RadixJournal - The Long MAGA

00:00:00.000 Yeah, honey-baked ham and sweet potatoes and some nice dinner rolls to go with the ham

00:00:08.840 and mustard, some other potatoes. We kind of had two potatoes going and it was very good.

00:00:19.640 No turkey?

00:00:20.160 No turkey. You know, I'm not a, I mean, I don't know. I guess I only would eat turkey on Thanksgiving.

00:00:27.340 I'm not a big turkey fan, but I kind of prefer a turkey alternative, like ham.

00:00:38.040 But yeah, there are a lot of actual turkeys out here. It's kind of funny.

00:00:44.860 Ham is the reserve for Christmas.

00:00:47.400 True, but I guess we're rule breakers.

00:00:57.340 I'm in my swing on my front porch here in the Deep South.

00:01:13.880 Ah, good.

00:01:15.220 I didn't vote for Trump.

00:01:17.340 It's time for me to, you know, be dox for, you know, not voting for that guy.

00:01:25.640 But again, I love all these guys, as I was saying before, where they're like,

00:01:30.040 oh, I'm super critical of Trump or whatever.

00:01:32.760 They're like, oh, I'm third position or like I'm alt, whatever.

00:01:36.160 And then they like viciously attack anyone who doesn't vote for Republicans.

00:01:41.660 There were, there were a bunch of people, there were, there were, there were a bunch of people who like at the very last moment, like flip back to Trump.

00:01:51.400 Yeah.

00:01:51.860 And that night of the, that, that night of the, of the election, when I was, I was drunk and I was like, hey, look, it looks like Trump is doing great.

00:01:59.180 And I was congratulating them.

00:02:02.400 And then like I passed out and woke up the next morning and it all turned around.

00:02:06.660 And, you know, from that point on, they just got angrier and angrier and angrier and angrier that he lost.

00:02:14.660 And a bunch of them unfollowed me because I was making fun of, making fun of them for losing.

00:02:19.960 Oh, yeah.

00:02:20.440 So they're just, so they're just, I mean, they're just, they're just highly emotional right now.

00:02:25.640 They think Trump's going to steal, 97% of his voters think he's still going to win.

00:02:30.860 Well, there are a couple of things going on here and there, there's some big picture things that I want to talk about.

00:02:37.380 And then there's some, also some small picture things in the sense of like what's happening with the alt-right and so on.

00:02:45.580 Maybe we'll, let's do the big picture first.

00:02:48.780 So I think you and I, we've done a couple of podcasts over the last month or so.

00:02:55.580 And we both agreed that no matter who won, the other side would say it was illegitimate.

00:03:01.820 And they'd just be in search of an argument to claim illegitimacy.

00:03:06.240 And so if Trump had won, we would have, the Russia narrative would have been revived.

00:03:12.960 And maybe some other new narrative entered, you know, the, would enter out of the woodwork.

00:03:20.120 And in fact, the whole Diebold voting machines, I've been hearing that for like 20 years about how, oh.

00:03:27.640 Yeah, yeah.

00:03:28.480 It's not the first time.

00:03:29.900 No, it's not.

00:03:31.060 And it's generally a left-wing thing.

00:03:33.600 I would hear this about George Bush and it's like Halliburton's a co-owner of Diebold or whatever.

00:03:39.780 I can't even remember.

00:03:40.580 Bush stole, it was Bush stole Ohio in 2004 from John Kerry by hacking the voting machine.

00:03:48.420 That's right.

00:03:48.840 And so this is, the point is that they have a conclusion and they're in search of an argument.

00:03:54.200 And you can see this with the, but again, just to be perfectly fair and not seem like I'm some Democratic partisan.

00:04:00.560 I think, I actually think we would have seen the exact same hysteria, maybe worse, in fact, if Trump had won.

00:04:07.400 Oh, yeah.

00:04:07.880 I'm by no means like trying to leave out any, any side that claimed that they're not guilty of this.

00:04:14.480 But it's, you can see this in the lawsuits themselves where they, they're like making, and these lawsuits are getting tossed out of court left and right.

00:04:24.000 I think all but one of them has been tossed out unless I'm incorrect.

00:04:27.180 But they, they're in search of evidence.

00:04:30.460 They're, they're like, we know there's, we know that something's going on here.

00:04:35.240 So, like, let's go find the evidence now.

00:04:38.800 And it's not really how it works.

00:04:41.980 I mean, maybe for a policeman, you can kind of act in that way.

00:04:44.960 But you just can't act in that way.

00:04:46.940 Or at least, I mean, when you're doing actions.

00:04:49.140 I mean, this is, well, it reminds me of a case that I'm involved in where they more or less claimed that and it's lasted for a while.

00:04:56.640 But, yeah, it's, they're, both sides are kind of in their own world.

00:05:01.360 And the other thing that I was thinking is, I actually watch the YouTube videos of this.

00:05:07.420 I mean, I guess you could call him an intelligent academic grifter.

00:05:11.160 But his name's Steve Turley.

00:05:13.540 And I've actually, even though I disagree with him on a lot, he actually is an intelligent guy.

00:05:18.140 I think he has a PhD from the Durham University and just where Ed Dutton went and so on.

00:05:24.920 So, he's, you know, he's a smart guy.

00:05:26.080 I learned something.

00:05:26.800 I kind of disagree with him.

00:05:28.180 So, it kind of sharpens my knife, so to speak, to listen to him.

00:05:31.720 But nevertheless, he's still on this team, Team Red.

00:05:36.200 And I was thinking to myself, like, as people increasingly watch less mainstream media and they tune in to Facebook, you know, your favorite YouTube personality, Tim Pool, Steve Turley.

00:05:50.800 Because Steve Turley gets, like, a quarter of a million views on every video.

00:05:53.760 I mean, he has an audience that's larger than ours, just for what it's worth.

00:05:57.300 But, yeah, if you tune in only to Steve Turley, Tim Pool, all these characters, if you're, you know, talking to your uncle on your Facebook group and he's giving you conspiracy theories, you are just, you might very well think that, like, Trump is winning and that the liberals are running for the hills and they're, you know, pulling their hair out and biting their nails because they know they've been had.

00:06:20.660 I mean, the level of, like, narrative, macro narrative divergence, I don't know, I don't think it's ever been this strong.

00:06:31.920 Especially with people who are online.

00:06:34.180 Like, from my understanding, like, normal conservatives or Trump supporters who aren't, you know, big into a Facebook group or Twitter or whatever have kind of accepted it more.

00:06:43.580 They're, like, oh, he lost.

00:06:45.120 But, like, these extremely online types are the ones who cling to this Trump thing.

00:06:52.360 Like, oh, he actually won.

00:06:55.180 And they think he is winning.

00:06:57.420 I mean, it's not even, like, a theory.

00:06:59.340 Like, they think that this is all moving forward towards a victory.

00:07:03.400 It's just bizarre.

00:07:04.440 Did you see that Tucker Carlson lost, like, half his audience?

00:07:08.940 And so did.

00:07:09.560 It was that.

00:07:10.040 So did, like, a lot of.

00:07:11.460 It was that dramatic.

00:07:13.020 I mean, he lost, like, half the audience.

00:07:16.000 Like, it's all over Fox.

00:07:18.320 Yeah, half the Fox News audience, like, is rebelling right now against Fox because they're all mad.

00:07:27.120 Well, they'll go to OWN and they'll go to Newsmax, which is, I didn't even know that was a channel now.

00:07:35.780 But it's not just a web channel.

00:07:37.580 It's actually on TV.

00:07:38.520 It's still around, apparently.

00:07:39.500 Yeah, I mean, I had not paid attention to them for years.

00:07:42.800 And I, anyway, but whatever.

00:07:44.640 I mean, they've developed an audience.

00:07:47.040 But the other thing, I think Fox News is in a difficult situation because, you know, first off, you have, like, Ailes is out.

00:07:56.320 And Murdoch's sons seem to be taking over.

00:08:00.980 And they're different.

00:08:02.380 I think they're around the same age as I am.

00:08:04.600 They're just kind of a different era.

00:08:07.340 And they also want to be taken seriously in some fashion.

00:08:11.120 And they kind of know that they're the Republican wing of this.

00:08:14.780 But they want to be taken seriously.

00:08:16.120 And I think they will pump up stuff.

00:08:19.400 And Tucker wants to be taken seriously.

00:08:21.620 I think he kind of intelligently recognized that, you know, uh-oh, the trap door is about to open below us.

00:08:27.560 So we've got to take a step back.

00:08:29.160 But they want to be taken seriously.

00:08:33.120 But then also, they want to pump up right-wing kind of goofiness when it doesn't really have any consequences.

00:08:40.820 So, like, the Fox News was, like, the Tea Party channel 10 years ago.

00:08:48.580 They would cover, like, some rally in Des Moines, you know, with, like, 20 people.

00:08:54.340 And they'd be like, this is amazing footage.

00:08:56.420 Like, the people are rising up.

00:08:57.780 Like, we've got to talk about this.

00:08:58.820 They're just rising up right now, you know.

00:09:02.460 Yeah.

00:09:02.700 The same thing was – they were doing the same thing with the anti-lockdown protest.

00:09:06.900 Right.

00:09:07.420 Back in, I think, April and May, they were pumping the – look at these demonstrators who are rising up against the tyrannical lockdowns.

00:09:17.300 So they tried to do that earlier this year.

00:09:21.000 Although this time they're in a, I would say, in a, you know, pretty bad spot.

00:09:25.760 Like we said, like we both agreed, the main take before the election for six months was no matter who won the election, the other side was – there was absolutely no chance.

00:09:36.040 The other side was ever going to acknowledge that they legitimately lost.

00:09:39.560 And we're in that – we're in that point.

00:09:45.440 If you look back at what we said before the election, maybe we were too quick to assume that they would acknowledge it was over because, you know, Holly 2024 hasn't launched.

00:10:01.920 Tucker 2024 hasn't launched.

00:10:04.040 None of that has launched.

00:10:05.520 They're all sticking with Trump who insists he won the election.

00:10:10.620 And so, in fact, like, so much of the Republican base is just so glued to – so absolutely glued to this narrative that, you know, things aren't really happening like they normally would,

00:10:24.280 where they have, you know, the post-election Civil War Republican Party.

00:10:30.100 And so all that's been postponed, I guess.

00:10:32.920 Trump's –

00:10:34.100 And they didn't have that.

00:10:35.000 What came on.

00:10:35.500 Because we could at least imagine a scenario in which the GOP told Trump no and told him no hard, you know, and that's kind of where they were four years ago.

00:10:47.800 I mean, remember, the GOP, they were just drag, you know, drag, kicking and screaming into the Trump movement.

00:10:55.100 And they eventually got there by the summer of 2016.

