Saagar Enjeti: “The Joke Is on Me”

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Hello and welcome to the Bollard podcast.

I'm your host Tim Miller.

A reminder, I'm live streaming tonight.

You know, I'm coming for Hassan and Destiny.

We'll see how it goes.

830 in the east.

Come hang.

One thing I've wanted to do on the podcast.

I told you guys this.

After the election, I've been trying to get

a wider breadth of views on the show.

But I have some policies, which is like no bullshitters.

But sometimes people can slip through the cracks on this.

And it's a little challenging on the mega side.

Getting no bullshitters.

Because Trump by his nature forces advocates to bullshit.

Because he's all over the place in the issues.

And he himself is a bullshitter.

And he rugpulls people all the time on things.

So I'm changing his views in two seconds.

And so I've been begging today's guest to come on the show

for like months, literally begging.

Our DMs are embarrassing.

It's like the lover that you have sent nine straight DMs to.

For this reason, he's an unapologetic, right wing populist.

And there's a bunch of stuff we don't agree on,

but he's not bullshit.

And that's been evident recently

as he's loved consistent criticism of Trump

as he has betrayed the popular base on Epstein and Iran

in particular.

So with that glazing intra, it's the cause

of breaking points, Sagar and Jettie.

How you doing, brother?

Hey, thank you for having me, Tim.

I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I'll take it.

I'll take it.

Well, obviously you feel a little nervous

because it's been months, you know,

I wouldn't say I was nervous.

I mean, I won't be honest.

I mean, I was conflicted about coming on your show.

Why?

Well, you know, I think bullwork style politics

has been kind of the antithesis of like everything I believe.

This is not really a shot at you personally,

but weekly standard and Bill Crystal, Jonathan Lass,

a lot of the people who you work with, Sarah Langwell.

I mean, a lot of these people,

I would consider like my ideological enemies.

And also at a policy level,

these are the very people who architected

some of the types of politics, which I have basically

dedicated my career to try to smash down.

So I was like, well, you know, what's the appropriate level?

But at the end of the day, you know,

I think at the, you know, some discussion

across these lines is probably important.

And I finally decided to do it because I thought

I want to expose, hopefully, your audience to,

let's say, criticism, which they may not have heard previously

and to potentially get them to change some of their ideas

or the very least engage with some ideas,

which they may think that they disagree with.

So that's why I decided to do it.

I love that.

We are kind of on opposite sides of the horseshoe.

You know, in Graham talked about this a little bit as well,

who's more of a left populist chair.

We'll get into it.

There may be more areas of agreement

than disagreement we think.

And growth is good, you know, there's been growth

and, you know, events have affected people's views on things.

So maybe events have certainly affected some of our views

on things, some of the weekly standard types

and maybe increasingly events will start

to affect your views on things.

We'll see as we go over the course of the podcast.

I also want to congratulations you for being the first person

to do the Tucker Carlson podcast and the Bullock podcast.

So good to see you.

Yeah, I know.

I saw that.

I was like, wow, you told me I should get a New York Times profile

and I was like, I really, that's like the last thing that I want.

I was like, that's no, absolutely not.

That's the last thing that I want.

At the end of the day, I'm pretty much the same person.

You know, I wouldn't say anything different

than I would say on your show.

Explain your worldview to people for people that don't know.

Like you kind of just did it by contrasting

against weekly standard world,

but like, what is it the proactive?

Sega world.

Yeah.

So I mean, I think the way that I really see the world

and this is why a lot of the stuff that originally,

let's talk about like so called MAGA or Trump.

For me, really, it's about ideas.

And so my own personal worldview is I started in politics around 2014, 2015.

I actually was much more originally aligned with people like Bill Crystal at all.

And I started working at the daily caller in 2016, I believe.

And really the election Donald Trump in 2016 kind of like shook me viscerally.

And I said, I really don't understand my own country.

I really don't understand the world.

And then clearly, I'm so out of touch.

And it's because I've been listening to a lot of the wrong people.

And so I started doing a lot of reading and thinking really

about how I think America fundamentally should be and where should go.

And really came down to a principle of sovereignty.

And a lot of that comes back to some of the original ideas,

let's say behind the original America first movement,

whether it's a cult or not now,

which you can talk about in a little bit.

And unfortunately, I do think that has been the case.

But that doesn't stop me from believing in a lot of the ideas.

And so the ideas fundamentally are about declaration of sovereignty,

independence, lack of adherence or giving sovereignty away

to let's say multinational institutions, things like NATO,

worshipping of the old order, trying to rethink what it means

to have an American social contract.

Some of that involves immigration dramatically,

lessening or lowering immigration to the United States.

A lot of it comes back to our foreign policy about intervention,

tax policy as well.

That's an element of MAGA and or America first,

which doesn't get talked about enough because it's mostly dead.

But it was a very live discussion to him,

as I know that you are aware about dramatically rethinking

our policy whenever it comes to economics

and challenging some of the Chamber of Commerce status quo,

which was, again, pushed by a lot of people

who you currently work with.

So it's a two or three time-trump voter for you?

For me, I guess it would have been two out of three.

Two out of three.

Were you an African-McMullen man in 2016?

I was very conflicted.

I actually didn't vote.

So in 2016, I tried to vote.

And then I requested my ballot.

But I was still in Texas.

It was complicate, technically voter fraud, actually,

because of where I was from.

You committed voter fraud, technically?

Watch out for the same guy.

I tried to commit voter fraud,

because I didn't live in Texas anymore.

And then something about my signature got challenged

in the primary, and then I was like, screw it,

I'm sorry, I'm gonna vote.

Okay, so if you ever decide to run

as the authentic America first,

that's the first piece of motto that we're looking at.

Yeah, you got me, you got me.

I'm never running for anything, so don't worry about it.

Let's start with the run.

People are gonna honestly think, again,

as mentioned in that long wind up,

that I wanted to have you on since like, finally,

I get to use you to be a vassal to attack Trump

on the Iran issue, but I'm trying to just for a while.

And Iran has just happened to come to the forefront.

You have been almost, I would say,

apocalypticly opposed to what has been happening

the last week.

Just give us a little summary of your view

about what's the administration's decided to do.

I think it's a strategic catastrophe.

And I'll say from a variety of different models.

So obviously, we basically given up

our sovereign ability to act to the state of Israel

with the Secretary of State uttering,

which I think is the most remarkable statement,

literally like in modern history,

saying that we had to do it,

because Israel was going to do it,

which apparently never entered in their minds.

They couldn't say no.

I mean, I'm not sure if you saw this.

Former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken

even came out and said that they tried

to pull the same nonsense on Biden.

They tried to pull it on Obama.

They tried to pull it on, I mean,

multiple different presidents.

So it's shocking to actually see our sovereignty

be sacrificed in this regard,

specifically whenever it comes to Israeli interests.

But then let's look at our own strategic interests.

I've been hammering home recently,

the munitions problem.

We have a very finite amount of resources.

Our defense industrial base is catastrophic.

A lot of our munitions have been sacrificed

on the battles of fields of Ukraine.

And now Israel, and now we are finding ourselves

in a catastrophic shortage.

We're already pulling out that interceptors

from South Korea, which is insane.

Considering the amount of bilateral trade,

we do it South Korea, some 240 billion compared to Israel,

which is 50 billion, we have three carrier strike groups.

Now on the way to the Middle East,

we have oil prices, the largest release now this morning

that you and I are talking

of the strategic petroleum reserve ever from the IEA.

And then also the closure of the Straits of Hormuz.

It was a war of choice.

It's something that I think is pretty explicitly,

explicitly, violative of a lot of the original principles

of the America First Movement.

And I also think I should clarify

when I talk about the America First Movement,

because the natural liberal will say,

you're an idiot, because Maga voters support the war.

And you're right, I'm not claiming in any way

that there is some popular front anti-war movement.

