levels of influence in American life,

we should, if they're saying crazy and nutty things, maybe people should stop listening.

And also when you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're,

officials. I mean, he was a government official, but I will also say that they, they,

they, they, they almost staffed part of this administration directly from the guest list

of like the podcast pros. And you can't staff a good government this way. I'm sorry, you cannot.

Like you should not use Joe Rogan's guest list as your way of staffing an administration.

I mean, Joe Rogan was spending the last two days talking about Benjamin Netanyahu is dead.

And Erica Kirk has crazy eyes. Like well, there, there is a, a brain rot that is setting in.

And it has infused all the way up to the governmental level. That's the part that's scary.

I mean, Michael, the argument he made last week when, of course, he made all sorts of headlines

because we're beating the crap out of you and you're fighting us back. And it was, it was

fisticuffs all the way around the world. Yeah, the, the, the, the, the, uh,

agreed, but the, but the argument that then Michael was making that these are sort of the podcast

wars. That's a legitimate argument until you got to Joe Kent, right? Yeah, yeah.

We'll start talking to people where actually it's totally different. I, I agree. I totally,

right. And when those government officials are basically acting at the behest of podcast

hosts and podcast hosts are visiting the White House and, and shaping policy,

then you start to ask some serious questions about like who knows what when and why are they

there and who's staffing and like, well, one correction, one correction. I'm a strong defender of

podcast hosts visiting the White House. I think that's a very important pride and true tradition

that should continue. But, but, you know, I saw, I did see that Kent has denied that he was leaking,

but then you raise a question, okay, well, who leaked it? So obviously there, there's going to be

some kind of investigation. And, you know, I guess you could have a world in which the director of

counterterrorism center is indicted. I mean, you could, you know, this, this seems to be something

that's very impressed me a lot about this Trump administration, in particular, is there's been a

ton of unity, even among people who would seem to be rivals or vying for position. The Vice President

and the Secretary of State could both run for president. They seem to have a lot of unity. They're

unified with the president. This seems to be the first break where you say, okay, you have this

official who wasn't a super senior official, but he was there coming out. Now he's kind of running

against the administration. Are you going to see more of this? Is this the beginning of division

or are they going to run this guy out, investigate him, maybe indict him and then keep the team together?

Well, I think one of the things that you're seeing here that's really fascinating is that there's

a sort of, as the Trump administration draws into, you know, it's, it's sort of late stages,

right? We're three years away from a new president. As that happens, I think that Trump

staffed the administration figuring, hey, I'm the president. All these people work for me. They

can say whatever they want. In the end, I'm the one who makes the call. And then you have a bunch of

people in the administration who are gaming for their own political futures. And they recognize

that a very lucrative way of being able to to draw your own sort of political future is to break

away from the administration and be critical of the administration. That is an excellent way to

sort of launch your political career, which is why there's been all these rumors about, you know,

Tulsi Gabbard over a DNI because, of course, people widely perceive her to be at odds with the

president's foreign policy. She's sticking around for now, but I think that there are a lot of good

rumors that you probably will not stick around for for very long. And so I think you'll see more of

that as the administration gets later and people have their kind of next step. You're going to see

people start to use the administration as a stepping stone rather than as an umbrella. And I think

that could be a real problem. I want to get to more of this with all of you in a second. First,

you're reminded, by the way, daily wire plus members can chat live with both me and Michael Noles

in the middle of our show. That's a thing that we actually are doing now. So you don't just watch

the conversation. We want you to be a part of it. It's a thing like we'll actually stop in the middle

of the show and answer your questions in the middle of the show, interrupting our own thought

processes to make these things happen for you, the people. You can get answers right here as we go.

Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe become a member today. Okay, Michael, go for it.

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Well, the question is is this setup functioning as well or better than the White House right now

with all this consternation. Chris, I'd like to get your take on it because wrangling Republicans

is truly like hurting cats. They all want to go off in their own different directions.

They actually are lots of ideological disagreements.

There has long been an anti-war right.

There's a more pro-war right.

There's a tariff right.

There's a free trade right.

It's hard to see what keeps us together

other than parted hair and garish neckties.

But right now, we're looking ahead at the midterms

and then at 2028, is that Trump cohesion

destined to fall apart?

Are we gonna lose the DNI or are we gonna lose?

Who knows, Secretary of State, is this it?

Certainly, I think it's possible.

I think there are, look, frankly,

some members of the administration

who aren't performing, who should be let go.