00:10:59.000 But it was a difficult situation.

00:11:01.240 And so – but now, I mean, the GOP, they put out a tweet endorsing Sidney Powell, like, five or six days ago now.

00:11:11.240 And you just can't take that back, you know?

00:11:15.380 Like, it's been screenshotted.

00:11:19.100 She unleashed the Kraken last night around, like, midnight in Georgia.

00:11:24.180 Oh, has the Kraken been unleashed?

00:11:25.660 And I've just –

00:11:26.260 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:27.520 In Georgia.

00:11:28.340 I didn't know this.

00:11:28.660 In Georgia.

00:11:29.200 I don't know if Donald Trump is president again.

00:11:32.220 Yeah, in Georgia and Michigan, she unleashed the Kraken last night.

00:11:35.080 And it was like, oh, my God.

00:11:36.660 And then there was some kind of Pennsylvania voter fraud hearing, and Trump called into it.

00:11:42.600 And Sarovic was like, wow, did you see Pennsylvania happen?

00:11:46.020 Wow.

00:11:47.240 And there's just – none of this is going anywhere, in my view.

00:11:52.120 And according to Trump, according to Trump, if the Electoral College votes to, say, Joe Biden's a president, he'll leave.

00:12:01.980 Of course, he'll never concede victory.

00:12:04.460 But, I mean, that's just his excuse for face-saving and getting out.

00:12:07.780 So I guess this will go on to what, mid-December?

00:12:10.460 It looks like.

00:12:12.600 If not January 20th.

00:12:14.260 Well, oh, yeah.

00:12:14.740 When does – do they do that in – oh, yeah.

00:12:17.300 It is like December 13th or 15th or something.

00:12:19.900 It's something like mid-December.

00:12:21.120 When Electoral College actually votes.

00:12:22.700 Yeah.

00:12:23.360 And then –

00:12:23.760 And they're still holding out hope.

00:12:25.600 Like, there is this so-called nuclear option of, in the words of Darren Beattie, of, you know, convincing the Electoral College voters and so on.

00:12:37.320 I – yeah, I give that – I think 1% chance is extremely generous.

00:12:43.000 And if they did that, I mean, that would cause its own just tremendous problems.

00:12:49.100 Because you have kind of, like – I mean, what is it now?

00:12:52.040 Republicans have lost the popular vote seven out of eight last elections?

00:12:58.820 Or eight out of nine?

00:12:59.100 It was about four points.

00:13:00.840 It's about four points and going out this time, so.

00:13:03.720 Right.

00:13:04.320 And so, obviously, I recognize that the popular vote does not, you know, determine the president.

00:13:10.600 Of course not.

00:13:11.300 But it does – I mean, we live in a democratic society.

00:13:15.020 This does give legitimacy.

00:13:16.940 And you are a little bit tainted if you didn't win the popular vote, even though you are, you know, certainly legally president.

00:13:25.300 But, yeah, I mean, that – him just staying on, I mean, that would also just create huge chaos.

00:13:34.680 And I don't even know what it would look like.

00:13:38.840 What were our pre-election predictions?

00:13:42.240 I overestimated Biden.

00:13:43.760 So, I thought that Biden would hit Obama-era numbers.

00:13:48.960 In the 330s, yeah.

00:13:50.720 Yeah.

00:13:51.000 I think I said 325 or something, but yeah.

00:13:53.900 Mm-hmm.

00:13:55.340 So, I was a bit – I mean, I picked the right victor, but I was a bit off.

00:14:00.400 I underestimated – it wasn't even so much overestimating Biden because he did benefit – I mean, Trump is right when he says that, you know, this is a mail-in, you know, flood.

00:14:11.640 You know, and that clearly has been benefit by Biden.

00:14:15.260 And Trump made it benefit by Biden, I should add, because he delegitimized mail-in-person.

00:14:20.020 But, you know, I think I underestimated – I think I was, you know, in my own head a little too much being just pissed off at Trump.

00:14:28.780 The blue wave.

00:14:29.480 Yeah, you thought it was – Richard's official prediction was that it was going to be a blue wave.

00:14:35.300 Actually, but, you know, technically it was a blue wave.

00:14:38.880 I mean, Biden won by four points, but the thing is, is that the House is so gerrymandered that – and the Democrats are so concentrated in these cities that –

00:14:51.320 Yeah.

00:14:52.060 I mean, they have to win by, what, four or five points.

00:14:56.140 Hold on.

00:14:56.840 In 2018, they won by close to 10.

00:14:59.240 They won by nine points if you aggregate all House races.

00:15:03.980 Yeah, and so that was larger than any red wave.

00:15:06.880 So these, like, 94 and 2010 – I mentioned this in my piece on this, and I'm kind of writing a piece called What the Hell Happened, which is kind of, like, the next stage of this.

00:15:18.580 But, yeah, the 94 revolution in the 2010 Tea Party election, I think the Republicans won by, like, five or six points.

00:15:28.040 The 2018 was a wave election, like, 100%.

00:15:32.160 They won by, like, nine percentage points.

00:15:34.780 And I don't think they went down too much.

00:15:37.140 So we're just seeing, like, cascades of blue.

00:15:42.240 And, you know, but, again, like, Republicans spin this, like, as if they won something.

00:15:47.640 Yeah, it was actually – I mean, this election was – I mean, when I looked at – I mean, you can see the swing map.

00:15:54.820 It was pretty much, like, static except in a – except in, you know, certain key suburban areas and around Miami and, you know, the Texas border.

00:16:06.940 Yes.

00:16:07.520 That's what stands out about it.

00:16:10.480 I mean, it was really a status quo election except that, you know, the famous defection of –

00:16:16.820 The famous defection of his strategy.

00:16:20.680 Some white guys.

00:16:22.200 Yeah.

00:16:22.760 Go ahead.

00:16:23.640 Yeah.

00:16:24.040 And I, of course, take singular credit for that.

00:16:28.080 It would not have happened without me and maybe you.

00:16:31.980 No, just kidding.

00:16:33.180 It was totally hard, didn't it?

00:16:34.440 It was totally hard.

00:16:36.100 If you had not tweeted about that –

00:16:36.940 We have an enormous audience.

00:16:38.320 Well, we don't have an invisible audience, but what I'm saying is, obviously, like, it's not so much like I just do something and this happens.

00:16:48.380 Like, I'm kind of part of the wave as much as I push the wave in my own little small way.

00:16:56.700 But, you know, I think a lot of people did read and they probably saw a tweet or read an article or saw their friend on Facebook tweeting about, like, the fact that I was voting for Biden.

00:17:07.660 I think I had a minute impact.

00:17:10.520 It was small, but it was what it was.

00:17:13.540 I think you did, too.

00:17:14.820 Yeah, it was people.

00:17:15.620 It was what it was.

00:17:17.440 Why else are we engaging in the public square if we're not trying to affect things in the limited way that we can?

00:17:24.460 I mean, give me a break.

00:17:25.480 Yeah, and the big takeaway of the 2020 election is that literally no one changed their mind except people like Richard Spencer and Brad Griffith.

00:17:34.600 Yeah.

00:17:34.940 Literally no one else.

00:17:35.640 Look at the people who did change their minds.

00:17:37.780 So look who were vehemently opposed to Trump in 2016 and then unequivocally, you know, glowingly endorsed him in 2020.

00:17:49.580 Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck.

00:17:52.720 Well, I mean, if you want to get into it, I mean, that's the story of the election right there.

00:17:58.440 What happened between 2016 and 2020, the way he won in 2016 isn't the way he lost in 2020.

00:18:08.800 Exactly.

00:18:09.780 In 2020.

00:18:10.900 Yeah, in 2020, you look at the numbers and what it's nationally.

00:18:14.760 He won, what, 85% of conservatives.

00:18:18.020 He won 94% of Republicans.

00:18:21.800 The upper middle class swung towards Trump by seven or eight points.

00:18:29.300 In this past election, in 2020.

00:18:31.540 Yeah, in 2020.

00:18:33.280 And he did, in one of the things, you know, one of the things I think that was getting, given too much credit was like, oh, it's a new, it's a new multi-ethnic Republican.

00:18:43.300 It's a new multi-ethnic, multi-racial working class Republican Party because Trump did better with minorities this time than he did last time.

00:18:52.220 But actually, actually, the big actually there is that because he was seen as a more conservative, normal conservative Republican, he didn't perform as badly with non-whites this time as he did last time.

00:19:05.540 So, I mean, he ran as a Republican, I mean, that's the story, he ran as a conservative, he ran as a Republican, he lost the Rust Belt while winning more Blacks, more Hispanics, more Asians.

00:19:20.040 But, I mean, the margins are there, it's like, it wasn't so much that there.

00:19:24.040 So, ironically, it looks like 2012.

00:19:26.680 Yeah.

00:19:27.340 The map.

00:19:28.200 So, we're going back to Republican candidates, and there is a blue wall.

00:19:33.600 That's what it reminds me of.

00:19:35.020 And it shows that 2016 was a remarkable, maybe aberration, or maybe just, you know, Hail Mary victory.

00:19:44.020 And I don't even know if he did it consciously.

00:19:46.040 I'm generally of the opinion that Trump just stumbles upon these things, and maybe thinks with his gut a bit.

00:19:53.760 But the remarkable thing about 2016 was all of these Obama Republicans, basically.

00:20:01.400 Like, they are, they voted for Obama once or twice, even, and then they voted for Trump in the, in 2016.

00:20:11.740 And that's a remarkable shift, or they were apathetic.

00:20:14.740 And these are tens of millions of people.

00:20:17.080 And, again, they gave him these, you know, narrow margins in the Midwest, but they made that Rust Belt strategy possible.

00:20:24.040 Now, that Rust Belt strategy depends upon Florida. 0.85

00:20:27.420 And, but that being said, that was the kind of unique thing, because the Republicans have kind of won Florida before.

00:20:33.880 It's really, winning Wisconsin and Michigan, that, and Pennsylvania, that's the kind of new thing.

00:20:39.640 I mean, Florida was trending, Florida was trending more Republican even in 2018, because DeSantis won there.

00:20:45.540 And who else, Scott?

00:20:48.300 Yeah, so.

00:20:50.220 Oh, Rick Scott.

00:20:51.080 He's always been doing better.

00:20:52.660 Yeah.

00:20:53.580 And Ohio, you know, ceased to be a swing state.

00:20:56.720 So that's, that's interesting.

00:20:57.820 It's now a red state, apparently.

00:20:59.860 It's now a red state.

00:21:01.480 Yeah, so, I mean, go ahead.

00:21:04.060 I think, yeah, you can.

00:21:05.480 Oh, well, you thought that Trump won more, more non-white votes because he just went back to being a normal Republican and maybe not like such a crypto white nationalist or whatever.

