The 18th Bro-maire
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Summary
If Donald Trump's failures in office were once tragic, it's all now become a farce. Both genres were on display today in the nation's capital as Trump's most hardcore fans were whipped up into a frenzy and stormed the Capitol building. Maybe they were doing it for fun, maybe they were trying to stop the election certification, or maybe were engaged in an armed insurrection. And it would seem better to have actually attempted a coup d'etat than to embarrass everyone with their half-assed bullshit. Mark Brahman joins me to discuss the coming fallout.
Transcript
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It's January 6th, 2021, and welcome back to The Spencer Report.
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The name has slightly changed, the commentaries still cringe.
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If Donald Trump's failures in office were once tragic, it's all now become a farce.
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Both genres were on display today in the nation's capital,
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as Trump's most hardcore fans were whipped up into a frenzy and stormed the Capitol building.
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Maybe they actually wanted to stop the election certification.
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And it would seem better to have actually attempted a coup d'etat
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than to have embarrassed everyone with their half-assed bullshit.
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Mark Brahman joins me to discuss the coming fallout.
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Did you expect this to happen today, Mark, when you woke up?
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In that it would get relatively wild, and it would probably produce some good clips.
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I actually didn't think that there would necessarily be violence, though, certainly.
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And I thought that, you know, but I thought there would be good clips of, like, Fuentes
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and, you know, chanting Christ is king and that sort of thing, right?
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I mean, so I thought that there was going to be some good footage.
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But, yeah, of course, I didn't really expect it to go this crazy.
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Though, I guess in the back of my mind, I thought it was – I think we all, in the back
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of our mind, thought something like this might happen.
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I mean, it's easy to say something is inevitable after it happened.
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But when you look at it, it was leading towards this.
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And, you know, you can't – I mean, I tweeted this at Don Jr. this afternoon.
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It's like you can't use this type of rhetoric of these are communists.
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We won California, in fact, and they just took it from us.
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You cannot say that and not expect that your followers are going to take your word seriously
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Like, at the end of the day, this is just a logical culmination of this massive grift that's
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And it spilled over from the internet into real life, like we've seen a few times.
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I mean, we saw back in 2016 – I mean, this is something that's largely forgotten.
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We saw a guy who was into Pizzagate, which is a kind of proto-QAnon-type conspiracy that
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I remember well from those crazy days of 2016, when we were kind of overlooking a lot of
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this lunacy because we felt like we were winning, but who took a rifle into Comet Pizza and demanded
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I mean, there is no basement, but demanded to investigate the basement of the restaurant
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And if you use this type of rhetoric, there are going to be some consequences.
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And, you know, these people who were doing this, I mean, you know, the meme that I've seen
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from a lot of conservatives is that, you know, Antifa infiltrated the peaceful protest or whatever.
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And I mean, maybe there are a few examples of that, but I just don't buy that at all.
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I mean, you see this type of person who engages in this kind of stuff, and they are, you know,
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But they are the type of person that has been cultivated by the Trump movement and that is
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actually listening to them and acting on their words in a fashion that can be expected and that
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Yeah, you know, it's, I mean, it's a populist movement, of course, as we know.
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And, but I don't think, I think that populist movements require intelligent leadership and
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So it's both, it has neither a brain, it has only a body effectively.
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And even the body could be a better, like they could be a kind of a better class of people
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You know, it's populist, but it's also like, I mean, they are on some level, they are the
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I mean, they, you know, it's in a lot of that might just be a function of where we are as
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a society and where people are as a society that we live in degraded conditions.
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Part of that is a function of living in America in particular, you know what I mean?
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So that might even be kind of emphasized in some ways versus Europe.
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You know, I think that there's kind of a, maybe a kind of broader bell curve in a way
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in America, uh, in the sense that we, we do have, uh, I think we, you know, I think we
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do have these sort of deplorable types that are, are, um, they shouldn't really be the
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And that's one thing you realize is that how, how important leadership is.
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I mean, it's just really in every political context, how important leadership is.
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And it's something that, um, I think that sometimes it's, you know, it strikes intelligent
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people who are kind of like, let's say, uh, for lack of better terms, uh, sort of autonomous
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thinkers, you know, free thinkers, intelligent people.
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I think that they are, they often miss, uh, this point that leadership is required because
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they don't themselves require leadership in their lives.
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They like, you know, a, a large group of people and, you know, it's partially, maybe
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it's an IQ thing, uh, but there are other factors of course involved as well, uh, that
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people do require leadership and movements require leadership.
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And often I would say probably the best leaders are, are in some cases the last to sort of realize
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that, that people require, because they've never required leadership in their own lives.
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You know, there's, there's another issue to this and I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll dilate on this
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for a little bit that whether these people actually want leadership and, you know, so let,
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let me start with this issue because this was the most bizarre coup attempt ever, perhaps
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you could say, and look on some level, it was a coup attempt because don't tell me this is
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When you enter a Capitol building, I mean, when you go to that level, you are going in
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to Congress, you're evading or overwhelming the police.
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You are saying that the election is illegitimate and so on.
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You, you are engaging in insurrection, however symbolic it might be.