Cash Patel, it would be high on my list for that to happen.

But the broader picture that I think we need to understand

and we're kind of dancing around the edges of,

is the relationship between the rights media apparatus

and the rights political apparatus.

Look, at their worst, these things are in tension

or in contradiction, where you have the political apparatus

oriented towards power and the media apparatus

oriented towards money, monetization,

audience, et cetera.

Sometimes those things overlap in a healthy way.

Sometimes they point against each other.

And we're entering a media moment where,

and you can see it, I mean, it's just getting bigger

and bigger and bigger, where the incentive systems

are not overlapping and integrating in a way

that advances the public good.

And I'll give you a specific example of what I mean.

My specialty, what I do is I take investigative reporting,

I turn it into media campaigns that try to drive public policy.

And I'll tell you, the last three to six months

have been very difficult relative to, say,

the first three to six months of the administration,

precisely because the conspiracy podcasting,

the anti-Semitism podcasting,

the kind of general, just psychotic or schizo breakdown

of the rights media apparatus in many quarters,

not, of course, in these quarters,

has degraded the ability for the right to be effective.

And what happens is that political leaders

often respond to and follow media narratives.

If the media narrative is, get rid of critical race theory,

abolish DEI, you know, stop, you kind of transcend

sanity in schools, that leads politicians

towards a greater understanding of reality

and towards some sort of positive policy outcome.

If the media narrative is, did Israel kill Charlie Kirk,

not only is the breakdown epistemological,

meaning we can't actually see the truth,

we're not tightly kind of clung onto reality,

but there's no positive outcome

that can emerge from that.

There's nothing we can do if the premise is false,

the conclusion is impossible.

And so every media cycle that is dominated

by the interpersonal, tabloid drama,

or just the kind of brain-addled conspiracy

is directly harming the Trump administration's ability

to succeed, and therefore directly harming its political fate.

I gave a speech on this topic to members of Congress

two weeks ago.

There was a GOP retreat, and it was on this exact point.

I said, guys, the problem is, I said, my,

invective against the podcast wars.

It's not actually because of any of the personalities,

all of whom I at least have been friends with,

almost all of whom I have been friends with at some point,

some of whom I'm still friends with to this day,

but I said, the problem is structural.

There's this moment where when the media

and the political, the elected types,

where their incentives were really aligned in 2024,

we called it the podcast election,

but increasingly you're seeing a divergence of their interests

to the point, I mean, I can even see it sometimes

in my own views, or in my own ratings,

where I think I know if I talked about this sensational thing,

or if I said something that I think I actually think is unjust,

or if I even talked about all the people

who were saying and doing the unjust things,

that are politically irrelevant,

that have nothing to do with advancing

the administration's priorities,

but are just kind of titillating,

I know my ratings would go up, and I'd make more money,

but I don't, I don't want to do that.

I'm more of a political animal.

I want to advance the political good,

but it doesn't matter what I do or not.

If that is the case, that for the right broadly,

you have a media machine that is incentivized one way,

and you have a political policy machine

that's incentivized another way,

it's just not gonna work, and it's so painful to me because.

You know, I don't want to beat up on you again,

because it just makes you look so bad,

but I think that the problem is that it is structural,

you're right about this Michael, it is structural,

but part of that structure is that falsehoods get out

by powerful podcasters into the general public,

and you find yourself, you know,

talking to people who think that Winston Churchill

put his opposition in prison, which is simply a falsehood,

and I think that that is something that is our job to correct,

and I, listen, I agree, this is not something I want to see,

I do not want to see us arguing about this stuff,

but I do think that it's incumbent upon us

to speak the truth from other people who are speaking lies,

especially those who are speaking lies, they're very popular.

I mean, the other thing that I'll add here is that

it's not just a matter of topicality that is incentive misaligned.

So yes, you will get more views talking about,

you know, the Canisone's latest crazy theory,

then you will talking about, you know,

the immigration fight that's currently happening

over funding of DHS, obviously that's true.

However, there is another incentive structure

that is significantly worse than that,

which is if you are the person who exposits the insanity,

you will get exponentially more traffic

than the person who amongst the insanity, right?

That is a difference there.

So lumping, it's almost a category error to say.

Yeah, it's too low.

On the one side, you have the people, yeah.

And so like, I would put closer to the,

basically, I would say the rational and irrational,

what we're at, the incentive structure right now

is toward the irrational, it is toward blackpilling,

and that is the opposite of the stuff that Chris is doing.