But I also think that would be a huge mistake,

which all of you found out in the 2024 election,

with how Michigan went, with how a lot of AOC Trump voters,

a lot of young men.

So for individual constituencies,

within the new Maga coalition of 2024,

what did you find?

You found that the anti-war position was very significant.

Again, it's not the only thing,

but it was certainly something which was important

for them.

And so watching this quagmire,

these billions of dollars, $5.6 billion in munitions,

spent in the first two days,

the streets of hermos oil, sacrificing our sovereignty,

the deaths of some seven confirmed KIA,

dozens, dozens of people who were horrifically wounded,

already that we know of.

On the very first day of the war,

God only knows what's being hit in.

I think it's a catastrophe.

And the best thing he could do is just end the war today.

Even that would be a nightmare.

Only into the politics of it in a second,

I do think it's interesting to talk about

kind of how Maga voters versus other parts

of the Trump coalition are reacting to this.

But just on the policy itself,

like, so your explanation, it sounds like,

is the reason he got into this

is because he was going to buy BB because I'm still really

trying to kind of process why he's doing it.

Because it is, to me, it just seems like such an obvious

quagmire and political mistake and for no clear purpose

that would benefit Trump himself personally.

The explanation I have is unfortunately very simple

is that Midnight Hammer was a quote unquote great success.

Midnight Hammer for everybody who is not as versinist

was the 12-day war, the bombing, the B2 bombers

that took out allegedly the nuclear sites.

Although now they say they're going to obliterate them

and I thought we already obliterate them

according to the White House.

So let's leave that to the side.

So it was a one-day bombing run where we came in

and we bombed it.

And Trump was amazed by his success.

The second thing, and you cannot underestimate this,

is Venezuela.

Venezuela was the red pill of all red pills for Trump

because so many people told him it would be a quagmire,

it would be a disaster is that, oh, who knows what could happen,

all of these troops could get killed.

And he was like, no, we're going to do it anyway.

Even though he had some praise and he had a lot of backup

from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

a lot of people warned about some of the bigger problems

that could erupt in Latin America.

And Venezuela, in the interim, by the way,

I hate when people say it's been a success.

I've even seen some liberal pundits say this.

Guys, I mean, does anybody remember how long it took Benghazi

and Libya to completely fall apart or Syria?

I mean, the whole idea is you don't get involved

because on a long enough timeline,

pretty much every single US intervention turns out

to be a disaster.

So in the interim, it turned out to be a quote-unquote success

because we didn't have state collapse

and we had some sort of deal with the oil.

And he really believed, I think that BB and Lindsey Graham,

you've seen this in some of the Wall Street Journal reporting,

convinced him that it would be that easy.

All we have to do is take out the itola, they'll cry uncle,

but they didn't listen.

And the military told them not to do this.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs,

the vice admiral Fred Cocker, he was literally fired

by the Joint Chiefs staff, I think,

because he probably leaked a lot of that meeting

where he gave a great warning,

I think to the American people and he's like, guys,

this is not the same thing.

We're gonna have to deal with Hormuz,

we're gonna have to deal with interceptors, munitions,

every warning that they said ended up coming true.

But I'll give it an analogy, I'm sure viewers will love.

For anybody who has ever read a history

of the Second World War, Hitler's dynamic with his generals

was very similar.

He was told that the phony war, that the invasion of France

and belt, it was gonna be a disaster,

it could be very difficult, sir, we could do this,

but not on this timeline.

And of course, what ended up happening?

It was a smashing success in the surrender of France

in a couple of weeks and the takeover.

And so what happens is you have Norway,

you have all of these great wins and wins.

I mean, it looked unstoppable in 1940.

And so when Barbarossa comes around,

they're like, no, man, like you really shouldn't do this.

He doesn't listen.

And so that's the same mindset.

I mean, I'm giving that one because I know your viewers will love it.

This is great, I need a cigarette right now.

So, I'm just saying I was complaining to Hitler.

It's the Vice President and Sagger.

I knew you would all love it.

Thank you.

But there are many of the military analogies of this

throughout the years where people have smashing success.

And that's what makes great men supposedly great

is that they, the gamble, they gamble.

I think the analogy I've heard,

I mean, which is very apt is if you've ever been playing craps.

It's like sometimes you'll see people who are on a hot roll.

And it's awesome.

But seven's gonna come up eventually, right?

Statistically, what is it you should seven out

after X amount of rolls?

But sometimes I've seen a guy roll for an hour and a half,

it doesn't really happen, but sometimes it does.

And you go on a hot one.

And then at the very end, people are like,

oh, he can't miss, he's got magic hands.

And then they put it all on six or eight or whatever.

And then boom, everybody goes bust on the table.

So there are multiple analogies that we can all use here.

I wanna give you just some of the pushback I've seen online

about defending him, not the Lindsey Graham pushback,

but from some other folks,

just a guy named Ruben Rider who I follow, who I like.

He wrote this.

I know Ruben, Ruben, our friends.

That's I'm not surprised about.

He wrote this, Gulf War, the first Gulf War.

292 killed, 776 wounded, 75 aircraft lost.

But it's still considered smashing success.

You can be against war if you want, if you're a pacifist.

But at present, we only have six KIA.

So it's a couple of days ago.

And an adversary who boasted a thousand missiles a day

is now launching like 10,

we've utterly ruined a regional power in 10 days.

What's your pushback to that?

Well, Gulf War had a very specific purpose.

It was for the removal of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

It had nothing to do with regime collapse

like the eventual Iraq war,

which by the way, the Gulf War led to.

It had extremely defined characteristics.

Also, this is where I hate to be a process liberal,

but the process does kind of matter.

You had, you know, so-called coalition,

which came into place where it was sold to the American people.

The SPR was actually released,

the Tragic Pedroyum Reserve was released

on the very day of the invasion,

specifically to mitigate problems on the home front.

And then, you know, to bring it into politics,

it was dramatically popular.

It had some 90% approval rating.

Not that that even matters, by the way,

because as you and I both know,

Bush went on to lose the election.

So the point is, is about the strategic ends.

You know, we can blow shit up anywhere

across the entire country.

And the point about this is that there was no actual plan

for what was going to happen if the Iranians

did not immediately capitulate, which they haven't.

Even right now, everyone's like,

oh, Trump is going to taco.

And it's like, is it really up to him?

The enemy gets a vote.

They have an Ayatollah now, who is, look, the new Ayatollah,

what, I can't even list the number of relatives

that he has lost in this conflict.

His father, his wife, his son, I mean,

niece or what, I mean, the number of relatives

who were all killed, he's a hardliner

who was pushed by the IRGC.

You have the entire IRGC that remains intact.

The president of the United States

has demanded unconditional surrender.

And yeah, if we want, there's been this hilarious scandal

where Ted Cruz and others have been attacking an interview

that I just gave with Tucker Carlson,

where Tucker Carlson said,

unconditional surrender means foreign troops

get to rape your wife and daughter.

And they're like, oh, you're disgusting.

You're saying American troops?

Or is it, no, that's not what he's saying.

He's saying in history, as we saw during the Battle of Berlin

and the eventual mass rape that took place

at the hands of the Soviet Union from Jenghis Khan

or any other unconditional surrender,

which has taken place throughout our history

that we have been involved in not saying

our troops engage it nor would they ever,

but that that is the implication,

especially that is taken to heart

by the foreign populace.

We've already seen a huge amount of reports

of Iranian nationalism rising in the country

directly actually supporting the regime.

I mean, there's videos, I can even send them if you want,

of people who are literally in the square being bombed,

who are cheering as it has happened.

And while the announcer says we will never relent

and we will continue to fight pretty much the opposite

of what was supposedly intended.

The 40 Chess Cheyenne people,

some of those, some of that happening on mega,

that like, this is really not even about Iran

because Iran sells their gas to China

and Trump is just on a different level as everybody else.

What, what, what is that?

That is a beyond, I mean, I don't know how,

I don't know how profane I can get.