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And however farcical it might be, you are engaging insurrection.
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I'm actually, um, listening to, uh, Will and Ariel Durant's, uh, book, uh, the age of Napoleon,
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which is a really good listen, by the way, it's kind of an old fashioned great man history,
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but, you know, he's telling the story of the French revolution and, you know, they would
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have these mobs that would enter, you know, uh, go to Versailles or to go to other, you
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know, major places and, you know, dozens would be dead.
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The ones who made it through would go in and drink themselves silly in the wine cellars.
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You know, I mean, this is a, what we saw today is a, is a fact of life.
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I mean, in some ways, the fact that apparently only one person has died, um, is remarkable.
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I mean, it's much, uh, safer than it was in previous eras.
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Uh, but they are engaging in this kind of stuff.
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I mean, there was big talk that I saw on Twitter about, you know, this next 48 hours are going
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to change everything in terms of the Georgia vote.
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And then the, uh, you know, the, the January 6th rally, and there was talk about Trump leading
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So, you know, quasi March on Rome type thing, you know, that Trump would actually be out
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there, you know, arm and arm with his supporters going to Washington.
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Uh, this, you know, the stop the steal slogan actually traces itself back to 2016.
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And, uh, that's when Roger Stone, uh, kind of coined this term and was, you know, developing
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it, uh, under the assumption that Trump would lose in 2016.
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Then in 2020, there was a concerted effort to delegitimize mail-in voting for months on
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And, uh, then, you know, from there on, they were kind of pushing towards this, pushing
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towards some way of delegitimizing the vote by talking about the mail-in ballots, talking
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about vote dumping and all this kind of stuff that we've been hearing for the last three
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So they were kind of pushing towards this, but it was the most bizarre coup attempt ever
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in the sense that, you know, if you're going to actually do a coup, you, you need to just
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Uh, you know, your own sanity and legality is measured by your success.
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You basically get all the fallout of an attempted coup, but then there's nothing to build on.
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It is utterly moronic, but at the same time, I don't think that this was just some, you
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know, spasmodic, you know, craziness of the crowd.
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I, I, they, they were clearly led in this direction.
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And the people who were using the hot rhetoric, Lin Wood, Trump himself, Trump's allies using
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this hot rhetoric for months had no real willingness or intention to back it up.
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And so you basically let a bunch of fools enter the, uh, Capitol building, have some fun,
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Uh, the fact is we have not seen the end of it.
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I think all of the people involved in this movement are, are going to, you know, uh, at
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the very least, some of them might be on probation, but they're going to be serious arrest, uh,
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When you walk into a Capitol building invades a Senator's office and live stream yourself
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acting like a jackass, you're, you're going to jail for that.
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Uh, you know, baked Alaska and company, whoever else was there, the America first movement,
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It doesn't matter if you were engaging in some, you know, hyper real hijinks, you will
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And, uh, so we have this, this bizarre situation, um, where we have all of these people listening
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Their leaders have no intention of backing them up, nor do they ultimately have some
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But I would ask this, like, you know, it is important to talk about, you know, intelligence
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and leadership and planning and patience and so on.
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I mean, that, that is a really important element of any kind of political movement, particularly
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I mean, I, I, I think my experience with the alt-right is that they generally don't want
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to hear, uh, critical views about themselves or critical challenging views about the world.
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They want to be led by people who are like them.
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Uh, they, you know, one of the really major, you know, innovations that's taken place on
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the internet over the past, you know, 10 to 15 years has been the development of the alternative
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media and the development of these kind of utter mediocrity, utter media, utterly mediocre,
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just guys who are either kind of entertaining like Alex Jones or who just reflect back at you,
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I mean, I'm thinking of Tim Poole might be the ultimate example of this, just the, the essence
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of mediocrity, someone who's has these delusional takes, who's kind of, you know, anxious about the
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current political divide, but won't actually take a side, uh, someone who's just, you know, not even an
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Asian nerd who's, who's kind of like somehow halfway between everything.
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He's just nothing, but he just puts up a bunch of garbage on a daily basis that reflects back
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at his listeners, what they're feeling at the moment.
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And there we've moved away from a situation that has its benefits and has its downsides.
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And that is a, a carefully curated and managed, um, hegemonic discourse through, through institutions
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like the nightly news, through institutions like the new Republic and national review through the
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You basically have a managed left, right spectrum and establishment viewpoint, and you can manage
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It's what Jackie Lule called propaganda in his sense of the word.
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Which is managing people's thoughts, but also kind of managing their actions in daily life.
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Um, where we are now, you know, the nightly news who watches that anymore.
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Whereas, you know, someone like Walter Cronkite used to be one of the most important people in
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I can't even name who the news anchors are anymore.
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Uh, they're not even watching cable news so much as they're watching, so to speak, their
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Facebook group and their Twitter feed and their forum or whatever their discord or whatever
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Um, we've just had this fragmenting and kind of, you know, siloing off of people where they
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And this is where they drive authenticity and the mainstream media, what used to manage
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Maybe, uh, it's, it's massively politically biased and fake news effectively.
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And we've just entered a new stage of media consumption.