00:21:17.780 No, I think it's.

00:21:18.960 But I think it's, I think it's because he's.

00:21:20.600 I think it's more complicated.

00:21:21.460 But go ahead with your, your interpretation.

00:21:24.760 I think that he, because didn't he win like more non-whites than even a normal Republican is, would win? 1.00

00:21:30.960 I think it's probably because of, quite frankly, because like Trump is kind of a character from a rap song or something.

00:21:37.740 Like he has like an appeal to like blacks in particular that like Mitt Romney or someone wouldn't have.

00:21:42.680 Like, I think that's.

00:21:43.740 Like he is Donald Trump and like he did the panic.

00:21:46.240 Yeah.

00:21:46.920 Yeah, I think that's definitely part of it.

00:21:49.680 He, he has been in all these rap songs, like music that I've never heard before.

00:21:56.060 I've only heard little snippets of it, but he is a meme, you could say, like an icon.

00:22:01.380 And I think that was part of it.

00:22:03.280 I mean, I've heard reports that he literally just paid like a million dollars to these rap stars to get their endorsement.

00:22:10.860 Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised.

00:22:11.840 Which was probably money well spent.

00:22:14.480 He has an appeal, just, just being himself, he has an appeal to these people that like, that like some normal Republican wouldn't like.

00:22:22.580 Yeah, they're not going to vote for Romney.

00:22:24.680 So I think he did well there.

00:22:25.720 Now, I think there's a, there is a complicated story among Hispanics, because if you, if you take a step back, like the, the 65, 35 break of Hispanics or 60, 40, you know, maybe 70, 30.

00:22:40.800 That has not changed.

00:22:43.240 So it changed in kind of little places.

00:22:46.840 So I think in Florida, there are these, there's always been a kind of Republican base of, you know, like Cubans who are wildly anti-socialism and so on. 0.91

00:22:57.960 I think there's also a kind of aspirational Hispanic in the suburb that was looking towards Trump.

00:23:04.640 And I think Trump lost that, you know, alt-right edge, you could say, that he had in 2016.

00:23:10.160 And it became something different.

00:23:12.700 My little pet theory, which I don't know how I or anyone could prove this, but I think it, I think there was some, you know, there are these wild districts like in South Texas that were just like extreme Trump.

00:23:27.280 And my pet theory is that Hispanics really don't like BLM for a number of reasons, including just, you know, some of the reasons that people are uncomfortable with, with, with African Americans in general.

00:23:43.640 But, but also maybe a little resentment of like, why are we still talking about you guys?

00:23:48.840 Like, we're the new minority, you know, we, we're the, we're the ones that matter.

00:23:52.620 Like, why are we, you know, obsessed with Africans as opposed to Hispanics?

00:23:57.280 And, um, I think there was probably like a weird thing that went on there where it was like, let's stick it to BLM by voting for, uh, by voting for Trump.

00:24:07.580 And I think that obviously held among, uh, many whites as well.

00:24:11.620 I'll, I'll jump in, I'll jump in and try to give you my explanation of it.

00:24:15.380 Okay.

00:24:15.940 With, with, with blacks, with, with blacks in particular, um, I think the exit polls, I mean, maybe he did two to four points better than last time.

00:24:25.820 From what I've seen with the exit polls, but what happened, what actually happened is that in 2008 and 2012, um, Obama was, you know, on the ticket.

00:24:37.540 So the Republicans did worse with blacks in both of those elections.

00:24:42.440 And then in 2016 and 2020, blacks kind of migrated, migrated back to the George W. Bush, 2004, um, about, about 10% of the black vote, getting more, more black women.

00:24:57.280 And, and, about six, six or seven points more over the black male vote, but nothing really changed.

00:25:02.820 That's really just the fading, in my view, the, the fading of the Obama effect.

00:25:08.240 Maybe the Jared's platinum plan thing had some kind of impact.

00:25:12.260 Maybe all these rap stars, uh, maybe, maybe marginally like, like in places like Chicago, like he, like the places that Trump did better than last time were Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia.

00:25:25.900 You know, the, you know, the places where all the fraud is supposed to occur.

00:25:30.080 Those are literally the places where he did better.

00:25:32.700 Like, like, like, like he, Trump won 5,000 more votes in Detroit and Joe Biden won a thousand less votes than Hillary. 0.95

00:25:39.800 In Detroit where the fraud occurred.

00:25:41.420 Well, you know, they're just covering their tracks by doing that.

00:25:43.960 Covering their tracks by ringing the election in favor of Trump.

00:25:46.940 Right.

00:25:47.320 But, um, and they decided to allow Republicans to win some congressional races while engaging in fraud just to kind of like throw us off the seat.

00:25:55.580 Yeah.

00:25:55.780 So, so in 2020, Trump ran as a more normal Republican and kind of went back to the George W. Bush 2004 level of support with blacks.

00:26:05.560 With, um, with Asians, you know, he got, I heard he got something like 7% more, 7% more of the Asian vote.

00:26:14.580 Um, and there's a, there's a number of, there's a number of things going on there.

00:26:19.400 Um, first of all, a lot of the, I think the Vietnamese in California, like the fact that he was so anti-China.

00:26:26.380 So, and then you also got, um, you also got Hindus who, you know, or Indians, you know, he courted the Indian vote heavily.

00:26:37.360 He went over to India and did a big rally there with Modi.

00:26:41.540 So he wants, I think more of them.

00:26:44.840 And then of course, you know, he's been, you know, just completely anti-Iran, anti-Shiite.

00:26:51.360 So, and the Muslim ban, of course, turned out to be this big joke that really applied only to Iran and like North Korea and Venezuela and Cuba.

00:26:59.500 So, and so, so he won more, he won more, uh, the Asian vote is kind of complicated.

00:27:05.460 There's a lot of, of, you know, beefs and, beefs and resentments going on there.

00:27:10.500 And of course, a lot of, I think a lot of some Asians were just scared off by the, alienated by the, the, didn't they, didn't they vote against affirmative action in California?

00:27:20.740 Oh yeah.

00:27:21.800 Yeah.

00:27:22.080 That, that was an interesting thing.

00:27:24.160 Actually, uh, there was a big referendum on affirmative action that was just emphatic.

00:27:28.800 And then Hispanics, and then, and then with Hispanics, it's a couple of things. 0.96

00:27:32.780 First of all, with, um, to John O's down in South Texas, that was like the biggest, if I'm not mistaken, one of the biggest two, one of the two biggest shifts.

00:27:44.500 Those people down there are, you know, had been there for like 200 years in Texas.

00:27:50.160 So they consider themselves, they think of themselves as whites, I guess, 56 percenters.

00:27:55.760 Um, they think of themselves as natives.

00:27:58.740 They think of themselves as rural voters, working class voters.

00:28:04.320 And of course, Joe Biden was like, okay, or the impression in the campaign was that they were going to abolish ICE.

00:28:11.140 Um, a lot of those people abolished, opened the border.

00:28:15.060 A lot of those people, uh, work for the border patrol and fracking was the big issue down there that Trump made an issue of.

00:28:22.480 And so, I mean, they, Trump appealed to those Hispanics.

00:28:27.940 Um, he lost, I want to say, I want to say he lost handily amongst the Mexican immigrants in places like Dallas, but down there, he appealed to, uh, Hispanics as whites and natives and rural voters whose interests would be injured by having Biden as president persuasively.

00:28:46.900 Then, of course, in South Florida, South Florida, it was, you know, Venezuela and socialism and Cuba is socialism.

00:28:58.340 And you got two big, you know, expat communities there who were, who the, you know, the socialism sucks message resonated with him.

00:29:07.800 Um, and he appealed to them, you know, on the basis of, you know, nationality, not as like Hispanics and one more then. 0.84

00:29:16.000 And then, and then, of course, just because he was seen as a more normal Republican candidate and immigration, immigration really wasn't part of this election at all.

00:29:25.260 It was, I think, 3% of voters said that immigration was the most important issue.

00:29:29.660 And because immigration was off the table and Trump was running as a more normal Republican, he, like, he won more of the, he, he just did, it's not that he was, he did better with the Hispanic vote.

00:29:40.780 It's just, he did so much poorly with it the first time.

00:29:45.420 So, and then of course, but the, the biggest, the absolute, the biggest shift of all the most decisive thing that happened with, I've written about it endlessly on my blog is with, I mean, you can, you can count white men, independence, moderates.

00:29:59.920 Living in the suburbs, making under a hundred thousand dollars a year.

00:30:03.920 That's where he lost the election.

00:30:05.480 Yeah.

00:30:05.940 I mean, clearly.

00:30:08.540 I.E.

00:30:09.060 What do you think of that?

00:30:09.980 The 5%. 0.98

00:30:10.780 I mean, it's, it's where the 5% meme where it's like, look, you know, you can hate on this all you want, but it's actually a real thing.

00:30:19.760 You know, like we're describing reality and you can hate it.

00:30:23.580 And I, I've heard other people where like, I, I, I mean, I don't want to make this too personal, but it's the, that genie guy who, you know, again, claims to be a big Trump critic.

00:30:32.640 But, you know, when you look at his actions and not his words, he, he's clearly a Trump fanatic.

00:30:39.160 Like, and he would, I think at one point he literally said, he, he was like, oh, well, yeah, he did.

00:30:45.580 Those numbers are right.

00:30:46.840 But with the 5%, that's all fraud. 1.00

00:30:49.300 You know, it's, it's just kind of like anything.

00:30:51.880 Yeah.

00:30:52.040 It's just like fraud is this like, you know, catch all, you know, argument that you can use.

00:30:57.480 I forgot.

00:30:58.100 Yeah. 0.94

00:30:58.940 It's ridiculous. 0.95

00:30:59.560 I forgot college educated. 0.78

00:31:00.800 I forgot, I forgot college educated there.

00:31:03.380 So if you, so if you, so if you, so if you take in, if you take in every Richard Spencer box, what you got white male, you got independent, you got independent voter, you got moderate.

00:31:14.420 Is it not being a liberal or a conservative?

00:31:16.840 You got college, you got college, you got college educated.

00:31:20.920 And, um,

00:31:22.220 I was just following my ethnic group, basically.

00:31:26.260 Extremely turned on by Trumpism.

00:31:30.140 Right.

00:31:30.620 And, you know, I've, I've identified, I've identified, like, you know, I've gone through all the, I did a previous podcast with Robert Stark and I went, I went, I got, I got out of a pew topology surveys.

00:31:42.760 And like I explained exactly where all these people were in the electorate is like right in the dead center.

00:31:49.140 In fact, I think I'm the, on the pre-election podcast I did with you.

