On this week's episode, the boys discuss the latest in the Trump vs. Biden debate, the ongoing Russia investigation, and the possibility of a Trump impeachment. Plus, a special guest joins the boys to talk about the NFL and the NFL playoffs.
00:00:44.120You know, like, you know, like whenever I remember hearing someone interviewed, I think it was like the Dallas Cowboys player.
00:00:52.700It was like Micah Parsons, the linebacker.
00:00:54.880And they were like, well, you know, you might face Brady in the playoffs like, you know, are you going to be rooting for the other team against Brady?
00:01:04.000And he was like, no, I'm rooting for Brady.
00:02:19.500The left would love to destroy Donald Trump again.
00:02:22.260Have another chance at him in the election, I think, just to tear him apart.
00:02:26.340And I think they have an entire like arsenal that they're getting ready, like legally and all other sorts of things to just come after him.
00:02:32.800So I think they I think they feel slighted to it.
00:02:34.980The fact that he won in 2016 still they want to come after him again.
00:02:51.000So the Alvin Bragg thing, actually, Ty Cobb, who was like Trump's lawyer for a time or whatever, he said that Trump should prepare for like a year jail sentence or something, which seems a bit, to be honest, excessive for like this kind of crime.
00:03:06.640I don't know. I guess I'm kind of cynical, but whatever.
00:03:10.740But in, you know, like there might very well be an indictment.
00:03:16.180There is going to be some kind of announcement of an indictment in Georgia.
00:03:20.100And that could happen like next week or a month from now.
00:03:27.580Yeah. And the Jack Smith thing is real.
00:03:30.440I mean, he like I follow that not not as intently as as shrill liberals, but, you know, I kind of will see little things popping up like he's filing motions constantly.
00:03:42.880And I mean, you know, so Trump would be running for his life.
00:03:49.640I mean, he would be indicted facing jail and he would over the Mar-a-Lago classified documents over J6, perhaps with Jack Smith as well and over the Georgia phone call and then there and then just throw into the mix.
00:04:06.640You know, the bookkeeping would store me paying off a porn star or whatever in New York.
00:04:13.100He'll be running in order to avoid jail time or at the very least house arrest or whatever they're going to do with the former president.
00:04:20.980But but whatever that the stakes will be existential.
00:04:25.460All right. Anyone want to jump in on this or I have kind of another little angle that I'm.
00:04:30.240That I have some interest in go for it.
00:05:18.000You know, part of the PayPal mafia connected with Teal and Musk and all of them and an investor of.
00:05:27.740Some kind of legitimacy, who knows, but also someone who's put on the paleo conservative hat.
00:05:34.340So he is giving donations and writing articles for the American conservative magazine is kind of part of this NatCon culture that we've talked about that's out there.
00:05:48.600He has some connections to the Claremont Institute, et cetera.
00:06:01.100So he was I mean, the the Musk town hall or space actually occurred on his account because apparently the Musk account was made it too popular.
00:06:14.340So they went to someone with many fewer followers and they got it done.
00:06:23.200He went on Fox News and he's been going on a lot of these podcasts.
00:06:27.780He actually even went on Jackson Hinkle's live stream.
00:06:31.120So I doing something like that indicates to me that he is like very keyed in with Russia.
00:06:42.540He's been dipping his toe into people, probably less so Dore, but but undoubtedly with Jackson Hinkle, like dealing with an actual like asset of the Kremlin.
00:06:56.940I mean, it gets a little bit edgy when you start doing stuff like that.
00:07:02.020But he went on Laura Ingram's program afterward.
00:07:08.140And I guess we can like go into the idiosyncrasies of all this.
00:07:14.420But I also had kind of like a broader point to make.
00:07:18.140So he was on Laura Ingram's program and they were talking about the space and Laura Ingram was saying, well, you know, what is Ron DeSantis's perspective on Ukraine?
00:07:31.380Because he's kind of played it both ways.
00:07:33.940There was a time maybe about, I don't know, three or six months ago where Tucker Carlson asked for a statement from all of the major political candidates.
00:07:43.860And Ron DeSantis gave a statement that was kind of, you know, had some escape clauses here and there, but it was kind of pushing towards the Trump side of things.
00:07:58.260Trump basically said, you know, he was asked at that town hall, do you want Ukraine to win?
00:08:04.380He basically says, you know, I want to stop the dying, which is basically a pro-Russian perspective at this point.