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And I think the inability of the establishment to, uh, you know, again, curate and manage
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opinion, and you need to do that to maintain stability.
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I mean, I say this as someone who has, you could say alternative viewpoints, you, you too.
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And I also get the need to manage opinions for, for maintaining a stable society.
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And so we've, we've reached this new point where you have this fragmented though, kind
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of authentic nut jobbery as that is replacing the mainstream media.
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And it's going to lead to, you know, what is it?
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You know, 60% of Republicans thinking that the election was stolen, uh, six, you know,
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50% of Republicans being effectively QAnon, um, fellow travelers.
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There was a recent poll, uh, that we, I actually mentioned an article by Ed Dutton recently,
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but, um, 50% of Republicans think that the Democrats are engaged in sex trafficking and
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You just have these bizarre opinions that are weirdly mainstream.
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And this is happening with this kind of technological breakdown of what, you know, what used to be
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And with that, um, you're going to end up in these situations of no real leadership because
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Leadership is about the most intelligent guiding the body.
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And we, I don't, I mean, it's going to be difficult.
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It's, you know, it was difficult to do that in the, in the era of the mainstream media.
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It is going to be difficult to do that in this area, in this, um, you know, area of, of the,
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the network society or the fragmented society, the Facebook era.
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It's going to be equally hard to guide these people because they don't really want that type
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of leadership and, and you can kind of see this among them.
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Like there, there, there, there is an anti-intellectual bias, but there's like a, a, just a reaction
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against intelligence, you know, that you find among say the alt-right or, or these, you know,
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There, there's just a, a sense of that's not authentic.
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You know, the, you know, all, and, and from there on down, all these people, they're real.
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And I don't know how we can really get ourselves out of this type of situation.
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I mean, I, I, I'm, I'm ultimately optimistic, but I think that, um, geez, I, you said a lot
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I mean, I, I think that, uh, um, I think that, uh, there it's, there's so that what you're
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saying is true that the audience has become fragmented and you do have like large numbers
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of people following all these essentially weird nut jobs with conspiracy theories in
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some cases, or just, you know, just unsophisticated people with bad takes or whatever people who
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Uh, so I think that that is a real phenomenon at the same time, uh, Trump was adored as a
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So if Trump had leadership skills and any political savvy, he, he would have been able to kind
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of like, uh, use these conditions in a, in a very positive way.
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I would argue, you know, or, or certainly in a much more positive way than he, than he
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managed to, um, use, use this sort of situation he was given.
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And, uh, because as much as, uh, the audience is fragmenting, as much as people are kind of
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looking for a mirror of themselves, you know, in these, um, in these online worlds, they are
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also, uh, very impressed by someone like Trump who has a kind of like establishment pedigree
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and has, you know, has this sort of, um, it's a kind of legacy pedigree in the sense
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that, I mean, the establishment no longer likes Trump, but Trump was part of Hollywood
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He was, he was one of the most famous people in the world.
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And, and so that is part of his credibility with this MAGA crowd.
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So he's still the reality TV star and, you know, he, he could have, uh, effectively had,
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and he did in a way, I mean, just through kind of innuendo.
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He caused this problem, but how do you start, had he actually been sort of commanding people
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in a direct and clear way, the guy would have had tremendous power to wield and he could
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have wielded it in a, in a good positive direction if he was sort of politically savvy and if he
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actually had a vision of what he wanted to do, you know, and this is another problem though
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with MAGA is it, and I think that this is also some, this also kind of infects the, uh,
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the DR, the alt-right, uh, in the sense that people, uh, you know, anything that's kind
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of implicitly white, this is a term that, um, you know, Kevin McDonald, I think maybe,
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uh, made popular, but, uh, the MAGA movement is obviously an implicitly white movement as
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is the GOP and as is the right wing generally, uh, the Republican party, um, as it's NASCAR
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But so there is this real tendency for the kind of the racialist element in the DR to get
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excited about things that are implicitly white, that like, you know, oh, there's, there's,
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there is kind of a fascism, a nascent fascism lying under there that's going to emerge at
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some point, but the problem is it, it never emerges because the movement actually requires
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a kind of coherence and it requires leaders who are kind of articulating a vision and
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otherwise these people are exactly what you get.
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There's sort of, it's a kind of sincere type, not necessarily the most intelligent type in
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in the case of the MAGAs, uh, but it's a sincere type.
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So they're, they believe that it's about the constitution or it's about democracy or
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it's about, uh, you know, it's about, uh, 1776 again.
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And so there is no, so that's what it's going to be, right?
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So what you see is what you, you, you get it's because, I mean, there's a couple of the
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two factors, they lack sophistication, so they wouldn't be able to veil any sort of secret
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And, uh, they lack leadership, which is the leadership is not articulating a desirable
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It's just this sort of, you know, it's just this kind of vague thing that Trump has done.
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And, you know, again, and he's created the problem that he's created the whole time.
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And this has a lot of similarities to Charlottesville, in fact, right.
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And this will have a lot of this, uh, kind of a lot of the same consequences.
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I mean, potentially this is Fuentes is Charlottesville, right?