I gave a speech in Manhattan Institute a few weeks ago,

and this was basically the topic of my speech.

It was one of the things that we ought to do

is conservatives is be solution driven.

Why?

Because solutions, number one, help people.

But number two, if you can solve things

within the American system,

that does uphold the American system,

which is an inherently good thing to do,

because the American system is a good thing.

The black pill that people are taking right now

says the system is unfixable and inherently bad.

And therefore, any solution that you

effectuate within that system

is upholding an unjust and terrible system.

And that right now is incredibly sexy to people

because people have decided that the institutions themselves

are bad, and so it's really selling,

is people saying, even the institutions used to trust,

they're lying to you.

And they're not just lying to you about some things,

they're lying to you about literally everything.

There is nothing you can believe.

And what's even better for the podcast bros

is they can say the only person you can trust is me.

And the way that you can trust me

is because you know you can't trust any of them,

because I'm saying you can't trust any of them.

And you know the institutions are all corrupt,

and the way you can tell they're corrupt

is because I'm about to tell you

that aliens killed Charlie Kirk.

And they would lie to you, they, right,

the unspecified they, they will lie to you about this.

They will tell you that there's an actual

evidentiary system required.

But I, I know in my heart, the dream came to me

that actually it was somebody else who did it.

And I'm so honest and authentic that I can't be controlled

this way.

I'm free.

I'm free to say what I'm not being paid.

I'm not being controlled by anyone.

Now of course, the answer is all these people

are being paid.

They're making ungodly numbers.

But by the viewers, yeah.

The idea that, but yes, correct.

I mean, the idea that they are doing it for poverty, right?

These are some sort of priest swandering in the wilderness,

begging alms on behalf of truth.

Like it's such horseshit.

I can't even express how horseshit is.

But this is part of the structural issue too.

To your point, man, now it's all these independent voices

because in the new media that the networks don't,

we're one of the last networks of new media organizations.

And so everyone's independent now.

So that, that too creates different incentives.

At least if you're on a network,

if you're on a network, you can get fired.

You know, if you're on a network,

there are kind of standards.

There's cohesion among the different shows.

And so in the old days, back in TV or radio,

if someone was saying something that when

was beyond the pale or the standards,

there'd be a campaign to get that person fired they'd leave.

Now, it seems to me the whole structure of the media

is anti-institutional.

So you've got the trauma of COVID

where you realize that big institutions

were actually lying to you about a number of things.

You've got the decay of our political institutions generally,

which is manifest and has been for decades at this point.

And then you have this new media ecosystem,

which is intrinsically anti-institutional.

So something Chris that you do very well is you say,

all right, well, if I don't like what's dominating the news,

if that's harming my political prospects,

I'm gonna change the news.

I'm gonna go do an investigative report,

and then I'm gonna lead a media campaign

about that to get people focused again.

That has worked a number of times.

But I just wonder if, you know,

it's kind of a tragedy, really.

The right-wing media began

because the old terrible establishment news media

shut us up and lied about us and censored us.

And then we had this independent media

and we kind of rode that and it was great.

We got the podcast election.

It was great.

And then the thing that made us great

ended up being our own downfall in the right-wing media.

Is there any, to get to the point on structures,

is there any way to fix the incentives?

Yeah, I mean, you have to understand

that the structure is new.

And so it's not just Fox News, NBC, ABC,

that have standards and practices,

they have legal review, they have an audience

that is aggregated and then sold

to, you know, Fortune 500 company advertisers.

The new structure and the structure

we're not talking about is the algorithm.

And so the media and technology companies are,

you know, the technology companies

are not media companies,

but in a sense they've replaced the media companies.

And it's like looking into a black box.

And I know there's been a lot of talk

about the Twitter algorithm, how that's changed.

I think there's been a lot of talk

about the YouTube algorithm and how that's changed.

And look, what happened after COVID was censorship,

especially censorship against the right

against dissident voices, was wrong, we shouldn't go back.

But paradoxically, by Elon opening up the algorithm

by YouTube, loosening some restrictions on the algorithm,

you have now a new problem that needs to be solved.

Then again, I'm not endorsing censorship,

I'm not saying we should go back,

but we have to grapple with the fact

that if you're on Twitter right now,

like truly psychotic narratives gather steam

at a rate that cannot be kind of debunked

in a cool calm and sober way.

And that has downstream effects on all of there is platforms.