We can, you can be as profane as possible here.

That is a beyond retarded.

Look, I gave you the example,

that batteries are being taken out of South Korea.

Now, little history lesson,

when those that batteries were placed in South Korea

in 2016, China put a full on economic boycott on South Korea,

almost tanked their economy,

closed down multiple of their stores,

boycotted BTS concert Chinese tourism for years,

almost two years.

I mean, they took billions in losses,

but they decided ultimately our alliance

with the United States is very important.

And we need this battery,

what these are, these missile interceptors

in order to deter North Korea.

I've seen some mixed reports on this,

that they're like, they set the entire like system

that is being taken, which is some elements of it,

but even so.

I'm not claiming we took the entire system out,

I just said the interceptors, the radar is still there,

which is what the Chinese are really concerned about,

but then why is it a political crisis right now in Korea?

The front page of the Korea Herald, literally today,

is saying, can America defend us?

And the prime minister said,

I, or the president, I apologize,

said, I oppose this decision.

You are already watching munitions

from the entire Indo-Pacific, not just South Korea,

because that was the second part of that report,

is that patriot missile batteries

from all across the Indo-Pacific

are being taken back to the Middle East,

which shows you the exact shortage

that people like me were warning about.

This is why I advocate for a policy of restraint.

I don't think that, you know,

the vast swaths of the American empire are doing us any good.

That's why I'm never supported funding the war in Ukraine.

We did not have the munitions stockpile or capacity,

and it's not that important to the United,

in fact, it's less important than Israel,

and I'm here sitting here at this entire case,

around Israel and Iran.

So it's shocking actually to watch this entire stockpile,

get depleted, which was so foreseeable,

for people who don't know, the situation is dire.

So in the 12-day war, just in the 12-day war,

the United States spent 25% of its that interceptor stockpile

in just 12 days.

God only knows what that number is right now.

God only knows, but that 25% was 150 interceptors.

Do you wanna know how many we acquired in 2025?

15, 12 the year before.

It's a crisis.

It's a crisis that money can't even solve.

We have an entire downstream production problem.

There's chemicals that are involved in munitions,

our entire industrial base, not only defense,

but broadly is catastrophic.

And this is why I just say we need to acknowledge

the problems of the Iraq war,

which foundational, really to my worldview,

to think really destroyed this country.

And we need to acknowledge that we're no longer

in living in some unipolar fantasy moment.

And personally, thought that that's what,

a lot of the people who were working

at Trump administration thought too.

And so that's why it's especially

galling, shocking betrayal.

We can use all the different adjectives.

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We're gonna put a pin in Ukraine.

I have a TDS Never Trumper section

at the end of the show.

So we'll come back to Ukraine during all that.

We'll hit all the hot button and never Trumper issues.

What's happening inside the administration?

I mean, I'm so far gone.

I can Trump 1.0, some of these people would call me.

I assume you friends in the administration

and people that share your worldview,

speaking of New York Times profiles

are all the profiles about Bridge Colby

and how he is in there influencing the administration

and restraint in pivot to Asia.

I assume that there are some junior Bridge Colby's

in the administration that I don't know

who've come up through kind of the America first pipeline.

Like, what are they thinking?

What is happening inside?

I can't speak for them.

Yeah, I can't speak for them.

I can only really speak for myself.

I could guess, really, at what a lot of things.

I can emails from inside that like,

please, Sagar, get me out of here.

Do you need a producer at Blake and Poins?

None of that is underground tunnel

out of the Department of Defense right now.

None of that is happening at all too weak.

By the way, people should leak to me more.

I'd love to have it.

Also Tim, I'm sure that you know this.

It's actually the people you least expect

who will end up leaking to you,

which is always kind of faster for anybody guessing

about who the people who are leakers.

You'd be amazed who they actually are

and I do protect my sources.

Do you have thoughts on JD?

Like, what, how, what's happening right now?

He's been a little more quiet.

He's given speeches.

There've been some reports that said he didn't want to do it

but then he also said if we do do it,

we should go maximalist, which is like a pretty incoherent view.

If the true, I don't know,

like what's your political sense of what's happening?

I have no idea.

I can only give you my guess.

My guess is, is that we're living in Versailles

and that the ear of the king is the only thing that matters

and to protect the ear of the king,

you have to tell the king what he wants.

He's enamored with his victory in Venezuela.

Everyone's on, I told you so tour right now.

And that's fair.

I think we deserve it.

I think people like me deserve it.

And I think let's talk about how,

why did we think that this would not happen?

And the first Trump administration,

really all administrations, personnel is policy.

We often say that, right?

And so our belief of the first Trump administration

is that the staffing of Neocons, of John Bolton,

of Jared Kushner, of people like this,

their worldview, especially with the departure of Steve Bannon,

became the default policy of the United States under Donald Trump.

There were, of course, very different things were happening.

Trump can say all things to all people.

And he really is that, if anything, that's his superpower, okay?

So that was the framework, which we're operating.

So there is a four-year project after Trump is gone

after the 2020.

That's kind of funny, like a lot of us,

we're telling people, like me and Nicole Wallace

were out there telling people,

the Trump 2.0 will be worse.

So it's gonna have all these other people

who are from our perspective, as I'm saying,

the true believers, the mega types of all be in there.

Like that was our framework of it as well.

It's just like you thought it was a good thing.

We thought it was bad.

Well, it depends because here's how it ended up manifesting.

So our belief over that four-year period,

and again, my belief, at least,

was that this professional elite project,

the so-called America First,

professional elite project,

which is very indifferent organizations, personnel, people,

we've all met conferences over the years

that those people would be able to transpose their ideas

into the policy of the United States.

Some of them became the vice president of the United States,

the Pentagon, you know, number three, like you're talking about.

And then Amiriette, different other people

who are all across the administration.

And the belief was that those ideas would be professionalized

into policy, but what I've ended up seeing, actually,

is an inversion, and this is something

that I dramatically underestimated,

is that what it actually has translated into,

is that the so-called lesson of Trump 1,

was that people were not loyal enough to him personally.

And that means that whatever he thinks

is the policy, the idea, or whatever,

that will then be set through in terms of policy,

and that there will actually be very little pushback whatsoever

if he disagrees, or undermining, et cetera,

because they don't want to be seen as disloyal to the president.

Even though there were a lot of people who were disloyal,

let's say to the president, in the first term.

But on a policy level, this time it's inverted.

A lot of it is like personal,

and that's why I gave the Versailles analogy.

And so I have no idea what's going on with JD.

I have no idea what's going on with any of these people,

but I can only speculate that for a lot of them,

they have to maintain their access to the president.

You can look at what happened with Tulsi Gabbard.

Tulsi Gabbard did what we thought people like her would do.

In the 12-day ward, she's like,

I really don't think you should do this.

I think this is a bad idea.

And then she got DNI'd, as in do not invite,

to the Venezuela meeting, and she got humiliated on a national stage.

She got struck out by Trump around that Hiroshima video,

which I didn't even think was that big of a deal,

but it caused some sort of problems for her.

And now she's got to go galvanting around Fulton County,

searching for bamboo ballots, or whatever,

just to try and prove some loyalty or whatever to Donald Trump.

So that is the unfortunate story.

The thing that we really got wrong

is we really believed that this project,

which again, let's be honest,

and you can even go pull the tape

from I never said Trump was the anti-war candidate.

I was super honest.

I was like, look, if you're pro-Palestinian,

I had literally did a monologue where I was like,

if you're pro-Palestin, you should vote for Kamala.

I was like, you're not getting what you want

out of this administration.

We knew that there would be trades

whenever it came to the West Bank or Gaza.

I don't think any of us,

or maybe I can only speak for myself,

when the vice president of the United States in October of 2024

goes on a podcast and says,

I don't think that it's within our interest

to go to war with Iran.

I believed it.

You know, and it's just where you could say,

we told you so, Trump is a charlatan.

Yeah, we know.