00:31:52.600 I was like, you know, I think that, you know, Trump's going to lose because I'm kind of in the dead center of where things are.

00:31:58.520 And that's exactly what happened.

00:32:01.080 Um, he, yeah, he, he appealed, what happened was, is that in the 2020, in the 2016 election, and, and this is, and this is true, uh, across the, you can see, you can see it, uh, in the exit polls, in both things.

00:32:14.460 But he won in the, uh, Trump's base in the 2016 election was amongst white independents, more moderates.

00:32:24.380 Man, he was, when he was elected, he was seen as, you know, an extremely moderate for Republican.

00:32:28.460 And that is on economics and foreign policy and issues like that.

00:32:32.580 He was explicitly, he, in a, in a book, he came out in favor of health, health care for all.

00:32:40.120 Like, and he, he kind of, he did, he wasn't quite as explicit in the campaign, but he, he indicated as much.

00:32:45.880 Uh, he was going to save all these jobs and rig the system on our behalf.

00:32:51.640 Right.

00:32:51.780 Um, and, and again, the, the conservatives actually did campaigning for him because from, you know, the summer of 2015 up until the summer of 2016, when they all turned, or more, a lot of them did at least, one of their key, uh, critiques was that he's a big liberal.

00:33:10.040 Wasn't even Malkin saying that?

00:33:12.260 I'm kind of curious.

00:33:13.060 I don't, I don't, I don't follow her.

00:33:14.600 Maybe so.

00:33:14.780 But I, I wouldn't be surprised if she were doing the same thing.

00:33:18.000 And they, they would, they would bring up.

00:33:19.600 That wasn't, Nick Fontes was saying that.

00:33:21.780 Right.

00:33:22.060 And he was, he was pro, pro careers.

00:33:23.820 And we can, we can talk about the Fuentes phenomenon as well and talk about it objectively and not, uh, bitterly at all.

00:33:29.600 But, um, yeah, it was like, I think even Malkin was anti-Trump at that point.

00:33:33.780 I'll have to go check on this, but a lot of the, the people who became Trump fans later on were against him and they would bring up things like, um, his use of eminent domain and building real estate ventures in the nineties or something.

00:33:45.760 It was just so just, just tangential to any real issue.

00:33:50.760 But a lot of it was like, he's a liberal, he's a socialist, he's a Democrat as he, as he, you know, he supported Democrats.

00:33:57.100 He's friends with Hillary.

00:33:58.620 That, that was a lot of their messaging.

00:34:00.300 And to the degree that that got out and, and reached beyond their, their little echo chambers, it helped Trump unquestionably.

00:34:07.980 Yeah.

00:34:08.620 So like in the, in the, in the, in the, you got to remember in the end of the 2016 election, he was going after, he was going after banks and everything down in West Palm beach.

00:34:17.460 All the conservatives had turned against them and were attacking, attacking him.

00:34:22.140 And he, he, he, he, I'm telling you the reason he would, the reason Trump was elected president in 2016 is because he appealed to white men who are independent voters who make under a hundred thousand dollars a year, who are moderates and who are not conservatives.

00:34:38.540 And that's, that's the reason.

00:34:39.780 Yeah.

00:34:40.520 Do you think like that same Trump 2016, do you think that'll be the strategy going forward for like a neo, I don't know, neo-Trumpists, like your Josh Hawley types and stuff?

00:34:51.020 Like, like, like I, cause I think they're going to run like more Trump, Trumpist, Trumpian candidates like Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton.

00:34:59.480 Like, do you think they'll like go back to talking about immigration or like, what do you think that'll look like in 2024?

00:35:06.540 Cause Trump isn't, Trumpism isn't going anywhere.

00:35:08.940 I'll let Hunter take this first.

00:35:10.360 It's a good question.

00:35:11.300 And I, I have something to say, but I'll let you go first.

00:35:13.800 Well, well, I mean, like we said in the previous podcast, the, the GOP prefer to lose for like a hundred from the most part for a hundred years, you know, for the last hundred years, rather than like change their position on economic, moderate their position on economics to appeal to white people who are more in the center of the electorate.

00:35:32.580 They prefer to lose throughout like the whole, the whole era.

00:35:36.480 Now we'll, we'll, we'll, will Trumpism go away?

00:35:40.360 Absolutely not.

00:35:41.620 And in some form, in some form, it's going to, at least rhetorically, I mean, that's what we saw.

00:35:48.640 Like we found out when we elected Trump, it was mainly a rhetorical strategy.

00:35:53.640 So the rhetoric will build, there'll be Trumpian, Trumpian rhetoric.

00:35:58.600 But the question is, or is any of these people actually going to like implement some kind of serious policy, whether it's Hawley or Rubio or, or either one, I don't, I don't know.

00:36:10.040 But yeah, Trump, Trumpism in, in some form, it was too successful, it was too successful for them to, to get rid of.

00:36:19.160 And I mean, Marco Rubio is already, Marco Rubio 15.0 has already come out and is trying to at least talk like Trumpian conservative.

00:36:30.120 Yeah, let, let me go on this.

00:36:33.720 Okay, first off, I did a cursory Google search, and I struck gold.

00:36:39.000 This is Hollywood Reporter.

00:36:40.620 So this is a very mainstream magazine that like breaks stories on movies or whatever.

00:36:46.520 Um, so the Michelle Malkin, the conservative, so this is from 2015, the conservative blogger called Trump out during a Fox segment in 2011, saying that he built his entire empire in defiance of core Tea Party principles.

00:37:02.720 It's time for those conservatives who, who's, who have been flirting with Donald Trump to get serious themselves.

00:37:09.180 I think actually, um, didn't Nick Fuentes say the exact same line?

00:37:13.400 He probably got it from her.

00:37:15.100 Yeah. 1.00

00:37:15.400 Following, following Trump's official bed for presidency on June 16th, Malkin tweeted, getting emails from conservatives welcoming Ronald McDonald chump would be refreshing to see more conservatives telling him to fuck off. 1.00

00:37:31.000 That's Michelle Malkin, 2015. 0.99

00:37:35.280 Like, yeah, now, go ahead.

00:37:37.440 Change.

00:37:38.240 Is she, is she, what happened?

00:37:39.960 She changed?

00:37:41.160 He changed?

00:37:42.420 Maybe a little bit of both?

00:37:43.860 She recognized just the reality of his popularity?

00:37:47.040 I'm sure that's the case.

00:37:48.260 I think he did change, and she, but it's like, go ahead for quick, and then I'll roll on this.

00:37:55.040 Yeah, like, you know, I've spent, you know, in the last few weeks since Trump lost, I've been doing these extreme,

00:38:01.740 deep dives, looking at, like, what the right actually is, and where people are, and where we are in relation to it.

00:38:10.200 We're real.

00:38:10.820 We're, the reason we've always, I mean, you think about 20 years of having the GOP in power, from our perspective is, I mean, especially after the wreckage of Trump, it's just been an absolute, absolute catastrophe.

00:38:23.780 Um, George W. Bush was a catastrophe.

00:38:27.620 John McCain would have been a catastrophe.

00:38:29.760 Mitt Romney would have been a catastrophe. 0.99

00:38:31.180 Trump was a catastrophe. 0.85

00:38:32.880 Yeah. 0.97

00:38:33.100 And the reason we feel like it would probably be the less, the least catastrophic.

00:38:37.840 Yeah, the reason we feel like that is because we are more in the middle.

00:38:42.260 This is one of the most interesting things I found out, that the stratum of the electorate that's in the center is, I looked at the peace surveys, and going all the way back to the 80s, it was disaffected, disaffected, disaffected, embittered, hard-pressed skeptics, and then finally, market-skeptic Republicans, right?

00:39:01.420 And what these people were, you know, they think that, they think the economic system is rigged.

00:39:08.200 They're far more moderate.

00:39:10.080 I mean, something like 95% of them believe that.

00:39:13.100 Um, their issues are immigration and foreign policy.

00:39:17.060 Not as much as the social conservative types, but still, um, so what happened in 2016 was, was, this is, you can see this reflected in the Pew surveys, is that group came into the Republican Party.

00:39:30.400 That was the group that we were in.

00:39:33.380 Now, the core conservative types, they're like 13, they're 12, 13% of the population, but they're 20% of the people who are politically engaged.

00:39:43.740 The social conservatives are, are kind of a distinct group, um, they're more, more downscale.

00:39:50.940 They're like 7% of the adult population and about 7% of the politically engaged.

00:39:56.200 Then there's another group called, like, new era enterprisers.

00:40:00.600 And what these people are is they're moderates, but they're like libertarians, um, they're cultural libertarians.

00:40:06.740 It was basically the alt-white. 0.63

00:40:08.020 That was another group that came in to the GOP.

00:40:10.480 And they're like 12% of the population, and then the hard-pressed skeptics are about 12, the nationalists and populist types, who were out in the center 20, 30 years ago, but as the Republican base shrank, shrank, shrank, were pressed more to the right.

00:40:29.340 They're like 12 or 13% of the population, too.

00:40:31.520 So, um, like, the Republicans can't win.

00:40:35.780 There's, there's no possible way for the Republicans to win the White House except winning our group.

00:40:42.620 But they're not, they don't, they don't want to do that because they don't want to moderate on economics and foreign policy.

00:40:49.200 Yeah.

00:40:50.060 They'd rather lose.

00:40:50.800 That's what happened.

00:40:51.300 That's what happened.

00:40:52.080 They, they, they, the Trump won.

00:40:53.000 I don't think they want to lose.

00:40:54.400 I, I just think that they, they're not willing to actually pursue this.

00:40:59.820 And then also demographics are changing.

00:41:02.420 Um, in terms of where the GOP is going to go, I don't quite know who, whom exactly they're going to elect.

00:41:09.800 I mean, I'm sure Mike Pence will actually be in this battle and he kind of checks certain boxes.

00:41:15.840 He's both old and new.

00:41:17.040 He's been loyal to Trump.

00:41:18.000 He kind of, you know, that it probably in a better way than like Nikki Haley or, or whatever, who, who have a lot of hate from the MAGA crowd.

00:41:25.720 Um, there's, there is the Tucker thing, although he might've blown it by just being like reasonable and down to earth on Sidney Powell.

00:41:33.700 There, there is obviously like Josh Hawley is wildly ambitious as is Tom, Tom Cotton.

00:41:38.780 I could see it.

00:41:39.360 I could see something else happening.

00:41:41.380 Um, but I think all those are, yeah, Trump himself, uh, or some other kind of wild thing happening.

00:41:47.340 Yeah.

00:41:47.640 I mean, it, the, this is the thing though.

00:41:49.880 This is what I would say.

00:41:50.680 I, a lot of people would say like, can you imagine MAGA without Trump?