And then what's happening is that people

in the legitimate media are sensing the feeling

of the algorithm and that they are chasing the algorithm

because that's where the audience is,

that's where the ad revenue is,

that's where their narratives are going.

And so, look, are there nefarious things happening

with the algorithm, with foreign influence?

You hear a lot of whispers about this.

Nothing extremely concrete.

But we should inspect, at least at the theoretical level

at this point, that we are becoming creatures

of the algorithm and we have to understand the algorithm

at least as good as we understood the old networks.

If we want to understand how to triumph over some

of these blatantly false and conspiratorial narratives

and create a right wing media machine

that is once again oriented towards achieving things

in the public arena that advance the public good.

You know, I have to say that this is actually something

I'm worried about in the short run,

but not in the long run.

I mean gatekeepers come back.

The important thing is that we make sure

that we are at the table when the gatekeepers come back.

The appointment of Barry Weiss at CBS is a perfect example.

She's a liberal person, but she is a fair person

and she understands that news goes cuts in both directions.

And the fact that she's been attacked the way she is

shows you how desperate they are to maintain the power

that is already crumbling.

I'm not as worried of this becoming pure chaos.

What I'm worried about is who makes it to the table.

A little bit, I'm a little bit more worried about that.

I'm very disappointed in people following

that the algorithm and, you know, starting

getting on board the train, the conspiracy train

and the crazy story train and all that stuff.

But eventually, eventually, things have to congeal.

They always do and the people start to be in control again

and start, you know, cooler heads start to control things.

What I think we have to do is we have to make the case

that fair news is good news, that doing your job,

doing your job, not changing the world,

not telling us the truth, but getting the facts,

gathering the facts, telling us the facts

are the important things.

I think Chris, you know, I admire you.

I think you've done a tremendous job of being

that kind of voice.

I think that Daily Wire now is hiring

the kind of people who can help us

become that kind of voice gathering news.

I mean, from the very beginning, my argument has been,

we need two things, we need entertainment

and we need actual reporting.

Because we've got the opinions, we've got good opinions,

we've got good outlets, outlets and outlooks.

But I think that I'm not as worried about this.

I think that the thing is if we keep doing the job we're doing,

which is investigating gathering news, shaping the news,

eventually we're gonna win because the fact is,

we're telling the truth, you know,

some of what we see is the opinion,

a lot of what we say are just the facts.

The thing that I'm afraid of is really not the algorithm,

which again, I think we'll shift over time.

And I think, again, chasing clicks is a fool's errand

because the algorithm will shift again.

And if you've lost your sensor, you know,

but for whales, right, you're selling your soul

but for whales, you know, I think that the thing

that that concerns me and that I'm seeing

in the conservative moment is I've watched

as the conservative moment went from a conservative moment

to a broader anti-left movement

to an even broader anti-quart establishment movement.

And once you move all the way from conservative

all the way over to anti-establishment,

this is no longer conservative.

Because the reality is that when you are conservative,

there are certain institutions, not all of them,

but there are certain institutions that you believe are core

that must be conserved, right,

that actually wants them to remain established.

Right.

And so, you know, so I think that that broader thing,

I think that what the Trumpier is it is

it shifted the conservative movement

into the anti-left movement.

Right.

That is what Rush Limbaugh said this famously, right.

He changed the advanced Institute

for Advanced Conservative Studies on his show

into the Institute for Advanced Anti-Left Studies.

He switched it, but he did switch it, yeah.

He did switch it.

I think it was indicative of kind of where the movement was.

It's like, we can't win its pure conservative.

So now we're just going to become broadly anti-left

and we're the anti-left alliance.

And then after 2020, it turned into the,

we're the broad anti-establishment front.

And I think one of the problems

that the Trump administration is having

is now there are establishments.

So what happens when you are an anti-establishment front

that is the establishment?

And the same thing happens that always happens,

which is you start to eat your own.

And so I think that that is an inherently unstable coalition.

There's no such thing as an establishment,

anti-establishment coalition, it doesn't work that way.

And so that's why I think you're seeing a lot

of the chaotic ideological breakdown

that you're watching right now.

Yeah, that's true.

And of course, you know, we have to continue

to appeal to a populist that does feel

like they were jilted by the establishment,

but you can't just be chasing that algorithm

because the most clearly guaranteed way

to go viral on Twitter is to call your wife a whore.

And none of us wants to do that.

Gentlemen, wonderful to be with you Chris.

Thank you for joining.

Thank you to all of you for being here.

See you on the next video.

See you guys, good to see you.

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