Okay, it's not that we had any faith in Trump.

Okay, anybody who had faith in Trump is an idiot.

We had a faith in Trump.

We had faith in the personnel who were around Trump.

And I think, you know, when I say

it's the greatest professional disappointment in my life,

really what it is, it's like,

it's been a hit on a multitude of areas.

Because look, Israel, we knew it was going to happen

that was pretty much baked in.

Even though, by the way,

they still took that way farther

than even I ever thought that they would.

But then, let's say we thought we'd end the war in Ukraine.

Well, that hasn't happened either.

We've, we know, whipsawed.

They're this insane pals.

They were like berating Zelensky, then he's our best friend.

Selling them weapons and then we're not.

Then we're doing summits with Putin.

They ended up being totally fake.

Basically nothing has really happened on that front.

And then let's say, you know, on the Iran situation,

for me, I knew it was basically lost in the 12-day war.

And really, I mean, you had to give it to the Neocons.

What they have understood is that Trump is just enamored

with the show of military force.

And that that alone is the easiest way to sway him.

And, you know, there were some bad signs.

In the initial days of the admin,

the appointment of Mike Waltz, Mark Arubio,

as Secretary of State.

So I knew things were already not trending

in the right direction, I guess, if you will.

But let's say, you know, people like Pete Hegseth,

what did he say?

He's a reform Neocon.

You remember that?

He said that on the Sean Ryan podcast.

Again, look, call me an idiot.

You're right to do so.

I actually believed it.

And it's not because I believed in Hegseth.

I believed in the people who were around Hegseth.

I knew a lot of people knew him.

They said, no, no, he really believes it.

I trust a lot of these people.

And the joke is on me.

The joke is absolutely on me.

I'm trying to reclaim both the words liberal and Neocon.

These guys are hawks.

This is a war hawk war.

They're not even claiming that they're trying to get democracy.

They didn't try to get zero.

You might have been able to sell me on Venezuela

if we were putting Machado in there,

not with Trump as president.

But if Marco was president, he came to me and said,

hey, we'll do this Venezuela again.

I bet we'll put Machado in there.

Maybe that they democracy will flourish in our hemisphere.

Out of it, like some of my old muscles

would have started flaring with that.

That's not what they're doing.

That's not what I'm doing.

Well, that's not okay.

Well, that's how he's doing.

It's corruption.

It's just like a straight, like it's a, like,

it's a shakedown.

We're doing shakedown and things go boom.

Well, don't forget.

It's actually, let's not discount the role

that Machado and her entire cohort

played in this entire operation.

Because she is.

She is.

We're upset.

You should be.

She's a joke.

And she wanted to bomb her own people.

So congratulations, Maria.

You didn't even get what you wanted.

But let's put that to the side.

Now, you're not wrong, but let's parse, you know,

some of the language.

Remember, the original impetus for this whole thing

goes back to the protests.

It had nothing to do with the nuclear program.

That became the Cassis Belli, right?

Originally, this was about which, you're again,

you're, I don't know, Bob's co-founder,

Bill Crystal supported.

He was like, oh, we must go.

What did he say?

This is January, 2026.

He's like, oh, we have to go and free and liberate,

you know, the great Iranian people.

Which, again, I think is a disastrous idea.

And as we have all seen, isn't even going to work.

What are they going to thank you?

Is you rain down acid rain on their children?

Yeah, that's definitely a very natural impulse.

So that element of it was genuinely neo-conservative.

Now, let's get to what you're talking about.

And this is fair, you know, terms matter.

There is a robust hawkish nationalist.

I would call it John Bolton.

So John Bolton is not a neo-con.

He is somebody who is robustly hawkish.

Now, this is a hawk neo-con.

Whatever you want to call it.

Hawkish and jingo is a hawk jingoist.

Yeah, actually, jingoist is probably the best term.

Really for it.

Because, I mean, I'm watching these Pentagon press conferences.

And it's like military assistance command Tehran.

Like, which is a joke about the Vietnam War.

Because in the Vietnam War, it was called

military assistance command, Vietnam.

And General Westmoreland would be like,

today we have killed a 252 Vietnamese.

And then he was like, oh my god.

An operation rolling thunder has dropped more munitions

than all of World War II.

And America was like, raw, raw, raw, look at us.

We're beating the shit out of the North Vietnamese.

Yeah, how did that work out, right?

And I mean, I'm literally feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

Watching General Cain be like, we've dropped

double the amount of munitions as shock and awe.

And I was like, oh, yeah, because that was a smashing success.

That was awesome.

And yeah, if you're too young to know,

even get the reference, shock and awe

was the invasion of Iraq.

It was the bombing campaign on the invasion of Iraq.

You said something in the middle of the rant there

about how if anybody, like trust Trump

doesn't understand that he's a charlatan, they're stupid.

I'm a little concerned that you impune most of the people

that show up at the rallies right there

because if you look at the polls right now, what do you mean?

Look at the polls.

I think parsing the kind of crosstabs,

which is, there's some limits to that.

But like, if you look at when people ask,

like, hey, do you identify as a macro Republican,

do you identify just as a Republican?

Are you an independent Trump voter?

Like the independent Trump voters hate this.

Like the newest people into the coalition hate.

A lot of people you talk to, breaking points, they hate this.

Okay, interesting part of the parsing though,

is when you look at people who say,

I'm a macro Republican, they're like hell, yeah, 94%

whatever you want, Mr. Trump.

And people who just say, I'm a Republican,

but I'm not MAGA, they're a little more skeptical.

I was interested in that,

because what that tells me is that the MAGA movement

is actually like a lifestyle brand

and that the people are in a cult

and that they're not taking into the facts

into consideration.

It's just whatever Trump wants, it's ra ra Trump.

And I wonder if that's how you kind of assess the coalition

at this point.

Yes, in a sense.

And by the way, I'm not impugning them particularly.

I think that a lot of voters are like that.

And I should also be clear, a core part of my philosophy

is I don't blame voters.

I notice all of my critique right here is not about voters.

It's about individual parts of an elite network

who should know better, okay?

And even my entire critique is really specifically

about an elite project that has gone completely wrong.

But let's talk about the voters.

You and I do each other.

Like me talking about my people eight years ago.

Welcome to the, this is why I felt like we was,

you know, get along so well.

I gave that same speech on multiple podcasts in 2017.

Oh, really?

Okay, good.

Oh, look, it is important.

People should know, like I don't blame voters.

A lot of people are very busy.

They go about their lives.

If you're listening to the show,

you're probably in the top, what, 2% of news consumers

in the United States.

I always say that on my own show.

I go, guys, you need to check your bias.

If you're listening to this,

you are literally in the top 1%.

And it's not a compliment either.

It means you're a news junkie.

You're paying attention.

You're like super locked in.

And that's great for you.

Obviously it's great for us.

We're happy to have you.

But, you know, the vast majority of people

are not paying attention to this stuff.

They also believe politicians whenever they say things.

And that's okay.

I mean, kind of think you should know better at this point.

But look, I mean, you know, who really is taking the time

to read platforms and assess internal dynamics

of White House is like, this is not a game

that you have to play.

That's fair.

I guess my question for you just to make a more precise

like it seems to me like the America first movement

is actually like vaporware.

And like the actual mega voters,

like the core Trump voters are part of a lifestyle brand

and a cult and they'll do whatever Trump wants.

I'm agreeing with you.

Yeah.

Got it.

So I was just, I am agreeing with you 100%.

No, MAGA is about Trump specifically.

I've actually always believed that.

That's why I noticed.

I'm not one of these people on Epstein or Iran

who goes, he betrayed the base.

I'm like, the base doesn't give a shit about anything.

They just care about Trump.

There is a term called thermostatic public opinion

where public opinion shifts depending on whoever's in power.

There's greens of data on this for Democrats

and for Republicans.

When a Republican's in power,

Democratic outlook on the economy is low.

When a Democratic is in power,

Democratic output is high.