00:41:55.560 And I actually can, because a lot of people will say, we've got to support Trump all the way.

00:42:00.320 Cause the MAGA doesn't exist without Trump.

00:42:02.220 He's the one who's the real fighter.

00:42:03.220 He's the one who doesn't.

00:42:04.040 Well, what MAGA became like the MAGA, what MAGA meant to me.

00:42:09.060 A personality cult.

00:42:09.780 Yeah.

00:42:10.220 It was, it is a personality cult, but it's actually bigger than that.

00:42:12.880 I actually kind of push back on people who say this.

00:42:14.960 So what MAGA meant in the beginning, yeah.

00:42:18.780 What MAGA meant to me in the beginning, 2016 was we have this, it's like, we're actually

00:42:24.820 bringing nationalism onto the political scene.

00:42:27.540 Now, my own critiques of nationalism, populism aside, I obviously recognized it for what it

00:42:33.540 was.

00:42:33.840 And it was part of that era, that Brexit era where you saw a lot of interesting things

00:42:39.740 happening around the world where there was a lot of angst.

00:42:42.520 And there were a lot of kind of chickens running around with their heads cut off, to be honest.

00:42:45.860 There was a lot of the yellow vest era, the kind of flailing around. 1.00

00:42:50.100 Orban, Salvini, these people too.

00:42:52.060 Exactly.

00:42:52.740 Yeah.

00:42:53.100 And Orban Salvini or Orban at least is a little bit different, but he's part of that trend.

00:42:59.020 He's the original one.

00:43:01.200 I won't get into a nitpick about this, but I'm agreeing with you basically.

00:43:07.400 But yeah, there were a lot of chickens with their heads cut off running around flailing

00:43:14.900 this way and that.

00:43:16.140 Like they were reacting to the problem, but not really reacting in a way that could solve

00:43:22.120 it.

00:43:22.340 I mean, that's at least my critique.

00:43:24.300 But MAGA-ism, what MAGA became, and it happened slowly and it kind of shifted there slowly,

00:43:29.960 is something that's actually been a part of the GOP for a long time.

00:43:35.000 You know, it is now the Tea Party.

00:43:37.440 It resembles the Tea Party in a whole host of ways.

00:43:41.100 And it is more libertarian and more kind of abstract.

00:43:45.160 Like they're talking about free and fair elections and voter fraud.

00:43:48.800 They're not talking about real issues, kind of like the Tea Party, like before Barack Obama

00:43:54.480 was elected, was even inaugurated.

00:43:56.740 And before he had raised taxes of any sort, they're somehow obsessed with taxes.

00:44:01.740 And they'll sometimes even start to sound like anarchists when you listen to them.

00:44:05.540 It's all a kind of, and Donald Trump's, you know, big rallies had a lot to do with this.

00:44:11.920 I mean, it's this big, goofy tent revival of republicanism and libertarianism and with some

00:44:22.420 kind of Christian elements thrown in.

00:44:26.740 But those don't actually kind of dominate.

00:44:29.980 I think if anything, it's a kind of ersatz religion based around the Republican Party

00:44:35.940 and the flag and the constitution and so on.

00:44:39.580 And that is there.

00:44:41.560 That's been there for my entire adult life.

00:44:44.760 At least 10 years.

00:44:45.860 Yeah.

00:44:46.320 Especially the last 10 years.

00:44:47.240 At least 10 years.

00:44:48.420 But I would say, well, we can do it like, yeah, it's going to remain like there's going

00:44:53.900 to be MAGA without Trump.

00:44:55.760 And I actually think, so this is where I kind of disagree with a lot of people.

00:44:59.640 Obviously, it's a friendly disagreement.

00:45:01.580 I might very well be wrong.

00:45:02.740 But yeah, when they say like, there's no MAGA without Trump.

00:45:05.280 I'm like, no, MAGA has preexisted.

00:45:07.480 Like all of those, you know, things were like the Republican candidate would go to a NASCAR

00:45:13.020 rally and there'd just be this big, you know, booming applause and flags everywhere.

00:45:18.080 Maybe some Confederate ones too.

00:45:19.840 Meaningless theatrics.

00:45:21.040 Meaningless theatrics.

00:45:21.980 Yeah. 0.99

00:45:22.100 Just kind of bullshit about abstract issues like religious freedom. 0.99

00:45:26.820 Okay. 0.99

00:45:27.140 Voter integrity.

00:45:27.640 Yeah.

00:45:28.020 The phenomenon you're describing here is right-wing populism, correct?

00:45:33.100 Yeah.

00:45:33.240 So, I mean, if we think of different groups of the right, you got the core conservatives

00:45:39.840 who are the, you know, the Paul Ryan types, those people who were never really, you know,

00:45:46.240 comfortable, the Republic, the core conservatives being the Republican.

00:45:48.400 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're wrong.

00:45:50.880 Sorry to interject.

00:45:51.920 This is another trend in this right-wing populism, which I'm criticizing, is that people come in

00:45:57.980 and then they get spit out the other end.

00:46:00.300 Paul Ryan was a Tea Party hero.

00:46:03.240 And he got, he spit out the other end.

00:46:05.860 Donald Trump was a Tea Party victim, as we've just proven, and he gets in, he becomes their

00:46:11.260 hero.

00:46:11.680 They churn through candidates.

00:46:15.160 And they, yeah, it's a weird phenomenon, but it is stable and it keeps lasting.

00:46:24.040 And you can even see this, like, sorry to, sorry to, I'll let you talk in this one second.

00:46:27.900 I remember going to CPAC in 2008 when it looked like, or excuse me, John McCain was going to

00:46:35.920 win the election.

00:46:37.380 And there was a Tea Party revolt against him where they would talk about immigration to

00:46:43.100 some degree, which, you know, I'm, I'm obviously tremendously sympathetic with, but then it was

00:46:47.620 also like, oh, you worked with liberals to, you know, to do campaign finance reform or whatever,

00:46:53.420 you know, you, you, you're a, you're a closet liberal.

00:46:55.840 Like it was this kind of rhetoric and it's, it's been there.

00:47:00.120 That's the stable thing.

00:47:01.560 MAGA is the stable thing and Trump and individual candidates are the things that get interchanged.

00:47:07.420 This is my analysis of it.

00:47:09.080 So, so, so MAGA, so MAGA is just like an, uh, the latest iteration of something that already

00:47:16.180 existed before Trump.

00:47:17.500 And well, you got to think, I mean, even back then he was connecting with those people.

00:47:20.700 He was the, the chief, he got into politics being, you know, the chief, well, in this latest

00:47:25.880 round being the birther in chief, right? 0.85

00:47:29.200 He connected, he connected with all the right-wing, uh, conspiracy crowds with the whole birther 0.67

00:47:35.180 thing when Obama was president.

00:47:37.020 So, so the way I think of about it, you can, you can think of like five different groups.

00:47:42.320 Let's, let's, we'll start off with an easy one.

00:47:44.800 The social conservatives, the, the first things crowd, the, the trad cast, the evangelicals,

00:47:52.540 the social conservatives, the people who care tremendously about homosexuality, abortion

00:47:57.960 and so forth.

00:47:59.220 That's, that's, you can think of those people as one group, the religious right.

00:48:02.800 And it's, it's been shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and shrinking.

00:48:05.660 I think it's down to like 8% or maybe, maybe something like that, the Republican base as,

00:48:11.880 as a stratum of it, distinct stratum of it.

00:48:14.540 Then there's the, then there's the, um, the, the true cons, the my principles crowd who,

00:48:23.500 who, who, who would kind of like sneer at the rock rib, who would kind of sneer, sneer at

00:48:29.080 the Alex Jones types.

00:48:31.000 Yeah.

00:48:31.840 Then, then there's the right wing populace.

00:48:34.300 And these are people like, uh, Alex Jones being most famous, but going back to 2010 with

00:48:40.980 Glenn Beck, who was with Glenn Beck and the Tea Party was, uh, it was Beck and it was Alex

00:48:47.860 Jones.

00:48:48.340 It was, this is kind of like a libertarian-ish backlash, a mix of libertarianism, backlash

00:48:55.940 politics, zaniness, the kind of people who liked Sarah Palin, you know, brought her up

00:49:01.320 in 2000, in 2008.

00:49:05.240 Um, Nick Fuente's appeals to these people, Andrew Anglin appeals to people, all the people

00:49:12.260 who thought COVID-19 was a hoax, number one, that's one, that's one thing that distinguishes

00:49:16.840 them, um, who, who thought that, you know, Obama was born in Kenya would be another example.

00:49:24.260 And who were absolutely convinced that the other election was, was, the election was stolen

00:49:28.780 from Detroit in places like Detroit, uh, stolen from Trump in places like Philadelphia and

00:49:34.420 Detroit where he did better than last time, who don't even bother to look at like what

00:49:39.700 the actual votes say, right?

00:49:41.460 Yeah.

00:49:42.160 So, so, so there's, there's that crowd and then beyond them, let's see, who else?

00:49:48.140 Oh, you have the alt-white. 0.89

00:49:49.020 I would stress real quick, that is, it's an emotion and not necessarily issues.

00:49:53.820 So they have a ton of zany issues like birth certificate or maybe moon landing conspiracy,

00:50:01.540 but, but it's not, it's not really, but they'll sometimes sound like libertarians for a while

00:50:07.280 there.

00:50:07.540 They sounded like, you know, socialist and economic protectionists.

00:50:12.300 It's the issues come and go.

00:50:14.060 And in fact, the candidates come and go, there's churn, it's not really intellectual, it's not

00:50:18.780 really, it stays, it's, it's like a thing that's emotional.

00:50:22.640 And although it is, uh, primarily a white thing and a kind of middle and lower, uh, middle 0.88

00:50:29.260 class white thing, even that it kind of, isn't quite what it is.

00:50:33.880 Like it's, it's this American right wing populist gut feeling.

00:50:40.640 And again, um, just, just to reiterate, I think that is what's, that's not going away.

00:50:47.020 And it's not going away.

00:50:48.760 Like, no, of course not the, the possession of the GOP as well.

00:50:52.580 Yeah.

00:50:52.960 So all the people who are, the people who are absolutely satisfied with, you know, base

00:50:58.260 tweets and Dom being represented by diamond and silk.

00:51:02.480 And he thought, Oh, well, you know, Trump's going to, Trump's got the platinum plan. 0.94

00:51:06.040 He's going to, you know, the, the, the mad man is going to, as the meme says, the mad 0.88

00:51:11.240 man, it's going to own the, own the libs.

00:51:13.360 The people, the people who are satisfied with tweets, owning the, owning the libs whose minds

00:51:17.820 are sunk in conspiracy theories, who are not really intellectual.

00:51:22.500 Um, the, those people are the right wing populist.