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I, I, I, it's like Charlottesville times a thousand, because the thing is Charlottesville
00:23:28.980
is ultimately defensible and, and not that there weren't some very bad things that, that occurred.
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Obviously the, you know, um, car incident with Heather Heyer, uh, was terrible as was the, um,
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the, the police helicopter accident, which of course was no one's fault.
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That was simply a pilot error, but those are very bad things.
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But, um, that was defensible in the sense that that was a, that was how you engage in the
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If you want to stand up for something, stand up for a symbol, like the Robert E. Lee statue,
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you go and hold protest and go out and give speeches.
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I mean, I, I, I, on all levels, I mean, you, you are, they were in, I mean, I get it.
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It was a farce and it was crazy, but they are engaging in insurrection and treason and they
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But beyond that, they are engaging in this on behalf of this man who will not support them
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So it's, it's just indefensible and it's going to be worse.
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It's not just about street fights and whether you, you know, use too much force against someone
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who shoved you or something, you know, those are like a lot of the issues of, of Charlottesville.
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Uh, the, if you enter the Capitol building, you, you've engaged in insurrection.
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It's just, it doesn't matter if you're there to live stream and it's all for the lulls.
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You are guilty of this period, end of statement in any other era, you would have been shot
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And I, and I think that we'll, this is so much worse.
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And I think we'll both hasten to add that, you know, hopefully, hopefully there aren't
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like severe jail sentences and there is leniency.
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Just, uh, in any case, I, I, I think that, um, uh, moving on, but I think that, uh, I
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I, but I think the problem is that they don't realize how serious it was.
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So I think they're going in with this kind of groper attitude, but, but they are basically
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I mean, that's effectively what's happening and there are legal consequences to it.
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Um, uh, you, you know, uh, but they live in this hyper real world.
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I mean, it's like they, they live in this world where like a D live stream or someone's
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Twitter feed or whatever, like, this is the real thing.
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Like they're taking part in politics, um, by, you know, donating a lemon to baked Alaska
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Like they, they're, they're in this weird, hyper real realm where that is real.
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It's sort of like they just finished playing grand theft.
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And then they went to the protest and then there was no real sort of the behavior didn't
00:26:49.760
So, uh, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of unfortunate things happened and I, you know, I, I am, uh,
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I hope for the best for everyone involved in humanity in general, but it is, I think that
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they are up Schitt's Creek without a paddle, unfortunately.
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Um, you know, the other thing too, the other interesting aspect of this as well is that, um,
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a very tragic and unfortunate aspect of this was the woman that was killed and, you know,
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and so here's the other dimension of what they, it's, it's not just what they did.
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It's the political climate in which they did it, which is, you know, in Charlottesville,
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You guys were a hundred percent, you know, legally and constitutionally correct, but because
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of the political environment, your, your rights were violated.
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Now this is, now they're in the same, they're in worse politically, even more sort of
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rabid leftist environment and they're, they're violating, uh, the law in the constitution.
00:27:58.740
It's, it's definitely a problem, but the other thing too, though, which I think is, um,
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so this woman was killed and, uh, you know, that is something that I think is, she's going
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to become on some level of martyr for the right.
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I would have to predict, uh, predict, um, maybe, okay, maybe it won't happen, but what
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will happen is because the contrast of her death versus like the death of, um, George
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Floyd, for example, uh, where police used, uh, ostensibly used unnecessary force and killed
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Uh, though there it's, you know, it's much less clear ostensibly.
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I mean, they actually shot her with an assault rifle.
00:28:40.540
She was killed, uh, which seems like, it seems a little excessive.
00:28:47.720
I'm sorry to push back on this, but I mean, look, I obviously don't wish anything to happen
00:28:53.940
to her, but at the same time, if we were in a different century, there would have been
00:29:00.060
dozens of deaths, they, they would have, the, the, you know, the, the people, the palace
00:29:05.300
guard would have just opened fire on the protesters.
00:29:09.140
And because what they did was so symbolically insulting, it's one thing to go out to a public
00:29:18.780
And there are many of them in Washington, DC and wave flags or hold signs or protests,
00:29:24.720
Uh, you know, any use of force against anything like that is, is just indefensible and you would
00:29:35.500
If you storm the Bastille like this, if you, if you just go in to not just public property,
00:29:43.640
but government, um, sovereignty, uh, you, you cannot expect to come out alive.
00:29:54.040
I think you're, I think you're making your, I think you're, you're making your point and
00:29:59.100
All I'm saying is the perspective from the right, from this, this crazy, like, uh, Magtard
00:30:05.960
like group that we have now that is basically a significant factor now in the political right.
00:30:13.160
Um, they're going to have a different perspective.
00:30:37.460
So this isn't actually live then it's not live.
00:30:41.340
It says live up in the corner, but I guess it's recording.
00:30:44.580
Um, you know, so I, I, I'm actually talking more to the perspective on the right and the
00:30:53.380
perspective on the right, she could develop as a martyr, uh, given the figures that she
00:30:57.700
can be contrasted with, uh, including, uh, George Floyd.
00:31:06.120
I mean, they, they were defending the Capitol building, right.