00:08:12.160I mean, it's Ukraine that's under attack.
00:08:16.560So then Ron DeSantis went on the Piers Morgan program and he quoted a line, although not attributed to him, but he quoted a line from John McCain, which basically said that Russia is a gas station with nuclear weapons.
00:08:34.660Which is pretty harsh, but maybe not untrue.
00:08:42.680But yeah, obviously Russia is more than that and history is more than that, but it's, you know, shorthand.
00:08:49.580And that, that kind of insult seemed to indicate that he was on board with the neocons.
00:08:58.700Certainly the Republican establishment to some degree, and I think to a large degree, likes DeSantis.
00:09:05.600I mean, Jeb said this is DeSantis' time and all this kind of stuff.
00:09:10.880So there's this kind of like question of who is he and where is he on this very important question.
00:09:19.460And Jeffrey Sachs is being, or David Sachs, sorry, I'm mixing them up.
00:09:23.640David Sachs is being interviewed by Laura Ingram.
00:09:25.900And he, he said, you know, oh yeah, I'm, I'm really against wars of choice.
00:09:36.780So he's kind of mixing his terminology there, but he's basically saying that we are engaged in a proxy war against Russia.
00:09:46.720And it was a war of choice in the sense that we, we chose to get in, maybe most defensively, we chose to get involved to defend Ukraine.
00:09:55.340We, we, we could have just let them, you know, suffer the consequences or even, and I'm sure many of, you know, many, many on the right believe this, that we instigated this war.
00:10:07.760That, that really Putin is, is a victim in all this.
00:10:11.620We created this, this Ukraine invasion.
00:10:42.880I can remember Laura Ingram and Ann Coulter and all of these people being fanatical Iraq war promoters and, you know, particularly Ann Coulter.
00:10:57.480She was doing like workshops at CPAC about how to get your professor fired for treason if he denounces George W. Bush in the classroom.
00:11:06.680I mean, it was just totally grotesque, vicious type stuff.
00:11:12.840Ann Coulter after 9-11 said that we should bomb their cities and convert them to Christianity.
00:11:19.100And, you know, Ann Coulter was part of the neocon attack on anyone in the right who opposed the, the paleo conservatives in particular, but really anyone who was lukewarm on the war.
00:11:34.040And now they're talking like paleo conservatives and, and, and using paleo language as well, which is interesting.
00:11:49.120And there, there's some plausible explanations.
00:11:51.720One of them is that they've learned something from the Iraq experience.
00:11:59.220Now I have a rather jaundiced, uh, take on the right.
00:12:07.040So it's hard for me to agree that they've learned anything, but who knows?
00:12:14.840Uh, the other thing is that they've just kind of gone along with Trump.
00:12:18.520Trump put himself out there during, um, the South Carolina debate in early 2016.
00:12:25.360He just said, you know, Bush lied, people died.
00:12:29.160They knew they didn't have weapons of mass destruction and they went in any way.
00:12:33.280It was a big whopper of a mistake or something like that.
00:12:36.780And that that was just so bold that it kind of got in their head.
00:12:40.900Maybe some of those things are occurring, but I wonder if there's something kind of bigger going on here.
00:12:47.960Cause you could also say that these conservatives granted, um, Laura Ingram would have been a lot younger, uh, in, during the cold war, but, you know, she was, she graduated from Dartmouth in the eighties.
00:13:00.520She, she would have experienced the cold war as an adult.
00:13:06.300I mean, the cold war was over by the time I was 10 or something.
00:13:10.180I do have certain memories of it, but, uh, I certainly wasn't a, uh, conscious, you know, thinking person at that time.
00:13:18.620But it seems like these conservatives would be the ones who would really take to a, a new neo cold war environment.
00:13:27.560You know, that this would be in their wheelhouse, just a, just a, a, a softball thrown over the middle of the plate that they could knock out of the park.
00:13:36.540You know, it's like, well, this is an attack on freedom and we have to oppose this, you know, Russian empire, which might very well be evil.
00:13:47.160And, you know, we, we need a strong home front in order to beat the commies or something like that.
00:13:54.040But they haven't, they've gone the exact opposite route.
00:13:57.840The, the exact opposite thing that you would expect them to do, you know, at least hypothetically, if you, if you were like a, a foreigner who had read a bunch about American history, you would basically say, oh, well, of course the right will be fanatically anti-Russian.