00:51:26.200 Then you got, of course, the alt light crowd, which are, they're, they're moderates, but they're

00:51:30.840 different from us.

00:51:31.660 They're, they're cultural libertarians, right?

00:51:34.560 Yeah.

00:51:34.860 They're basically, the, basically you think of them, the degenerates for capitalism.

00:51:39.200 Yeah.

00:51:39.680 I think of them, or as they're seeing the Pew survey called the new era enterprisers, people

00:51:45.540 like Cernovich, right?

00:51:47.220 Yeah.

00:51:47.920 Um, and then beyond them, you got the, and then beyond them, you got the, the nationalist,

00:51:53.340 the populist, the old labor crowd that's concentrated in the rust belt, the hard press skeptics and

00:52:00.460 mixed in with them.

00:52:01.360 You got most of the ethnocentric whites. 0.82

00:52:04.300 And so those people, those people tend to be, uh, socially conservative, economically

00:52:09.560 populist, and they're a different type of moderate.

00:52:13.660 So those, those are the five groups that I think of, and it'd be interesting in my theory

00:52:18.220 of the election is that the, that last group I mentioned shifted back towards, uh, the Democrats

00:52:24.120 and that's what cost Trump the election.

00:52:27.840 Just like, just like, cause that was the group that, I mean, they were all saying all the

00:52:31.640 headlines before the election was, you know, this is the group, this group's the future

00:52:34.540 of the GOP.

00:52:36.200 And Trump won that group, but he, you know, alienated them because those people were actually

00:52:40.820 were never really interested in his personality cult.

00:52:44.260 He always had a low, a lower approval rating with him.

00:52:48.100 And they always had a more negative view of the GOP and they were interested mainly in

00:52:54.120 they, they didn't really care so much about Trump, the man they were into, you know, what's

00:52:58.900 he going to actually do for us?

00:53:00.520 Yeah.

00:53:01.160 And he didn't deliver.

00:53:02.180 So that's my view.

00:53:03.780 And let me, let me take this a step further.

00:53:06.560 So, and I'll, I'll talk about Fuentes.

00:53:08.080 So, uh, first off, look, I I've never been a fan of Fuentes.

00:53:12.760 Okay.

00:53:13.000 So, but I'm going to try to actually move beyond any personal, you know, antagonism or

00:53:21.680 something, because that's not really helpful.

00:53:23.660 You know, I mean, every it's, everyone knows that it's not a big deal anyway.

00:53:27.200 Um, but I'll, I'll praise him here.

00:53:30.320 So Fuentes, you know, there he's jumped on the bandwagon and I don't, I don't necessarily

00:53:38.140 say that as a criticism.

00:53:39.440 Like sometimes a bandwagon is going full speed ahead and you jump on it and he has made himself

00:53:46.820 into a bit of a, you know, um, public figure.

00:53:52.460 And he's, he's kind of jumped in front of a crowd and almost let people believe that that

00:53:59.240 was the crowd was there for him.

00:54:01.000 A kind of like, I saw you tweeting about Andrew Anglin saying things like, well, you know,

00:54:05.640 I learned the lessons from Charlottesville and then, and then I decided that we needed

00:54:09.040 to do this.

00:54:09.800 And then look at what I did in Washington last weekend.

00:54:12.460 You know, it's like, look, man, you did not do that.

00:54:15.260 And if you had a negative, you know, contribution to that, if you had any at all, but regardless,

00:54:20.960 he, he does kind of, he's, he's riding a wave and, and like a surfer, you wait for the

00:54:26.040 wave and then you jump on it.

00:54:27.440 You can't just surf under your own accord.

00:54:30.080 So I don't, I don't even say this as a criticism.

00:54:32.920 In fact, he just is doing what he's doing now.

00:54:34.900 It's not my mission because I am only interested in changing this viewpoint and, and, and, and

00:54:43.320 changing metapolitics in a new direction. 0.57

00:54:46.140 I'm not even interested really in about like one issue, like let's kick out the illegals 1.00

00:54:51.320 or something. 0.52

00:54:51.680 Like I, I want to get in the brains of people of all strata actually, and start changing

00:54:59.440 their outlook.

00:55:00.100 That is what I do.

00:55:01.200 And therefore I'm not going to go and wave a flag and, and be like, oh, you know, China 0.99

00:55:05.860 sucks, uh, you know, Trump number one, blah, blah, blah. 1.00

00:55:08.960 That, that's just stupid. 1.00

00:55:10.660 You're not, you're not, the, the, the bottom line here is that's not the stratum of the electorate 1.00

00:55:15.500 where you're at.

00:55:16.320 That's not, not my people, so to speak, but, but also all these people claiming like, oh, you're,

00:55:21.420 your ego's too big, you know, and obviously I've never denied that I don't have a big

00:55:24.940 ego, but it's like, your ego's too big, uh, you know, whatever I, if I, if my ego were

00:55:30.140 so out of control, I would be still surfing this wave.

00:55:34.300 Like, I know how egotists act, you know, I'm speaking as one, like you would, I would

00:55:41.740 jump on this wave and not criticize Trump and wave the flag or whatever.

00:55:45.840 Like, that's the way to blow up.

00:55:47.760 Are you seriously, yeah.

00:55:49.600 Are you seriously going to, are you seriously going to do the Andrew England thing, which

00:55:53.060 would be to grab the American flag and, and we'll, he's not actually going to actually

00:55:57.840 go and do anything in the streets.

00:55:58.900 We never see him.

00:56:00.200 Are you going to grab the American flag and go out there and start screaming about, um,

00:56:05.500 Jade Helm and how, Jade Helm and how COVID is a, COVID is a, COVID is a hoax.

00:56:11.500 And the election was stolen from, from, from Trump.

00:56:15.020 And I mean, no, I'm not going to do it because I have self-respect.

00:56:19.560 You're not going to do that.

00:56:20.920 But, but, but Fuentes is a Cruz Republican.

00:56:23.740 And so therefore it makes a lot more sense.

00:56:27.920 And so I'm not actually here to criticize him.

00:56:31.100 I'm here to, to praise him.

00:56:32.640 He has like, again, I am not a fan. 0.97

00:56:36.180 Believe me, like, don't misunderstand me, but he has some balls. 0.85

00:56:40.340 I mean, uh, you know, whatever he has some balls and he he's acquired an audience and 0.97

00:56:46.940 he, he has, he has blown himself up in a way. 0.64

00:56:50.580 And it like, it is what it is.

00:56:52.060 Um, he's also said things that are pretty dramatic now, whether he's serious about these.

00:56:57.400 I, we don't know because, you know, one thing I've noticed about the, that whole, in that

00:57:02.420 crowd is that they just flip every three months.

00:57:04.680 They're on a new thing.

00:57:05.540 You know, they were pro Yang at one point.

00:57:07.240 So they say like, we're going to destroy the GOP.

00:57:09.780 We're going to vote Democrat, maybe stay at home, uh, even in the Georgia election in

00:57:15.560 January.

00:57:16.260 I doubt that too, but he's at least saying it.

00:57:20.420 And that actually makes him a bit dangerous because, you know, if those, you know, generally

00:57:26.600 speaking, runoff elections are not, don't bring out a lot of turnout and the incumbent has

00:57:31.660 the advantage.

00:57:32.140 Uh, but not, maybe not this time there's the, you know, the eyes of the world are on

00:57:36.780 Georgia.

00:57:37.120 And so I don't know, I bet the GOP there, if they hear some of these sound bites that

00:57:43.140 he and the Ammanac crowd have put forward and they're like, well, we are definitely not 0.99

00:57:48.320 allowing them into CPAC, you know, like, you know, this is, these people are fucking with 0.97

00:57:54.000 us and they don't like that. 0.97

00:57:55.640 But the only thing that I would say, and, you know, I, I pride myself in at least trying

00:58:01.380 to see a couple moves ahead and try to like, you know, stand up on a ladder and try to

00:58:05.880 see the whole view and not be, have my head to the ground and only see two feet in front

00:58:11.160 of me.

00:58:11.860 Um, they, they are going all in on Trump.

00:58:14.720 So they will attack the GOP to the extent that the GOP is not a Trump diehard loyalist.

00:58:21.940 So it's like Brian Kemp doesn't love Trump enough.

00:58:25.540 You know, all of these people don't, Tucker even doesn't love Trump enough.

00:58:29.340 And so we're going to attack them.

00:58:30.700 And I think that's actually a misunderstanding of the dynamic, which is that MAGA-ism, like

00:58:40.560 right-wing populism remains and it's going, it's here to stay, but Trump's not.

00:58:46.980 Yeah.

00:58:47.660 Yeah.

00:58:48.300 It's like you're kind of, you're kind of getting yourself out there on a gangplank and they

00:58:54.340 might make, they might push you off.

00:58:56.160 I mean, there's, there's absolutely no substance at all to a right-wing populism.

00:59:01.080 It's all like theatrics and backlashes that go nowhere and, you know, people grifting, grifting

00:59:10.300 off that whole scene.

00:59:11.400 I'm going to be a little bit more negative.

00:59:14.100 Okay.

00:59:15.040 Yeah.

00:59:15.280 Yeah.

00:59:15.580 So, cause, cause I think, I think you've been more about fair and balanced.

00:59:18.700 And what I, what I, what I look at, what I look at, but I will see Fuentes and the Groyper 1.00

00:59:25.780 crowd.

00:59:26.400 What I, what I see is Nick just setting up his own sideshow carnival act.

00:59:31.640 Um, just like Alex Jones.

00:59:33.780 Right.

00:59:34.540 I mean, there's obviously a huge audience.

00:59:36.420 There's obviously, there's obviously a huge audience for people who believe that, you

00:59:40.840 know, what was it?

00:59:42.780 What was it?

00:59:43.300 Um, before Trump came along, it was Jade Helm, right?

00:59:47.140 And Jade, Jade Helm was one of the things that, that, that Alex Jones was ranting about

00:59:51.860 for, I forgot, but it was one of the most famous things he did.

00:59:55.100 There was a, a network of underground tunnels underneath Walmarts in the Southwest.

01:00:01.000 And Obama was going to round up Patriots in FEMA camps and like place them underneath the Walmarts. 0.60

01:00:06.380 It was, it was something like absolutely insane going on.

01:00:10.120 Which ironically inspired the motion picture us.

01:00:14.580 So it actually, yeah, but no, I, I have not even heard that one.

01:00:18.720 So, yeah.

01:00:19.180 So, so, so, I mean, I mean, what Fuentes is doing, I mean, when you consider who Fuentes

01:00:24.300 is, who his audience is, what he's trying to do, it's actually smart.

01:00:28.980 There's, there's a huge audience for people who believe in all this, you know, empty nonsense.