Same for Republicans like a lot of voters are in cults

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Let's talk about Epstein.

You cause you've done a lot of,

you've been covering this for covering it before we were

just to be fair.

Seven years.

Yeah, you've done deep dives on this stuff.

I'm wondering, I just kind of open ended.

Like what you think some of the listeners

or viewers of this show might not know about the Epstein files

that you guys are following.

Like what are you guys covering that isn't being covered

in other places in the media?

Well, Epstein was a Israeli asset almost certainly.

He was an intelligence asset for multiple

different intelligence agencies.

He was primarily a money mover and potentially even

an arms dealer.

He was a very important node in a global intelligence network

for moving money around for very, very powerful people.

And the reason why I always start with that is that his

usefulness to this global intelligence network is what

enabled him to get away with his behavior for decades.

And really, I think the reason people

allied the first part of that story is it's politically

uncomfortable for a lot of people and constituencies

in various different elite networks.

Are you sure that just can we just use the word asset

really quick?

Like asset versus, I read the emails, the Epstein emails.

And what I see is a guy who loves being around power who's

like trying to set up dinners with people that he thinks

is rich and famous.

And some of that is whatever ego.

Some of that's because they give him

cover for his gross activities, criminal activities.

Some of it is whatever.

But like there are non pedophiles that do that, right?

Like there are people like this is we know I know this type.

Like I read his email and I'm like, oh, I know this type.

It's like the hangers on of dinner parties and DC.

And you know, he just expanded it out to globally.

I don't really know the type for multinational arms

dealing, but it's it's the same archetype.

So how is that?

Like I look at it and that's what I see.

Like that is different than I am at that of the of the

government.

See, I actually think you're confusing the term asset is

exactly what we're talking about is somebody who's like a fly

by the night person who works in this convenient,

whereas agent and or directly employed is kind of what I

think you're assuming.

Yeah, that's not the correct use of the term.

He was a hatchet man, a bag man, really, for a variety of

these different elite networks.

And what Epstein did is and I mean, allow me, I'm sorry,

this is we're going to have to go back because I literally

spent hours on this topic.

But the US and the CIA, the way that they would operate

before the church committee is they would never need an

Epstein or a noncashogi or a Douglas lease to do a

ran contract.

They would just do it, right?

So after the church committee, what ended up happening in

events to try and have transparency and oversight of the US

intelligence community is that the CIA had to start using all

these unsavory people.

And that's specifically the story of a ran contract.

A ran contract was a scandal because it broke the law, right?

They were like, you cannot do this.

Now, the way that they were able to move money and funds

and all this to illegally fund these wars was specifically

to use these outside, you know, hatchet men,

bag man arm traffickers.

And then what Epstein's note was that he was an expert in

moving money around.

This is where he primarily got a lot of his expertise at

Barristerns was eventually fired and all in the early 1980s.

So at that time period, what he does is he specializes in

moving and opening illicit bank accounts and moving money

across the globe.

That really was his like reason for being important to a

lot of these intelligence agencies.

And that's why his name, you know, starts to pop up.

I would also note, you know, in the Epstein files, one of

the craziest things that come out that nobody talks about is

his false Austria passport from when he was like 29 years

old in the 1980s.

Austria was literally known as the bed of spies.

If you have ever visited Austria or Vienna, specifically,

Vienna was the nexus of East and West because of the treaty

and it had to remain neutral.

And it was one of the highest concentration of spies in the

globe.

And so this is long before he became a billionaire or any of

this.

So he was very useful to this and also he had his, you know,

disgusting kind of sexual proclivities that were going on.

And there has been a long, long history of intelligence

agencies who have these types of assets like Jeffrey Epstein,

who remember foiled his name in 1999 to the CIA long before

anybody even knew who he was, asking them to acknowledge his

work with the agency or any of the name in the agency that's

come up in his files.

But the reason why this is important and why I think this

had some impact on his sweetheart deal in 2007 is there's a

long history of intelligence agencies that when their assets

or their agents or anybody gets involved in a criminal case,

particularly involving underage children, is that they

want to brush this under the rug.

And the reason why is they never want this to go into open

court.

So we have multiple confirmed instances of actual agents,

CIA personnel, who were actually caught, let's say with

child pornography, where they will pressure the FBI and they're

like, hey, this cannot go to trial.

Sources and methods cannot come out in open court.

We need a plea deal to cut a deal.

This has happened multiple different times.

And there's a long, unfortunate, long history of a lot of

this going on.

So I do think people can get a little conspiracy brain saying

that the government itself was running this or any of that.

No, I don't think any of that is the case.

Just conspiracy brain really quick on the Israel side of it.

You see this?

I'm sure in your comments and from people like legitimate

criticism of Israel, which there's a lot to criticize right now,

can tip over into either conspiracy brain or straight anti-semitism

or using Zionist as a slur, all that kind of stuff.

I'm wondering how you try to think about that and navigate it.

That's a very woke view, Tim.

See, I think it's the opposite.

It is not my responsibility what other people do.

And that's what I mean, but this is this implication

that we have to be very careful or critical of or let's say

lessen our criticism of foreign state because we're worried

about anti-semitism is ridiculous.

Anti-semitism is stupid, wrong, immoral, et cetera.

I don't really even know why I have to say that,

but obviously for anybody who tries to smear me otherwise.

However, however, it is often weaponized specifically,

the term anti-semitism to shut down a lot

of this legitimate criticism.

Sure, but I mean, you would put, I'm not that woke.

I mean, you'd police your comments if people were dropping

the N word all the time in the comments.

Absolutely, but that's on policing.

And so if people in your comments are doing a lot

of Jewish conspiracy theory or Jewish slurs,

like that make me at least as the, I can't control it,

but it'll make me as the person communicating,

like one at least say to them, hey guys, fuck you,

they're the doors, get out of here.

Sorry.

Sure, I know I can criticize.

If we have to say it, I guess I will,

like the idea, this idea that we're fostering it

or any of that is frankly preposterous.

We follow the facts where they lead.

And on the Israel side, I mean, how much more do we need?

His relationship with the Prime Minister,

a Barack, the amount of funding between the two,

back and forth, the amount of time that they spent together,

his own long history of, I mean, by the way,

I mean, a lot of people now don't even know this.

Whenever he was negotiating his little sweetheart deal

back in 07, he fled to Israel for a while

and where there was some speculation

that he might have to actually stay there

and take advantage of their extradition treaty.

That's not anti-Semitic to say.

I gotta be honest,

something he said that bothered me a little bit

that this Zionist is a slur.

It's not, I mean, it's a literal term, right?

People use Zionist as a slur.

Okay, but it is a term, no?

Like it is, it's quite literally a definitional term

about somebody who believes in expansion

of the Israeli state in the Middle East.

Like I don't think that that's a slur.

I mean, maybe you could use it as a slur,

but I don't think that's a particularly good example.

Sure, I do.

I see if some of you know that they're going

really nilly, nilly, like I hate that actor,

like fucking Zionist so and so.

I'm like, why are you, like,

that's just you trying to say the K word without saying that.

Honestly, like that is happening.

I disagree with that.

I mean, there might be some cases,

but I completely disagree.

What's your Trump theory on Epstein?

Why is he covering it up?

I have no clue.

This is, see, this one's interesting, Benny Ron.

I think Trump is now caught in a basket of lies

of his own making.

And I think that his obvious,

look, his obvious social relationship

with Epstein that goes back decades all the way back

to the 1990s, the infamous 2002,

what is it, New York magazine quote,

where he's like Jeffrey, he likes him young.

He enjoys his social something like that.

I think that was the quote.

I mean, there were obviously very close.

And then what he said afterwards

is he was like, light about it basically.

He's like, no, I threw him out of my club.

Not really true.

Or it is true, but not in the circumstances,

which he wants it to be true.

It was over like Virginia Group Frey

being stolen from the Marlaco spa

and not about whether he was concerned

about his own creepy behavior.