00:14:15.320Uh, but they're not, they're the opposite.
00:14:17.300And so what is it, what, what exactly is going on?
00:14:24.760I, I wonder if it's the case that the reason why they don't like this war is because it is a kind of, you know, int, intrafamilial battle between Europeans that they really took to the rock war.
00:14:46.560They, I mean, maybe they've learned some lessons.
00:14:49.780I think that's being generous to the, the notion that any of these folks have learned anything from history or experience, but maybe they have, and they saw the folly of Iraq, but maybe like their vehemence and passion in fighting the Iraq war was really based on its Jewish or Middle Eastern qualities.
00:15:16.560That it was an attack on Babylon that it was an attack on Babylon that is Iraq and that it was on some level doing something on behalf of Israel.
00:15:29.100And it resonated with them kind of religiously and emotionally in that way.
00:15:35.400And at this point saying, sticking up for a country in Europe, they're just past that.
00:15:43.900They don't think of themselves as a European country.
00:15:47.040I mean, the, the dissident right can talk all day long about how, you know, we're an outpost of Europe and we should be connected to other whites and other nationalists around the continent and, and, and, and Australia too, and whatever.
00:16:03.260That's not how conservatives fundamentally think that is not how they have thought for decades.
00:16:10.600And so it actually isn't, it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that Laura Ingraham, who wears this crucifix prominently when she, you know, appears on television, who was a raging fan of the Bush era wars, denouncing anyone who dared to offer criticism.
00:16:33.080That this actually makes a lot of sense and they don't want to fight on behalf of white people or Europe.
00:16:40.660They want to engage in some kind of crusade in the Holy land.
00:16:45.820And that that is the kind of foreign policy that ultimately resonates with them.
00:16:50.720And certainly it resonates with David Sachs.
00:16:57.400Well, I do think it is notable that, um, a lot of these, uh, sort of titans of Silicon Valley who have become very salient in our society are essentially foreigners.
00:17:11.200Um, Sachs being one, I mean, he's also South, uh, South African, like, uh, Musk.
00:17:21.560So, but essentially it, they represent, you know, for better or worse.
00:17:25.540And I don't, I don't think this by itself is a, uh, mark against them.
00:17:29.740I mean, you know, my views on globalism, but they do ultimately represent a kind of global elite as it were.
00:17:35.500Um, and they see, you know, in their, their, it's almost as if they've watched, uh, the development of the, the American empire, you know, from abroad growing up in this sort of thing.
00:17:50.540And now that they're, they're kind of, you know, entering into the arena of this, the, the sort of the power arena of America, as it were, um, as, as foreigners essentially, because it is a kind of, it is a kind of open arena.
00:18:05.760Um, and America ultimately is a global empire.
00:18:10.100Um, so, I, I mean, I just think it's interesting to see this sort of generation, right?
00:18:15.040Sort of the powerful people in American society now, a lot of cases are not even American, really.
00:18:34.500And I've been, um, I've been into his writing, uh, for, for a long time, since I was like in a British school.
00:18:42.120And I, uh, Columbia is a very Catholic society.
00:18:46.500And, um, this was like time of, of, uh, new atheism.
00:18:52.020And I had, uh, a British, uh, guy from Wales teacher who lended me his copy of, of God is not great, which, which was, uh, Christopher Hitchens, you know, bestseller book.
00:19:04.120And I follow, uh, his, his career as a writer and the chapters in his memoir where he narrates, um, when he became an American, when he got his, not his green card, but he became naturalized and he had to, uh, say the Pledge of Allegiance.
00:19:24.180And, and, and he take that, um, that history test.
00:19:28.220He was more fanatical than any American I have read, uh, about America.
00:19:35.080And the guy wrote the book about Thomas Jefferson and how America is, is exceptional.
00:19:41.500Uh, he, he was a socialist and a Trotskyist, uh, a Trotskyist, sorry, uh, in the eighties and the seventies.
00:19:49.220But, but, but he then became a neocon after the, uh, after nine 11, of course, of Hitchens, I mean, and you do find this, this weird phenomenon of foreigners who get naturalized and become more fanatical than the natives themselves about the country, which has given them political asylum or, or, or like, um, has adopted them.
00:20:16.360Um, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's also very common in, in, in Latin American exile writers during the Condor operation era in the cold war.