00:31:14.720
And then it seems like at some point, uh, the resistance faltered with the cops and they
00:31:19.220
just kind of allowed these people to kind of wander around, uh, the various chambers
00:31:24.780
Um, and you know, I don't want to get too conspiratorial on this, but in Charlottesville, we had a very
00:31:37.820
difficult situation where the, you know, the most peaceful people were cleared off the field
00:31:45.780
and then the most violent people were allowed to run wild.
00:31:52.660
We were waiting and I think it was noon when, um, you know, people were supposed to speak
00:31:58.020
and, uh, a, um, in a state of emergency was called before the violence took any major violence
00:32:09.960
I got maced by Antifa person, but, um, the, the state of emergency was called almost immediately.
00:32:18.820
And it's certainly before the worst acts of violence were, were, were enacted upon.
00:32:24.180
And, uh, the people who were there to protest were shoved off the, uh, field, what was Lee
00:32:31.460
Park now emancipation park and pushed into market street.
00:32:34.560
And I can remember after being cleared off the field by militarized police, uh, making this
00:32:41.440
run for it, uh, with Gregory Conti, where it was like, you know, running through Mogadishu
00:32:49.120
or something there, the people were launching rocks or who knows what at us and yelling at
00:33:01.740
Um, and then afterward, afterward, I actually went back to my hotel, but afterward, um, it
00:33:08.360
basically downtown Charlottesville where the protest was not taking place just became chaotic.
00:33:15.420
And that's when, you know, that, and that, that chaos eventuated and the death of, of Heather
00:33:21.200
Hire, we seem to have a kind of, it's not quite a reversal, but it's a, it's a little
00:33:27.280
So you had all these people, you know, outside the Capitol and they were there, you know,
00:33:38.340
There were a few clips that I saw of people talking about entering the Capitol.
00:33:43.600
There's one clip with baked Alaska where he was with this big, you know, older gentleman.
00:33:48.440
And they're like saying, you know, we've got to enter the Capitol and tell them this is
00:33:53.320
This, you're not, we're not going to allow you to do this.
00:33:56.420
And, um, I don't think it's being, you know, I, I don't want to tread into Alex Jones territory
00:34:02.180
here, but it does seem like they were allowed to tread onto sovereign territory a little too
00:34:10.920
And you could say that maybe that was simply because, um, the, the, the DC police didn't
00:34:20.920
Maybe that, that simple explanation might be the true one.
00:34:26.380
Um, maybe this was, maybe there was, maybe there was sympathy among the, the DC police.
00:34:34.960
I don't know, but it was weird and it's at least worth speculating upon.
00:34:41.800
I assume if there is evidence for this, um, we're going to start to see it trickle out
00:34:47.860
But just the fact that this was allowed to happen, I mean, it talk about embarrassment.
00:34:53.800
I mean, a guy wearing a coonskin cap and Viking horns is in the chamber of the Senate, you
00:35:05.800
And I mean, that's not even like third world behavior.
00:35:12.880
There's the difference between Odinism and Apolloism actually.
00:35:18.480
Yeah, he was a, he did, he did seem to be an Odinist.
00:35:20.920
I think he had like a big George hammer tattoo.
00:35:26.260
Not too different from pretty much every other Odinist I've met with the exception of,
00:35:32.840
um, Stephen McNallan, who, who's, uh, I've always enjoyed it.
00:35:40.700
Yeah, there are some others, but there are a lot of guys.
00:35:44.780
The least we can say, even if he's facing a decade in jail, um, I will guarantee you that
00:35:52.860
Yeah, it's funny how the world works in funny ways, but I think you're probably correct.
00:35:58.500
Front page of the Washington Post, dressed like a Viking, like in the center of Senate.
00:36:15.060
But, um, yeah, I don't, I mean, one of the things too, that's just kind of like, I mean,
00:36:20.920
Trump, his decline is just so striking and amazing.
00:36:24.460
Um, and I think that also are, we gave him so much credit in the beginning.
00:36:31.880
Like we, we, we believed him to be much more sophisticated than he turned out to be, um,
00:36:37.980
where he's just kind of like, not that politically savvy.
00:36:42.120
And I mean, look, I, I, obviously probably the guy has a fairly high IQ, uh, and he's,
00:36:47.940
um, you know, he's obviously gifted as a businessman and he's, he's intelligent on some
00:36:55.840
But his political savvy is very low and very weird.
00:37:05.700
His political savvy, because I just, look, this is a guy who did develop real estate and
00:37:12.080
you can say he's an idiot and how, you know, if he, if he had just, there, there's one fairly
00:37:17.580
strong argument that if he had simply invested the money that he got from his dad, he would
00:37:27.340
Uh, but you know, he did develop property in Manhattan and you don't just do that as
00:37:35.140
You know, you, you have to have some level of savvy and even taste and, um, vision to
00:37:42.500
Um, now whether he's lost a lot, I don't know, but you, you also can't become president without
00:37:50.260
I think it's a weird political instinct, instinct.
00:37:53.440
And at least in his, you know, seventies, um, this political instinct is towards, uh, chaos
00:38:01.060
and, and this intense ambiguity, like what we saw today, where he both inspires these
00:38:06.960
people to go to bat for him, but then denounces them and doesn't back them up.