01:00:35.220 Right.

01:00:36.120 You can, I mean, you can, you can make a good living gripping off those people.

01:00:39.320 Look at Alex Jones.

01:00:41.220 Alex Jones has done it for years.

01:00:43.460 And Alex Jones is, is nothing but a performance, is nothing but a performance artist and an

01:00:48.060 entertainer.

01:00:48.920 And he has no ambitions to be anything more.

01:00:51.700 He's just there. 0.90

01:00:52.300 He's just, he's the head clown of the circus. 0.59

01:00:55.460 And Fuentes is going to be, you know, his sidekick in the, in the Trump sideshow.

01:01:01.440 Yeah.

01:01:01.800 In my view.

01:01:02.700 And Hey, but you, you know, you know what we really found out about this election that

01:01:05.660 we haven't, um, one of the points I made on my blog, one of the things that we really

01:01:09.420 found out about this election is that voters actually didn't care about the optics of, of

01:01:16.940 all these people like Andrew Anglin and Fuentes and the Goypers and Alex Jones.

01:01:21.560 But what they really cared about is they didn't want to be governed by retards, right? 1.00

01:01:27.260 Cranks.

01:01:28.500 That's why college educated voters turned against, turned against Trump and, and sunk him, sunk 1.00

01:01:35.300 him in the election because I mean, being governed by a moron and is something that is intolerable. 0.99

01:01:43.340 It kind of is, I mean, I'll, I'll just, you know, cause I am like, you know, you, I have 0.99

01:01:51.340 a lot in common with a wealthy college educated or indeed graduate level educated, you know,

01:01:59.560 liberal in the suburbs.

01:02:00.580 I have a lot in common with them.

01:02:01.940 I kind of know how they think.

01:02:03.900 And yeah, it is intolerable.

01:02:06.040 You want some like, you know, and you see a lot of these picks by, by Joe Biden and they're

01:02:11.020 like, you know, graduate of the Kennedy school of government and, you know, Stanford alum

01:02:16.600 or whatever.

01:02:17.120 And they, you know, they have this like lot, like 30 year diplomatic career.

01:02:20.660 And it's you, you, that's what you're kind of looking for.

01:02:24.480 You're looking for the adult in the room.

01:02:26.380 Yeah, exactly.

01:02:26.880 You're looking for the triumph of the resume.

01:02:28.540 And I mean, for better and for worse, I'm not saying that that's the best thing, but you

01:02:33.160 at least don't like have that, that contempt for someone like, you know, the guy in charge

01:02:39.440 of the EPA is like pro, you know, fracking in Yellowstone National Park or whatever.

01:02:46.940 You don't have that level of just like contempt and hatred.

01:02:51.160 You have a kind of like, well, you know, he's really smart, you know, it is what it is.

01:02:59.980 What else were, what else were we going to cover?

01:03:03.300 What about our predictions?

01:03:04.420 Okay, well, the blue waves didn't have, okay, violence hasn't happened yet, but we're still

01:03:10.940 kind of in this limbo phase.

01:03:13.240 Violence hasn't happened.

01:03:14.880 It has not been increasing.

01:03:16.080 That's, I think that's actually quite surprising.

01:03:18.780 I think we all thought that that was about to occur.

01:03:23.300 Pop off.

01:03:24.240 Yeah.

01:03:25.160 But it hasn't.

01:03:26.380 Maybe that has something to do with the weather, but, but at the very least it has not occurred.

01:03:31.000 And, and, but let's, let's hold off on having a definitive view on this because if Trump does

01:03:38.500 something totally wacky, you might see something.

01:03:41.560 But the conservative media wound it down to like, I remember right after the election,

01:03:45.940 you had like Tucker and Don Jr. 0.89

01:03:48.140 Being like, we own all the guns.

01:03:49.840 Like there's going to be blood flowing through the streets or whatever.

01:03:52.500 And now it's kind of been slowly wound, like the, the Patriot, the, the Patriot types with 0.54

01:03:57.700 their AR-15s aren't like, aren't, it isn't like right after the election.

01:04:02.200 Cause I don't know, for a while there, I thought like there's going to be some, I thought like

01:04:05.900 Trump supporters are going to be clashing with Antifa and there's going to be people rounded

01:04:09.860 up, but the, kind of the conservative media has like wound it down a little bit.

01:04:14.140 They, well, you saw with Tucker, he did have all these like bold statements about we own

01:04:18.640 the guns. So we'll win the civil war. And I disagree with that contention, but I'll put

01:04:23.880 table that for now. But then I remember there was another show like three days later, he was

01:04:29.380 like, let's remember what we love about America. Oak trees in Vermont, palm trees in California,

01:04:38.960 big forest in the Midwest. Like it was this like weird, like, like poetic, like we love America,

01:04:47.320 but it was all like calming. It was, it was like, it was like a, one of those videos with

01:04:51.920 like, like, you know, some Bach in the background of like, you, like a babbling brook and like

01:04:58.900 it, and like a vision, like you, you just calm down and just eventually fall asleep.

01:05:03.100 Close your, close your eyes and go to your happy, close your eyes and go to your happy place.

01:05:07.320 Yeah. Yeah. That, that was basically what he was doing. I mean, maybe we should actually praise

01:05:12.200 him for that. You know, cause he might've prevented some lunatic from, you know, ending his life

01:05:20.160 and others. What about our new, what about our new, what about our new president elect? Any comments

01:05:25.420 on the Biden cabinet on the student loan issue, which seems to be coming up? Well, I actually did a

01:05:33.800 podcast with Ed on the student loan issue that I need to, I need to edit and publish. So I'll be

01:05:40.340 putting that out. I mean, look, I have to say, I, I could, I mean, we talked about it like in a

01:05:45.520 really macro view and how we can actually reform education. But I would just say this, I mean,

01:05:52.420 this forgiving $30,000 of student loan debt, or maybe all of that. I mean, you know, we,

01:05:57.600 they're floating issues. They're doing trial balloons. So we don't know what they're going to do.

01:06:00.740 And it's probably going to be less than what people are, are hoping for. But I mean, I do,

01:06:07.120 I do just support it in a basic level of, you know, this is a wicked system, but keep in mind that

01:06:14.340 forgiving that debt, isn't going to change the problem. It's going to arguably make it kind of

01:06:19.720 worse. And so I think it is kind of like, I do like, if he did that, I think it would be a brilliant

01:06:26.800 move politically. And I would generally back it, but I would actually be one of the ones saying like,

01:06:33.400 you know, the whole, we need to reform higher education drastically. We are, we are actually

01:06:39.620 overproducing quote elites unquote right now. And that actually isn't right. And it's leading to

01:06:46.000 problems. So, and, and, and, and beyond that, we're just screwing people over like, you know,

01:06:51.280 these 25 year old baristas with, you know, $80,000 in student loan debt, like that's just unethical.

01:06:57.560 And according to, according to, according to Scott Greer, you know, everyone is, uh, you know,

01:07:03.320 who's got student loan debt is, you know, uh, a doctor or, um, you know, a lawyer, um, what an AWFL

01:07:13.820 Oh yes. It's, it's, it's all everyone. He, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's like, he's like,

01:07:20.100 look at, look at the amount of debt. It's like, most people have debt, go to graduate school. And it's

01:07:24.040 like, dude, I mean, this is, this is conservative populism right here.

01:07:28.900 Most student loan debt is actually non-degree debt is an interesting set. And so it's a lot

01:07:36.080 of people who went to two years of math or like a year of a master's degree and they have,

01:07:40.280 they don't even have a degree. It's, it's really tragic.

01:07:42.320 Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's like most, I mean, it's like, it's like saying, it's like

01:07:47.620 talking about slavery and being like, look at the planners, the planners own most of the slaves

01:07:52.580 when the average slave owner has something like two or three slaves. And that's what

01:07:58.080 the conservatives are doing to kind of like murk up the issue by saying, Hey, people who

01:08:02.320 own the most debt, you know, they're, you know, doctors and lawyers and people go to

01:08:05.780 grad school and stuff like that.

01:08:07.380 Right. It's a wealth transfer from plumbers to baristas is the mean. 1.00

01:08:12.500 Yeah, I know. But if you, if you, if you did like a $50,000 student loan forgiveness, like

01:08:17.840 the Warren was talking about, Elizabeth Warren, that would have to what three fourths of people 0.96

01:08:24.580 who were in debt would be out of it. Yeah. Is that what it, yeah. And why, why wouldn't

01:08:29.480 you do that? Right.

01:08:30.840 Oh, I think you ran on the plat, you ran on the platinum plan. I mean, no wonder they lost,

01:08:35.700 right.

01:08:36.200 They were planning on spending close to a trillion dollars on giving money to blacks and Hispanics.

01:08:43.240 And then the Democrats come in and they say, we're going to effectively give money to millennial

01:08:50.140 and Gen X whites. And of course the conservatives are mad. You know, it's just, it's just ridiculous.

01:08:56.740 It's just simply ridiculous. Like how they think about these things. The other thing, I think 0.98

01:09:01.120 that Obamacare is, is not an ideal system, but like it actually helps it reduced medical

01:09:09.160 bankruptcies. And like, I don't know what to say. It's like, they, they're so people hopped

01:09:16.320 up on the, the, like the, the, like the Democrats are the black party and the Democrats are the,

01:09:21.540 the, the blue haired SJW party that they're not able to see what is the reality in front

01:09:28.760 of them. Um, which is like the, the GOP is the platinum plan party. I mean, don't they're,

01:09:34.280 they're, they're literally the reparations party. Whereas the Democrats are literally

01:09:39.420 the let's give white people a break party by saving them 50 grand. You know, I mean, 0.75

01:09:46.820 Right. Right. Yeah. If, if, if, if, I mean, if me and you were GOP consultants would be like,

01:09:51.180 Hey, we've got an incredible strategy that'll help the GOP win the White House. And it's really,

01:09:56.180 it's really this simple. It's like, this is all you got to do. You got to move to the center

01:10:00.640 on economics and foreign policy in order to make it more attractive to non-conservative white people,

01:10:09.140 um, who can't afford to be Republicans. And that way you can win states like Minnesota

01:10:14.560 and Maine and New Hampshire, but you don't want to do that. Right.