I think really they buried himself

with a lot of the denials for the White House.

The birthday book, remember,

he said it was totally false, sued, murder.

A lot of times on the plane.

Ridiculous.

It's ridiculous.

It's obvious that their social relationship was deep.

And that's a bad look, I think, for the president.

He also knew these people, socially, Glean Maxwell.

What did he say to Jonathan Swan?

He was like, I wish her well,

or something that infamous interview.

That was crazy.

Melania, maybe it would be mad.

Yeah, I've seen the Melania theory

floated by what's his name, by Michael Wolff.

I haven't seen enough evidence around it.

I hate giving him any credit.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, I know.

I was more talking about her being mad

at them, like, Melania.

Yeah, it could be Melania's scene.

Right.

Yeah, right.

That was very important on the Stormy Daniels front.

So I really have no idea.

I do think it is important to say.

And in retrospect, it was really the people

around Trump who were obsessed with Epstein.

It really wasn't Trump himself.

He's pretty obvious.

He never really was into, he's like,

yeah, sure, release it kind of the way

like I'm a big UFO guy.

Same thing.

He obviously was just using it for cloud clicks

or whatever.

He knows people are very interested in the subject,

but he never had any real enthusiasm for it.

So that's my guess for why they've handled it this way.

He has very little empathy,

but one of the groups he has empathy for is men

who are accused of sexually harassing people.

That's another reason I think he's doing it.

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You've been pretty mean to Donald Trump,

the president of the United States,

where 43 minutes in, two votes for him.

So let's talk about the good stuff.

Who'll get the last 14 months

and you're like, man, he's really killed it on that.

What would be the list of you?

Shut the border down.

Shut the border down.

Yeah, I would say that's probably number one.

I mean, for a lot of people, that's essential, right?

For a lot of people, if you even look at some of the most

die hard like America, first, Mac, or whatever,

they're like, look, I don't care about anything else.

That's number one.

So you could say that.

I would say that's probably as big as when.

There's been literally no more incoming, you know,

fake asylum refugees coming across.

Oh, let's think.

So let me think chronologically.

So we have the border, then there was Doge,

which I would say was a failure.

I don't know, I haven't got much else for you.

One million for Donald Trump.

Yeah.

Well, it depends.

I mean, it depends.

You have to border for a second.

Personally.

I'll tell you what's border for a second.

Then we'll go back to grading the Trump presidency.

I give credit just on the narrow question of,

it's important that we secure our border.

And I do agree with that.

And I think that this has been a failure

by going a lot of past presidents.

And some of that's out of their control a little bit,

but they've done a good job in the securing of the border.

If you bring that into kind of the whole,

you know, kind of immigration policy though,

like the fact that we have probably fewer people

in the country now than we did when he was elected president

is insane to me.

I think that is not the sign.

Well, it's not a sign of successful company

when you have negative net migration

when there are more people leaving than coming.

That was a declared goal of the campaign.

Well, sure.

But yeah, obviously it was a policy success,

but I'm saying is, okay, it's bad for the country.

Like he did.

That's true.

Yeah, but I'm saying that is,

I don't understand why anyone would think

that is a good policy.

And it's going to contribute to inflation.

It's going to contribute to, like there's a lot of needs

we have for a country growth in a country is important.

You know, I don't think we want to be Japan in the 1980s.

I don't think we want to be a country

that people are fleeing.

I think that it's good to bring people into the country,

maybe not the same way that they were brought in

between 2000 and 2024,

but we have to have some way to add people to the country.

Right?

Well, I think it's kind of a neoliberal view, right?

We're kind of looking at as immigrants

as you tills, like economic you tills and their plug and play.

Well, I also care for the person I would consider it.

But I think that I think that there are you tills and I think

I think both of those things are true.

Right, but by the way,

you would find a lot more agreement between you and me

on ice than you might even think.

And there's also a political problem with all of this.

I've talked about thermostatic public opinion.

The way that the Trump administration has carried out

a lot of their immigration agenda has actually flipped support

for mass migration more than I think ever before

in history, including amnesty,

which I think would be a catastrophe for the United States.

But let's just think philosophically.

So first of all, I reject the idea

that human beings are you tills and we should care about that.

But a secondary, and I think that there are much bigger arguments.

Now, when let's talk about the border

and really about the historical trend.

So Trump, you can look at Trump as a singular force

or as a historical force.

I like both theories, but I also think that historically,

if you're gonna take a look at our own history,

they're under the Biden administration,

about 10 million people illegally entered the country.

10 million, the most I think ever in American history.

You also had the largest foreign born population

of the United States ever since the early 1900s,

which was met at the time by a organic democratic pushback

and shutdown of US immigration specifically

because they were having chaos in their internal society

from unmitigated mass migration over the last 50, 60 years,

I think at that time period.

Also, to your economic point, at that time,

we had much more industrial plug-and-play style labor

where any individual human being could be reasonably expected

to perform well in that economy.

You cannot say that at this time,

except with the same level of mass migration.

We're a service-based economy.

A lot of this idea about basically turning people

from Guatemala or whatever into home health aids,

I think is deeply actually almost racist, honestly.

And what it does is basically imports some sort of slave class

in order to serve all of us to keep-

I think that there's a gap between importing a slave class

and having negative net migration

and having a similar type of economy.

There certainly is, but I'm, look,

I, in the same way that you gave the maximum argument,

I'm giving you the same one.

Sure, is that we don't need maximal number of home health aids

and the biggest growing sector of our economy right now

is healthcare and specifically home health care aid

for old people.

I mean, look, I'm not saying that's not a noble job

or any of that, but if you wanna drive the price down on that,

it's a big argument for basically like low-skilled immigration,

which I don't think that we need.

We're a service-based economy.

We have industrial-based problems of our own, wage growth,

obviously has been stagnant now for decades,

a couple of blips up in there over the years.

But at a bigger, more important level,

and this is really why Trump really shifted me

on the immigration question,

and really just thinking about it bigger,

is really like, we need a cohesive social understanding

of America.

And finally, you said something that made me mad.

Great, 50 minutes in, awesome.

That's fine.

We can gather.

I mean, I just think we look at Minneapolis, for example,

and we've seen a very socially cohesive society

that's had a lot of immigration into it.

We had the society come in together, volunteering,

helping their neighbors.

I don't think there was any sense.

I like there was some fraud, right?

Like that's true, and that should have been dealt with.

But like, as a society, I don't think

if you asked people of Minneapolis,

like, do you feel incohesive in your community?

It's, I think you would hear right now exactly the opposite.

And you saw that these masked agents coming in

to the community to bully and harass people

were the ones that caused social discohesion.

I wouldn't even disagree in terms of the way

that the operation went down.

What I would fundamentally disagree with, though,

is that there is not a chaotic element

to tens of millions of people living your country illegally.

And specifically, having people and their children

have to be educated at the price of the state,

while a lot of these people barely speak any English,

25% of the people that Biden led in literally

didn't even have a high school diploma,

very not even literate in English, let alone Spanish,

significant portion of the population

is not even literate in Spanish.

I mean, whenever there are lawyers

and other have to disc, are having discourse with them,

they're speaking like, you know, like native languages.

That doesn't mean it's not going to succeed

in the United States.

This, you know, to your economic point,

if we want to reduce people to utils,

maybe some volunteering for people in the mom community

and Guatemala, they were kids in high school.

I have nothing against these people personally.

What I'm saying is that, let's say,

again, to reduce people to utils.

What would you say for an American citizen

who doesn't have a high school diploma?

Statistically, that person's not going to do very well.

Now, it would be madness to allow that person

to come to the United States, legalize them,

give them citizenship, and then just expect them to flourish.

Like, we know that it's not going to work

based on the data.

And really, what it comes down to, again,

this is turning your point around like social cohesion

and like an understanding is we get to decide democratically.