00:38:11.820
And he, he, he has a weird political savvy of like trying to make in runs around things.
00:38:17.280
And I, and I think this is why we thought that he was our guy and why he was effectively,
00:38:22.160
you know, using the alt-right and pumping us up and so on is that he, he, he grasped
00:38:28.240
that the establishment hated him and he needed to find another way.
00:38:32.720
And he found, he, and he found these kind of wild banshees that were on his side.
00:38:36.740
And he was like, well, these guys will fight in my army.
00:38:38.740
If the regular army, you know, won't do it, then I'm going to bring in these wild men from
00:38:45.540
And so I think that did show some political savvy and I think he continued to do that.
00:38:50.340
Um, but he does also have a savvy for kind of like intense ambiguity and chaos where he'll,
00:38:59.640
he'll kind of like support something, but never actually implement it.
00:39:03.860
We all talk about how he betrayed us and he doesn't have a policy vision on immigration,
00:39:08.180
That's all true, but he kind of like brings up these issues, these hot buttons and realizes
00:39:15.340
how intense they are and how kind of toxic they can be.
00:39:18.980
And then he kind of brings them up there and, and, and, you know, gains victory for them,
00:39:28.620
And he, he did this with the birther issue, the birth certificate, the Obama birth certificate
00:39:37.640
He did this with race, um, of just, you know, tweeting about black crime and kind of, you
00:39:43.780
know, pushing everyone's button and kind of getting this intense energy from that in a
00:39:50.120
way that other politicians aren't able to evoke that energy.
00:39:53.100
He was, but then not following through on anything and just getting kind of crushed by the opposition.
00:39:59.280
It's just, he has a weird political instinct and it can carry you far, but it's, it also
00:40:05.300
kind of hoists you by your own petard in the end.
00:40:10.500
And I, I mean, I also, the, the people he, uh, chose to surround himself with, you know,
00:40:17.240
That's, that's a very kind of dramatic betrayal at the end.
00:40:19.960
Um, but we all, you know, he, he, and the whole, his rhetoric about draining the swamp
00:40:26.040
and then he surrounds himself, you know, in the beginning with all these guys from like
00:40:30.820
Goldman Sachs and, you know, he, he, he basically, uh, refills the swamp with different swamp
00:40:38.540
And he, and he, and also some GOP shills like Pence.
00:40:44.100
I mean, no one, no one liked Pence in the alt-right when, when he originally was chosen.
00:40:49.200
Um, so, I mean, so these were things where it seemed like he had some sort of faith in
00:40:55.840
his ability to kind of negotiate and bring people to his side.
00:40:59.880
And it, it seems like it was not correct for that particular arena.
00:41:05.520
So in other words, the, his, his, his skills as a businessman did not transfer well in
00:41:14.060
many ways, uh, to his, his abilities as a politician.
00:41:19.460
I mean, he should have just, he should have effectively surrounded himself with loyalists,
00:41:23.740
Rather than trying to make connections into the mainstream establishment by surrounding
00:41:28.220
himself with smart loyalists who would have pushed back on him because he, he did surround
00:41:32.240
himself by loyalists to a degree, but he didn't surround himself with, with anyone who has
00:41:38.040
a vision for something and could push him in a certain direction and push back on him.
00:41:43.100
You know, I mean, Kellyanne Conway is a loyal loyalist.
00:41:47.820
In some level level, but we're Lewandowski or all these morons, but you, you, you can't do
00:41:54.660
You actually need people who are smarter than you in the room and who can push back and tell
00:42:05.700
Mike Penn was probably stroking his ego up until like 24 hours ago, you know, just kind
00:42:11.360
of the guy who looks, he's a professional ass kisser, but yeah, no, I, no, I think you
00:42:21.280
And so he surrounded himself basically with traitors and fools is essentially what he
00:42:26.560
Um, and, but a lot of those fools were basically, uh, removed and, uh, replaced by
00:42:39.160
I mean, it was, it's just, it's just really disappointing.
00:42:44.120
The whole thing is just a fucking disaster, you know, because it's like we, we gained a
00:42:54.640
Uh, the, the, I mean, just speaking to be honest, Richard Spencer as a meme is out there.
00:43:01.820
Like, you know, we gained certain, uh, a certain amount of notoriety.
00:43:06.220
Now we paid a huge price for that, but we did gain that.
00:43:10.520
But at the same time, the whole thing is just a colossal disaster because look, I am not
00:43:15.280
a right-wing populist, but if I were, um, I could only conclude that this was a, a catastrophe
00:43:22.720
because I mean, immigration reform or whatever.
00:43:26.160
I mean, that, that, that issue is now tainted because it's not just an issue that's already
00:43:31.760
difficult and there's already like business interest against it.
00:43:35.420
You now, it's now per maybe not permanently, but long-term tainted by buffoonery and silliness
00:43:43.620
and racism and all this kind of stuff with Trump, um, right-wing popular, like a right-wing
00:43:48.820
nationalist party or whatever that, that is tainted for the next decade.
00:43:55.720
That is not happening and it's just not happening.