01:10:19.340 They won't do it. And let me say this as well. So how could Trump have actually had a successful

01:10:27.300 presidency? And he was having one, like if, if COVID had not come around, Trump could have won

01:10:34.140 reelection like that. That's real. But, but, but let's go back and look at like early mistakes that

01:10:40.220 were made early on. Well, okay. Now an egotist. Yeah. Do you go back to 2016 and 2017? Now an

01:10:48.120 egotist maniac like myself would just tell Trump, well, you should just appoint me as your advisor. 0.95

01:10:54.100 And then we would have done better. But putting, putting fantasies like that aside, um, what could 0.82

01:11:00.760 he have done instead of what he did very early on that would have put him on a very, a much better

01:11:07.180 footing with this like radical center that you're talking about. And, um, now obviously a lot of

01:11:13.780 those are appointments in 2016 that you were talking about, um, back in the day. Um, but you

01:11:20.860 know, I, I think he made some really bad errors early on that kind of got him into this polarization

01:11:28.120 and right-wing populism track. And he could have at least plausibly transcended it. So when in 2016,

01:11:36.600 granted the Republicans kind of came to terms with Trump, but they, they came to terms with him

01:11:43.780 quite reluctantly. And the speaker of the house at the time, Paul Ryan was clearly undermining him

01:11:49.320 and had not really come to terms with him. So Trump was in a position where maybe this wouldn't have

01:11:56.160 worked. I'll grant, but he could have done this. He could have reached out to Chuck and Nancy

01:12:02.460 and pursued major infrastructure spending bill that would have done light rail across the country,

01:12:11.640 new Metro systems and major metropolitan areas, you know, high getting the highway system up to snuff

01:12:17.200 and do the wall as part of this big infrastructure package that the liberals wanted. Um, I think the,

01:12:24.500 the, the so-called Muslim ban was just, you know, it was pretty ridiculous. He, he could have, 0.94

01:12:31.080 you know, we're keeping out Muslims from North Korea and, you know, and we're like literally at 1.00

01:12:36.220 war with Iran and we're not allowed to immigrate. It's like, okay, I get it. He also the healthcare

01:12:41.820 policy that maybe didn't hurt him, but it hurt him in the midterms. I mean, the number one issue of

01:12:48.440 liberal of Democrat voters was healthcare in 2018, according to polls. Now take that with a great

01:12:54.880 assault, but done, done a Medicare for all, or some kind of national healthcare proposal that

01:13:01.980 wasn't this incoherent mess plus Paul Ryan, like talking points. So the, the healthcare thing

01:13:08.580 didn't, it removed the mandate from Obamacare. It was almost like entirely negative. It didn't offer

01:13:13.460 anything return. It wasn't actually a free market solution, but it had like free market rhetoric

01:13:18.300 attached to it. It was just the worst, it was a, the worst of all possible worlds, in fact.

01:13:22.980 So he could have done early things, you know, he could have done some things very early on

01:13:29.300 that would have changed the direction and he could have attempted to, and I know how difficult this is,

01:13:35.080 but he could have attempted to transcend populism or polarization as opposed to just buying into it.

01:13:43.300 And if he's working with Chuck and Nancy on a, on a healthcare and infrastructure bill,

01:13:48.360 I think they're probably a little bit less likely to impeach him.

01:13:52.100 And he could have got an immigration, which he did actually pursue. I mean, I'm, I'm not a fan of 0.99

01:13:56.540 the Rays Act, putting that aside. He could have done something if he had, he had reached out to them

01:14:01.680 in that way. And instead he reached back in to the Tea Party. He reached back in to polarization.

01:14:08.080 He reached back in to the GOP and tax cuts for billionaires. And it, it just doesn't work.

01:14:14.800 You're going to end up like Mitt Romney if you do that. And at least you can try something that is

01:14:20.740 high difficulty, but also high reward. And that is to transcend populism and win over for life

01:14:27.800 the, the radical center.

01:14:29.620 Yeah. So, um, it was that first year, let me give you an example. So the first year is

01:14:35.380 that killed him with his image when the first year he was in office. And actually we found out that

01:14:41.840 actually Trump is, isn't, isn't this new kind of Republican that we thought he was in the campaign.

01:14:47.540 Actually, he's doing Paul Ryan's tax cuts. Actually, he's doing this goofy healthcare reform thing.

01:14:54.420 And that's what, if you look, if you look at his poll numbers, and if you go back and you look at

01:14:58.860 the poll numbers of Trump throughout his whole presidency, there were really three points in

01:15:02.800 his presidency where he really started to drop. The first was of course, the first six, seven months

01:15:08.800 of the healthcare, when you, when healthcare was front and center in 2017, that was wildly unpopular.

01:15:16.980 And if you look, if, if you look at 2017 and his poll numbers, his poll numbers improved after Charlottesville.

01:15:23.840 I mean, everybody says Charlottesville was this huge thing that, you know, just completely destroyed, changed everything.

01:15:29.500 No one cared at all about Charlottesville. Most people didn't even probably even notice Charlottesville even happened.

01:15:36.940 Um, but, uh, his poll numbers got worse and worse. The more and more he was attached to Paul Ryan and Paul Ryan's

01:15:45.340 healthcare bill in 2017, his poll numbers got worse and worse. And then like they improved after Charlottesville

01:15:52.760 and into like September, 2017. And then when they started doing the tax cuts, his disapproval rating

01:15:59.320 started going back up. And then the third, the third thing that killed him was COVID and the reopening

01:16:06.920 and how he handled that in 2020, that and the riots and the riots are one thing COVID. I was, I was joking

01:16:14.600 about this with a friend of mine just yesterday. He, he could have bungled COVID like on a policy level

01:16:21.280 and gotten away with it because it's a novel virus. Like we don't know how to react. I think actually

01:16:27.780 people are willing to grant a lot to, to policymakers on COVID because we don't quite know what we're

01:16:35.280 doing and like doing a lockdown early and then kind of slowly opening it up gradually, but then still

01:16:42.880 suffering like a second wave. He could have gotten away with that. Totally. The thing with COVID was

01:16:48.020 the rhetoric. It was like all people wanted was a grandfatherly figure to give them a hug that it,

01:16:56.420 or they wanted someone to be like wearing a mask and being like, this, this is a serious thing.

01:17:02.840 We're going to, you know, we're, we're going to, you know, use all government to defeat it. The problem

01:17:06.900 is he, he did sound those notes on occasion, but, but more, more often he sounded the conspiracy

01:17:12.760 theory notes of like, this is not, this is a Democrat hoax. It doesn't exist or it's nothing.

01:17:17.700 You can beat it just like I did, you know, with like literally the best healthcare, the China

01:17:21.720 virus, the China virus, it's the China virus. It just, everything struck it. He went Alex Jones

01:17:27.920 on all of these things. All he had to do was change his rhetoric. That's all he had to do. He could

01:17:35.320 have bungled the actual policy because it's difficult. No one has a right answer, but like,

01:17:40.940 it's just, he just couldn't help himself. And here's how bad, here's how bad his 2020 campaign

01:17:51.160 was. Right. In 2020, he did something, but that was actually populous. And that was actually

01:17:56.200 of substance. Right. In that, when he signed, I think, was it the cares act, the big stimulus

01:18:01.380 thing in, was it March or April? It's just, he suspended, um, student loan repayment payments

01:18:10.160 and interest on student loan debt. And people actually got checks. People actually got checks

01:18:15.540 for, uh, interest on student loan debt, um, from the government in addition to the stimulus

01:18:21.380 he did. Right. Well, I mean, throughout the whole campaign, do you ever remember Trump taking

01:18:25.480 credit for suspending student loans? No, not one time did Trump take actual credit for

01:18:35.260 suspending student loan payments for not like what, six, seven, eight, nine months. Not one

01:18:41.360 time. He ran on the platinum plan though. He ran on the platinum plan. He's like, I've actually

01:18:47.520 suspended student loan payments. I'm not even, it's too controversial with conservatives to

01:18:51.660 even talk about it, but I'm going to like speak endlessly about the platinum plan. It's

01:18:56.000 only a conservative, yeah. And criminal justice reform. It's something that only a conservative

01:19:01.300 would have been stupid enough to, a conservative consultant would have, you know, only something 1.00

01:19:07.560 dumb enough. Don't mention that. That's really unpopular. Don't mention the fact that you suspended 1.00

01:19:14.020 student loan payments, right? Like literally like a third of the population, like radically hates

01:19:20.620 student loan debt and the banks. Right. And you're like, you know, like, easy, like just

01:19:26.220 gimme. I mean, I mean, I mean, don't they understand, don't they understand, okay, well,

01:19:30.800 it's 2020. So that means that there's going to be more millennial voters and less silent

01:19:35.420 generation voters, especially with COVID, especially with COVID killing them all off. 0.99

01:19:39.960 Killing them, yeah. So, and of course, you know, the millennials are so broke and have 0.96

01:19:45.420 like, are so much in debt and are so angry that, you know, they're supporting candidates like Bernie

01:19:52.460 Sanders because they're so financially stressed, right? Well, let's do, let's, let's do nothing to

01:19:57.640 address their concerns whatsoever. And let's let, let's let Joe Biden run on forgiving their student

01:20:03.560 loan debt. Let's play into silent generation resentment of the millennials. Like that's, you know,

01:20:09.480 like, well, let's, and then let's congratulate ourselves on, on our, our true conservative

01:20:14.640 principles after we lost the election. And then, and then after we lose the election, we'll learn

01:20:19.420 after we lose the election, because literally college educated white voters, many of them

01:20:24.320 millennials who are in the lower income brackets because their burden was student loan debt voted

01:20:29.980 against us and cost us Georgia and Pennsylvania, Georgia, Pennsylvania for nothing at all from that

01:20:36.700 experience. And, and, and double down on the, on the, on the same stupidity, which is what they're 1.00

01:20:41.240 doing now. Yeah. It's actually all these rich, wealthy people who have student loan debt. That's what 1.00

01:20:47.000 you're saying. Well, let's do this. Um, let's put a bookmark in this conversation. This is a great

01:20:54.980 conversation. And I like, I like the fact that we got really, um, you know, kind of like technical

01:21:00.980 and, and, you know, sometimes, um, on my podcasts were a little too up in the air. I think

01:21:06.380 sometimes it's good to get down on the ground and like, look at the gritty how he could have

01:21:10.260 done this, but yeah, this is fantastic stuff. So, um, I would, uh, yeah, we should, we should

01:21:16.300 get back on this because obviously this is like the election that will never end. We'll

01:21:22.300 just be in this like weird zone for another three months probably. Um, but anyway, yeah,

01:21:27.360 thanks a lot.

01:21:36.380 Okay.

01:21:36.700 Thank you.

01:21:37.320 Thank you.

01:22:07.320 Thank you.

01:22:37.320 Thank you.

01:23:07.320 Thank you.

01:23:37.320 Thank you.

01:24:07.320 Thank you.

01:24:37.320 Thank you.

01:25:07.320 Thank you.

01:25:37.320 Thank you.

01:26:07.320 Thank you.

01:26:37.320 Thank you.

01:27:07.320 Thank you.

01:27:37.320 Thank you.

RadixJournal - November 27, 2020

The Long MAGA

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