And I will say there was a, I think, again,

I think immigration was probably number one,

maybe number two reason why Donald Trump got elected

is the people want to feel some sort of control over the border.

And it was a popular vote.

I think mandate really on the immigration question.

Like, I really think there's a lot of like,

you fell for it, award stuff, whatever it comes to Trump.

He stood in front of a sign at the RNC

and it said mass deportation.

I know.

And he won the popular vote.

And I think people like you have to reckon

then that your idea of Minneapolis,

then of some utopian vision is just not true.

My reckoning is, I'm sorry, my reckoning is that I was right.

And there was a big portion of people

that Donald Trump, the vote for Donald Trump

that didn't know what mass deportation looked like.

And I did know what mass deportation looked like.

And I knew it was going to be an assault

on American citizens' rights and an assault on the human rights

of people that tried to come here legally

through the asylum process, even if you don't like that process.

They weren't criminals that snuck across the border.

They tried to go through the legal process

and now they're being assaulted,

they're being sent to foreign countries.

And I think the people look at that.

And that's why ICE, like the only thing less popular

than ICE in the polls right now is AI and Iran

and the Democratic Party.

Well, I think the people are now seeing

that what mass deportation really is.

Maybe I totally disagree.

I don't think mass deportation had to look like this at all.

And in fact, my criticism on the immigration agenda

of the Trump is that a lot of it is for show

and it's not actually for affect.

Don't forget that the White House itself

has put out a memo or something yesterday

and don't talk about mass deportation,

talk about removal of what is a violent criminal's

or any of that.

I mean, the real story of the immigration agenda

under Donald Trump is he didn't live up

to the fundamental promise, which is that to tackle immigration,

you have to tackle big business.

And there has been an absolute courting of big business

and allowance really of like farm labor or reduction

and work raids, any of this.

And this is where the economic question is.

So how would I deal with mass deportation?

I don't think it's very difficult at all.

Pass mandatory verify for the entire country.

Make it so that you have to verify citizenship

whenever you're employed and then put a massive tax

on remittances to any foreign country.

Everyone will go home tomorrow.

You don't have to lock anybody up

or very, very few people.

However, it will dramatically affect a lot of house building

industry.

I don't know, like the weed industry

in California banking, it's not gonna create the show.

You know, necessarily like I guess some people

in the Trump administration want.

But I think that would be a much easier way to do it.

Frankly, a lot more effective too.

So you said he's done one good thing

since he's been in there 14 months.

Shut the more, any reg rats.

Any feeling like maybe you're a little too pro-Trump

in retrospect.

Of course.

How could I not?

Should have been for Kamala.

No, definitely not.

It's special.

Well, I mean, this is why if Kamala is present,

we'd be better off right now.

The country would be better off.

Okay.

Well, I mean, we wouldn't be in the Iran war.

We wouldn't have, we wouldn't have like the tariffs.

Do you remember what mass agents in the streets?

Those are three things we wouldn't have.

Do you remember a segment on your show

where I think it was Jonathan Lass said

that the Neocons are now in control of the Democratic Party?

Do you remember that?

I hate this set.

You all took that so far out of context.

Why did we take that context?

Because he was joking.

Because we have a clubhouse joke.

We were joking.

He was laughing about the nature

of how she talked about lethality at the,

at the word, go back and watch it.

I've went back and rewind.

I'm joking.

Well, I will.

That the 17 seconds goes around

and then we keep talking about it later

and have a longer conversation.

I'm going to go back to the airport

because I hate when people clip me out of context too.

By the way, please don't do that for this episode.

We won't do it.

So, okay, let's put that clip aside.

Let's talk about the DNC platform from 2024.

Were they attacked Donald Trump from the right on him?

I don't want to really like 2024.

I mean, we're here in 2026.

But do you think we're being in Iran war right now?

Do you think we being in the Iran war right now?

I'm just going to.

No, obviously.

And I'll give you that.

What we have some of the Israel policy?

Yeah, I do think so.

Actually, I was at the DNC.

I remember how they treated a lot of those Palestinian protesters.

I interviewed a lot of them actually

with my colleague, Ryan Grimm.

Yeah, that was bad politics.

No, but it was policy too.

It was policy too.

I mean, these are people, like, again,

but see, this is where I get frustrated.

It is like we could only evaluate candidates at the time.

And the time was Liz Cheney.

It was a DNC platform that attacked Trump

from the right on Iran.

It was somebody who had just come through

this disastrous policy in the war in Ukraine.

Incredibly new conservative.

We're going to kill Putin.

I mean, we had real reason to believe.

This is a critique of the campaign,

which is a whole new agenda.

It's a policy.

I'm not asking you if you would vote for Kamala

based on the information that you had in November 2024.

Obviously, no, you voted for Trump.

It's March, 2026.

I'm asking you based on the information you have now

having learned about what Trump was going to do

the first 14 months.

Do you think Kamala would have been better?

If I could have gone back, I probably just wouldn't vote

to be honest, because immigration

is also a very salient question for me too.

And like, if anything, what I've seen revealed

in a lot of the current democratic, like legislative bases,

like they really still believe in the same numbers

but the asylum, so-called asylum process that you just said,

I think mass amnesty is the plan, was the plan,

will be the plan whenever people come back into power.

And like, that's a red line for a lot of us

on the immigration question.

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Rapid fire TDS and then Rapid Fire Fund

stuff we disagree with.

Really, we'll just, you know, it's like a chess match.

We'll have 45 seconds back and forth.

Why was January 6th not the end for you?

What do you mean?

Some people in the Trump administration walked away.

Mike Pence walked away.

They said, look, anybody that would sit there

and watch TV while a mob of his fans

stormed the Capitol and attacked police officers.

It was a judgment call that was so horrible

that like based on a lie that he made up.

Like the judgment call was so horrible,

you could never trust somebody that has that judgment

to do anything again to run a fucking corner store

to coach your kids basketball team

and there's no way you could ever make a president again.

Why was that not your view?

Well, there was lesser of two evils, easy logic.

Watch Democratic leaders and Kent take cloth,

get on their knees and encourage one of the worst riots

in the country.

That's actually the easiest answer is why January 6th

was not the breaking point was literally watching

the entire Democratic Party and media

encourage the mass looting and rioting and burning.

Oh, so I mean, I lived in DC literally where I used to live.

There were riots that were going on.

People, the crime rate exploded, it was a disaster.

So no, that's, that's the easiest.

Well, did I think it was bad?

Yeah, I said so too at the time on my show,

people don't, not some Jan 6th apologist or any of that.

Like, you know, I'm not sitting here,

I'm like, are you playing the choir?

Like, Dan and Wes had his podcast for you guys playing the choir.

I wasn't playing the choir.

I wasn't, you know, I didn't say QAnon shaman

or whatever was a hero.

I said, well, whenever you have to choose between this

and the people who encourage, I still think

would encourage mass rioting and looting.

Yeah, that was not, that's honestly the easiest

TDS question.

My least favorite bull or comb I've ever written was that I

thought that the punishment for the shaman was too much.

So there you go.

There's my consistent.

Yes, by the way, that was true.

That's true.

I know.

I don't think we can actually do Ukraine,

rapid fire style.

So why don't we just take Ukraine, we'll do it another day.

How about that?

We can fight about your country another day.

Let's go to the fun stuff.

You are apparently against daylight's time,

which is a total of front on the human spirit.

You have 30 seconds to explain why.

It's bad for your circadian biology.

It is bad for the productive class

who actually does anything in this country.

It's only good for boomers who want to golf later on in the day.

And it is massively disruptive.

You're up here now.

How do you guess?

My, my daughter is 10 months old.

10 months, okay.

We're going to redo this one in three years.

When you have a three-year-old,

you're going to change.

It's not going to change.

When you're going to the park after school,

when school ends and it's already fucking dark

and you've got to have your child running around the house.

It's all about energy.

We don't have 30 seconds to get into this.

I've battled all of these bullshit arguments

for years and years and years.