00:20:26.260So yeah, it's, it's, it's a real thing where you say, Mark, that, that some, some foreigners become fanatical, uh, American exceptionalists.
00:20:39.020You know, the, the Christopher Hitchens thing was interesting.
00:20:41.380Um, I, from what I have can tell, and I actually recently watched a, an interesting round table on YouTube that was during that era, I think it was about 2002 or so.
00:20:55.940And it was Christopher Hitchens and David Reif and a number of writers of, uh, good repute, in fact, and they were discussing these issues.
00:21:06.480I, I, I think there might've been a socialist edge to Hitchens because he didn't become a conservative exactly.
00:21:14.160And he, he, he kind of stuck to his guns in so many areas, but actually did feel that in this circumstance, the U S military could be a force for good.
00:21:26.880Uh, and I believe like, gosh, someone can correct me or somebody knows the history better than I do.
00:21:32.860He was very concerned with this like Kurdish socialist organization that was in a way betrayed when George Herbert Walker Bush let Saddam slaughter the Kurds at the end of the, uh, first Iraq war.
00:21:57.580And so he, he kind of saw this as like, let's do it right this time and let's knock out the big bad.
00:22:04.660And he was also making the argument that Iraq isn't going to collapse anyway.
00:22:08.380That, that seemed to almost be a, uh, I don't know, a little bit bad faith.
00:22:13.620I'm not sure that that's accurate or anyone believe that, but you know, let's knock it over and then help out some of these people who I like basically.
00:22:25.660Anyway, he's a complicated figure because, you know, a lot of new atheism to its credit really was reacting against the Iraq war and, uh, the rise of the religious right.
00:22:43.160It also had a decay day in the eighties, uh, with Reagan and, you know, the, the, the God delusion came out in 2006.
00:22:54.820Um, Dawkins claimed that he had, you know, wanted to write it for decades or had written parts of it earlier or something.
00:23:03.100But it, it came out as a, you know, a, a torpedo launched against the, you know, George W. Bush mission accomplished aircraft carrier.
00:23:14.400If you go along with my metaphor here, you know, I mean, it's, it, it was, it was of a time.
00:23:21.340And I think, you know, I, I have my own lots of criticisms of new atheism, but it, but it kind of was like justified and, and, and, uh, and, uh, a needed critique of a lot of the madness going on with evangelical voters.
00:23:38.180Particularly in 2004, when they really came on board with George W. Bush and he won, uh, a re-election in a landslide, it was all these evangelicals who hadn't voted before.
00:23:49.120And they're, they're, you know, previously they had, uh, you know, I guess post scopes monkey trial.
00:23:54.540They had basically said, you know, all politics is corrupt and they're all evil and blah, blah, blah.
00:23:58.820And then there are these times where they get activated and they really get activated and they say, no, God has chosen George W. Bush.
00:24:07.480We are fighting a, a war that is not about weapons of mass destruction.
00:24:13.560And it kind of sorta is about, uh, spreading democracy or all that stuff that was articulated in George W. Bush's, um, 2005 inaugural address, you know, we're a force for good bringing democracy to the world.
00:24:29.560It was about that to a degree, but, but it was, all of that talk was like tinged with a, a religious message.
00:24:38.460And the fact that Iraq was in Babylon, I don't think is insignificant.
00:24:44.240Um, it, it was, whether they quite understood that consciously or not, it just, it was, it was layered over their political opinions.
00:24:54.920And, and, and obviously Christopher Hitchens did not agree with any of that kind of stuff, but, um, I don't know.
00:25:04.380It's a, it's a, it's a very complicated way.
00:25:07.500Uh, it's a, it's a complicated thing to think about, but I, I, I think my, I think my take on this is, is right.
00:25:15.040It, it, it came to me last night while I was watching that interview with David Sachs and Laura Ingram and it was like, isn't this funny?
00:25:24.040And, and, and, you know, it's like, and I think a lot of people in the dissonant right or, you know, Tucker Carlson fans, they're, they're wanting to say like, oh, look, they've, they've learned their lessons.
00:25:32.840You know, they, the right used to suck in 2003 with Bush and all that stuff, but, you know, they, they learned so much from that experience.
00:25:42.700And now they're, you know, and I was, the idea of conservatives learning anything that strikes me as impossible, basically.
00:25:53.580And so what is it that's going on there?