00:44:00.240
And they, like Trump did this, Trump shat the bed and you guys, because I'm not a part
00:44:09.940
of that world, but you guys are going to have to deal with this because you guys backed him
00:44:15.800
I don't know if they're now turning on him or apologizing or equivocating or whatever,
00:44:20.300
but you guys supported this buffoon until the very end and you're going to have to sleep
00:44:27.140
in that chat bed, you know, I mean, you just are going to have to, and all of that stuff
00:44:34.400
that was presented as pragmatic, pragmatic is not pragmatic at all because it is now tainted
00:44:43.600
And, and what happened today as just the, the cherry on the shit Sunday.
00:44:49.720
And, and, and returning to the point you made, uh, before, because I think there's another
00:44:55.440
aspect, maybe in which you're kind of like alluding to now is that, um, so yeah, Trump
00:45:02.160
made all these, he had all this kind of bold rhetoric.
00:45:05.380
Uh, he was a lot of bark and no bite effectively.
00:45:08.800
But what that did was it, it was kind of the worst of both worlds because it, it, uh, it
00:45:14.480
made the left militant, it militarized the left and, and made them rabid against us
00:45:22.980
Um, because in, well, it, it emboldened us foolishly thinking that we had his back, that
00:45:32.880
He emboldened these fools effectively because really, and I think that his supporters have
00:45:39.860
Let's be honest, because at the beginning, yeah, at the beginning, he had this, yeah.
00:45:47.180
So his, his supporters got increasingly less intelligent and more foolish.
00:45:52.400
And so his strategy of, uh, you know, all, uh, bark and no bite.
00:45:57.800
He, he basically, it was, he led the lambs to the slaughter effectively, right?
00:46:01.920
But I mean, yeah, by the end, by 2020, like you had a lot of smart people and kind of interesting
00:46:09.040
people who were independent, who were getting behind Trump in 2016.
00:46:12.560
By 2020, you had evangelical preachers speaking in tongues on behalf of Trump.
00:46:22.120
I mean that, that, that Paula White, you know, situation, you know, like a hoomba joomba, they're
00:46:40.020
And, you know, the religious right was on kind of the Cruz and Rubio plantation.
00:46:47.760
I don't know what's going to happen after today.
00:46:49.380
Uh, but that, that, that's more religious too, right?
00:46:54.280
It's a much more religious, much more religious.
00:46:58.660
I wonder why there's a connection there, right?
00:47:04.060
I think Dutton has done some studies on this, right?
00:47:09.420
And I mean, it's sort of like, uh, uh, Gibbon talks about the decline of Rome where superstition
00:47:14.980
becomes rife as things start to, you know, and just all these sort of crazy cults start
00:47:19.660
popping up because people, you know, uh, the leadership is gone, right?
00:47:25.460
Uh, uh, conditions are becoming more degenerate and dysgenic.
00:47:29.520
Um, you know, the influences that people have are worse influences.
00:47:34.000
There's no leadership that, you know, the leadership, the establishment is corrupt.
00:47:44.640
The elites are, are, you know, they're all set and they're not worried.
00:47:48.200
And, and, but the consequences that, uh, the consequence is basically the deplorables.
00:47:53.780
It's the Magatars, but the deplorables now are much of a much lower quality than they
00:47:59.620
were in 2016 when we effectively were among the deplorables because, you know, it looked
00:48:06.220
like there was, we, we might've had a serious candidate on our hands.
00:48:10.640
As it turns out we didn't, you know, so he lost all the support of the intelligent people.
00:48:15.840
Um, and, uh, I'm, yeah, I'm glad that we, uh, I'm glad that we were hated for this long
00:48:26.660
It's kind of, it is kind of vindicating in a way, right?
00:48:31.480
Also, I'm just glad that I'm not, I, you know, I, the spotlight is not worth like supporting
00:48:41.600
And I am glad that I am not apologizing for this man.
00:48:45.880
And that means that I'm out of the spotlight, but that's okay because like the spotlight
00:48:51.580
was sometimes a little too bright and it got, you know, we, we kind of needed to get
00:48:57.220
I needed to get out of the spotlight a little bit and I am deeply thankful that, you know,
00:49:03.380
that, that Biden vote was, uh, you know, a, a little bit of a troll, but I think it was
00:49:11.700
absolutely justified and just basically to separate us from this and say, we are going
00:49:24.300
We are not, our, our success in the future success is not contingent upon this man.
00:49:36.800
Um, but I am very thankful that I, um, really, you know, pulled the, uh, escape or whatever
00:49:47.200
the metaphor is, jumped out of the plane with a parachute.
00:50:06.800
But I, you know, I, I mean, honestly, uh, the, there are, because we're now in a new
00:50:12.660
phase and I think that there are obviously many questions and we don't know exactly what
00:50:18.380
Um, in front, in, in terms of, you know, the one big question is, uh, deep platforming
00:50:24.860
We don't, we actually don't know the answer to that question or, are they going to be like,
00:50:28.360
well, okay, we got Trump out and are they going to relax and they're not going to have
00:50:32.420
like sort of the, um, they're going to have a little less juice, like the ADL and these
00:50:36.720
groups are, there's going to be less sort of, uh, um, kind of justification for their
00:50:43.740
So it might be more difficult for them to mobilize all the people they need to mobilize
00:50:48.000
to actually get this sort of legislation passed and that sort of thing.