Okay, I'll redo it.

If you want, by the way, for anybody wants,

I put out an entire essay where I destroyed Nate Silver

on the DST question.

You can go on and you can find it.

Fight on vice, on vices.

Yes.

I've said that I'm not accepting CalShi

or prediction whatever advertising on the bull work.

I refuse to.

I refuse to endorse it.

I think it's deeply pernicious.

I do accept weed gummy advertising, though.

You are, it's worse.

You're, you're harshly against weed.

And, and gambling, though, it seemed like you did

play crap earlier.

So what, what's your weed and gambling in alcohol?

Give me just kind of a run of devices.

Well, first of all, I don't drink.

On the gambling question, I'm very against online gambling.

I'm fine with in-person gambling.

You need to introduce friction into the system.

This is another reason why I'm against prediction markets.

You know, my modest proposal on gambling

is just make it casino gambling.

You have to be able to go to a casino to place your bets.

And when you go to a casino,

you see all the other degenerates inside of a casino.

Number one, you're like, God, I don't ever want to be

like these people.

But also, you have to get into your car and drive.

You can't just do it sitting in your underwear

in your home, which leads to runaway addiction problems.

Also, the sports books, I don't have enough time

to go into this.

They are robbing you blind.

The types of bets that Kalshi, Polymarket,

and Strafkings and Fandool have would make a 80s Vegas guy.

He would blush red at the idea of stealing

that much money from you.

And that's what's normalized now inside of the system.

Okay.

Is even worse than years of, oh, we gum is 10 times worse.

Well, it's used by more of the population.

Yeah, we have a mass parts of our population.

I think what's the latest number?

20 million.

I think it is 20 million.

I'm pretty sure I'm using high potency tea

and tea on a daily basis.

It's destroying your, for you, it's destroying your testosterone.

It is destroying your sleep.

It's destroyed.

Are you on TRT?

I'm not on TRT.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Some of your blood work.

All right.

It's destroying your testosterone, destroying your sleep.

It's bad for pregnant women.

It smells like shit whenever people smoke it everywhere,

but most of them leave.

It smells better than cigars.

You smoke cigars.

Well, we don't smoke cigars in public, do we?

When you go down to a park,

are you going to smell cigar?

Are you going to smell weed sometimes?

When you get on a plane and a guy reeks,

is he going to reek of, is he going to reek of cigars or weed?

Whenever I drop, walk down the streets of New York City,

am I going to smell cigarettes?

Or am I going to smell weed?

Same in DC where I can see cannabis dispensaries everywhere.

What am I going to smell?

You know it's weed.

It's going to be weed in it's everywhere.

It encourages you, legalization encourages teen use.

It dramatically lowers IQ in the developing brain.

Also, in the adult brain, makes you slow, makes you lazy.

It's just bad for you.

It's a horrible product.

It's the high potent CTHC, which you're probably

encouraging people to use with weed gummies is,

I mean, psychoactive to the point where

we have a mass explosion across the globe in schizophrenia

and the outbreak of mental illness.

So the social costs of marijuana are so much higher

than any of these stoners let us to believe.

And in fact, big weed is, big weed, I would say,

is one of the, like, the preeminent threats to the country right now.

Oh my God.

Okay.

One of the preeminent threats to the country.

What about crypto?

How about how does you compare it to crypto?

We have a president running a crypto scan

and people are doing gambling in their wallets with ship coins.

It isn't even gambling.

It's actually stealing.

It's theft.

The president and his family are stealing from regular people

with their coins.

It is an abomination.

Yeah, we didn't even get into corruption, unfortunately.

We can do that at another time.

No, crypto has gone completely out of control.

I was a Bitcoin guy very originally.

I really like some of the hype and some of the use case

specifically around Bitcoin, the Bitcoin manifesto

and some of the original theory.

But the way that the industry has now become

where it's basically, I mean, just run away,

ridiculousness and really gambling.

Whenever it comes to mean coins, ship coins,

prediction markets.

Remember, prediction markets started with crypto.

It's not an accident actually that it did.

And so I think it's gone completely run amok

and I think all of this needs to be shut down.

I did this yesterday.

I already made my case on why it would be fine

for a basketball team to have a strip club night.

You disagree with that.

People can go listen to yesterday's show.

If they want to hear me in favor,

give it now a say girl on top.

I mean, this, how I mean,

we still live in a free country.

I cannot even conceive of a sports league

which is watched by children trying to normalize

celebrating a fucking strip club.

You realize they're tits aren't out at the game, right?

It's just a little bit.

Their tits aren't out at the game, right?

It just says magic civics.

Regardless, it's like this is a horrible,

it's just like gambling, like weed or any of these other things.

These are industries which should be resigned

to the gutter of American society.

Just like gambling, you need to go find some fat guy

to go and place your ridiculous bet on the Cowboys

for 3.5.

You should not be able to do it on your phone

to billions of dollars of advertising,

normalizing it into your life.

So I'll make the exact same case on the strip club.

I mean, I can't even believe this is up for discussion.

Just absolutely not.

So this sets up for my final question,

which is listening to your case.

You're against gambling, gummies, alcohol, strip clubs.

Are you kind of low key for Sharia law?

Are you a low key pro Sharia law guy?

Yeah, people have asked me that before.

People have asked me for that.

Look, I still believe in individuality and freedom

and to a certain extent.

But in the way, in the low key that I'm not saying

like you really want America to be a Sharia country,

but like you low key Sharia curious though.

I live my life more consistent with Sharia law

than the American degenerates.

Minus praying five times a day

and some of the other stuff that would come with it.

But listen, you know, those laws and those traditions,

they come from good practice, I think.

Liberalitarian, right wing populist.

We've found a lot of common ground today.

You never know.

Things are shaking.

You have another practice called the realignment that you do.

Let's listen to that.

I've said this morning, walk and unwalk.

And I was super with you on that.

Like I wrote an article, you're before me,

maybe like six months.

I wrote an article for the Bullock one of my first articles

is called The Trade.

And I was like, we've had a full shift

called Red Dog Democrats or now Democrats.

And these working class folks are now Republicans.

It's already happened.

Like people pretending like it hasn't.

I do wonder if what's had been happening the last month

is regigling that a little bit.

And I guess that's my final question for you.

And I'm wondering kind of looking into your crystal ball,

what you're seeing as far as the restructuring

of the coalitions right now.

I absolutely think that that is happening.

I especially think with the newly activated parts

of politics, so like young men, right?

That's we're gonna see a dramatic reduction.

I think in that, I think that group is really gonna be

either upper grabs or maybe apathetic,

they may just not vote.

But there are also, you know, the Latino swings

that have been wild all over the place from 2020

up until 2024, either reverting back to normal

or changing in a different way.

Coalition, I think one of the favorite things

and one of the reasons I love about covering politics

is that nothing is static.

Do you remember the book?

I have it behind me somewhere.

The 40 more years book by James Carville.

I keep it as a reminder.

As a reminder that you are owed nothing.

Is that people change their mind?

I'm seeing James on Saturday.

I'm gonna order it and refresh myself.

I'll tell him that you said that.

I still have it.

I'll sign it because I use it as an example

of how wrong you can be.

Is that demographics are not destiny.

There is no such thing as a static coalition

in American politics.

And my faith in America is that they change their mind

all the time.

Go and look at the 96 electoral map to 2000,

look at 2000 to 2004,08 to 2016, 16 to 24.

And these are elections that I've just lived through.

Okay, I'm only 33.

So think about that.

How many times America's changed their mind over the years?

And I love that.

I think America's always up for grabs.

Things are always changing.

We're highly dynamic country.

States change.

I love it.

And I think it's, I think I would say it's the coolest part

of our republic is watching, you know,

for all of the black pill, doomer,

like, oh, people are in cult and all of that.

Enough people on the margins actually do change their mind

literally all the time.

And they respond to incentives, politics, the news.

And that's kind of what keeps me excited