00:50:51.760
Like maybe people start to relax on the left a little more.
00:50:55.360
We, we actually, I think it's, you know, we don't know.
00:50:57.920
And I don't think there's going to be good legislation that would be really helpful that
00:51:02.340
could have been done in like 2018 or something when, when we knew full well was happening.
00:51:08.400
And in fact, Trump had, you know, de-platforming conferences and so on at the white house.
00:51:15.180
I don't think we're going to see that, which could have been very helpful, but I agree with
00:51:19.200
you just like the juice is, is not there on the opposition side.
00:51:23.200
I think we might enter a kind of more ambiguous phase.
00:51:28.360
I, I mean, um, as of today, from what I understand, Trump's account has been locked because even
00:51:33.820
though he was calling for peace today, um, he, uh, in his video, he was still saying the
00:51:41.320
So he was basically saying like, you know, come down, go home.
00:51:47.160
Uh, but at the same time, he was like, they stole the election.
00:51:57.520
He just, he, this intense ambiguity, which is the, like, he just has like an instinct for
00:52:05.800
It's like, he could never, I don't, I know he's been divorced a number of times, but he's
00:52:09.220
like the woman who like, can't break up with you, but then like hates you, but then
00:52:17.960
You're like pulling your hair out due to, due to, he's like that.
00:52:21.440
He just creates this just unbearable ambivalence and, and, and ambiguity that that's what his
00:52:31.480
I mean, um, my, I, I mentioned this on Twitter.
00:52:37.540
Um, whether Pence might take over, I'm forgetting which amendment that was.
00:52:43.740
I can't remember the number, but it, it was some amendment that was basically in there.
00:52:47.480
If the president is rendered incompetent, then, then you can pass this on to Pence.
00:52:51.820
I would not be at all surprised if he is impeached and removed.
00:52:56.880
And yes, that's mostly ceremonial at this point, but, um, I, I could see it happening in a kind
00:53:03.880
Um, and I think he might be impeached and removed from Twitter.
00:53:10.060
So it, so the other thing, so there are two dimensions to this.
00:53:13.980
Um, and the one is, you know, what is going to happen with platforming?
00:53:18.200
Uh, uh, you know, are we going to be more, uh, kind of significantly de-platformed in the
00:53:24.280
wake of his presidency or, or are they going to sort of, is there going to be an instinct
00:53:31.880
The other thing, the other element too, is that, uh, Trump is still a political player
00:53:36.420
and he, um, he, he has always only been a mouth as it were.
00:53:42.920
So in a lot of ways, he's more effective out of office because when he's in office, he
00:53:49.680
So when he's out of office, if he still is saying, and he still has a platform, I don't
00:53:55.020
know how much of a platform he's going to have, uh, in the years to come.
00:53:58.000
I'm not, I'm not sure, but he, he still has a very huge and strong following and he'll
00:54:02.360
still be able to talk somehow to his following.
00:54:05.580
Um, so the rhetoric, there will still be this kind of inflammatory rhetoric and that's not
00:54:13.380
a bad thing, I guess, especially if, you know, if the, uh, if Biden and the Democrats are
00:54:18.280
So the next four years could be years of opportunity, but it's, it's really, it's really hard to
00:54:25.540
I, I don't think there's anything to be gained by this, his bloviating.
00:54:31.400
And I do think that the next four years are going to be one of opportunity when we can
00:54:35.940
build the something better because the big issues are not going away.
00:54:40.060
Like, I think that Biden might actually believe that he just has to come and give the country
00:54:46.080
a big hug and be like, all right, it's, it's okay, pal.
00:54:48.480
Like we're, we're, you know, we're, it's going to be 1984 again, you know, now that I'm in
00:54:53.960
office and everyone's going to be rich and happy and there's no division or polarization
00:55:04.720
Um, yeah, 1984 in the, uh, Wonder Woman 1984 ways.
00:55:10.540
Um, but, uh, I, uh, I, I, I, I think he might actually believe that I don't, obviously he
00:55:20.420
And I, and I think this is the opportunity for us to rebuild and build, uh, and then
00:55:24.880
also find new ways of articulating our message because the articulation of our message via
00:55:47.200
This is, this is Trump and stuff like, you know, America first is inevitable.
00:55:57.580
Guys, this is not happening in the next decade or two.
00:56:05.220
You have to recognize reality if you're going to transform reality.
00:56:09.280
And our challenge is to begin articulating things in a very new way and a different way
00:56:16.380
And I think in some ways we've, we're doing this now.
00:56:18.900
We've all, we did this 10 years ago, even, but the challenge is now set for us.
00:56:24.160
And that is what we need to be focused on because all of this, all of this like proxy,
00:56:30.280
you know, you know, our, our movements ultimately about Trump and Trumpism and right-wing populism.
00:56:35.960
And let, let, let, let, we're going to send the illegals home, pack in, guys, over, over.
00:56:44.240
And, you know, in some ways it's good to be done with it.