J.D. Vance is the new VP nominee for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, but who will he pick? Will it be the man who s a self-built autodidact from out of the middle of nowhere, grown up in a shack to Harvard, become a lawyer? Or will it be a man who was initially suspicious and cynical about the MAGA movement and Trump, or will he be some new incarnation of JD Vance that might possibly participate in a new blooming of a new United States of America? Who will it ultimately be, and what will it look like to be a patriot in 2024, at a time where we re seeing conspiracy theories abound and where we ve become accustomed to the rhetoric of conspiracy theory? And what does it mean for us to look for unity and togetherness and genuine change at a moment where we are seeing conspiracy theory abound, not just in the alternative media spaces, but in the mainstream media spaces where we've become more cynical and suspicious of establishment mainstream narratives? We ve long known that you can t trust institutions of power, whether that s the judiciary, the judiciary or the media, and increasingly every system of government has become less reliable, more and more an institution regarded as one of enmity rather than alliance. This is surely the time for a great awakening. I felt it myself in all places today, as I walked down the street and met the newly anointed VP, presumably because there ain t been an election just yet, and I saw in the streets of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And I saw the many facets of J.Davos Vance the man, the man I ve been waiting for a chance to become a VP, and a chance for a better version of himself. of the man that might be a better J.Vance the one that s going to lead us to the next president of the United States and a better America in 2020, the one we all are going to see the future we re gonna be a new country a better United States, a better U.S. of America in the next two years, in 2020 an America, not a better place better than this country, better than we thought we ve been here before more than we ve we re going to be here, we re here, and we re not here yet, we ve all got this, we are here, We re here We re all here
00:14:51.000No assault courses and no martial work.
00:14:54.000Just genuine, gentle, languid, angley and relaxation.
00:14:59.000But still, as I said when I was with Dan just a moment ago, this is an opportunity for you.
00:15:04.000To disclose and be proud of your doubt and cynicism when it comes to establishment power.
00:15:10.000This is an opportunity for us to talk about what it means to be a patriot in 2024.
00:15:16.000What does it mean to look for unity and togetherness and genuine change at a time where we are seeing conspiracy theory abound?
00:15:25.000Not just in the alternative media spaces where we've become kind of accustomed to the rhetoric of conspiracy theory, here we have learned and have long time been cynical and suspicious of establishment mainstream narratives.
00:15:37.000We've long known that you can't trust institutions of power, whether that's the judiciary or the media, and increasingly every system of government has become less reliable, more and more an institution regarded as one of enmity rather than alliance.
00:15:55.000If you go to another platform, and don't leave me for a second right now, you will see conspiracy theories being discussed on the left.
00:16:02.000People saying that, hmm, did Trump sack his entire security detail just a couple of weeks before?
00:16:08.000Spaces where if during the pandemic you'd said, I'm not sure about this vaccine, you would have been ultimately incarcerated, particularly if you were in Australia or Canada or New Zealand.
00:16:17.000Suddenly now, they are open to alternative narratives.
00:16:20.000You know me, or unless you're from the Bongino army, you may not.
00:17:26.000Vance that was initially suspicious and cynical about the MAGA movement and Trump?
00:17:31.000Or will it be some new incarnation of J.D.
00:17:34.000Vance that might possibly participate in a new blooming of a new United States of America?
00:17:41.000Because you know elsewhere, in the adjacent silos where people have different political perspectives, this is seen as a kind of calcifying of the MAGA movement, and many people are deeply afraid.
00:17:54.000The inhabitants and denizens of the legacy media burrows are terrified.
00:18:00.000Whether that's Joe Scarborough, whether that's Joy Reid, all those that have long participated in incendiary rhetoric of vilification are beginning to sense that change is coming.
00:18:13.000You'll be familiar by now with this press memo, right?
00:18:15.000Where the legacy media were instructed how to report on this story.
00:18:20.000Don't call it an assassination attempt.
00:18:24.000Don't say a shooting targeting Trump at the rally.
00:18:28.000Well, now there is an attempt to reassert the narratives that preceded this event.
00:18:35.000And I've got to tell you, to be at the RNC in the midst of all of this, is fascinating indeed.
00:18:41.000I've not watched this yet because one of the people I've been curious about and appreciating and understanding the perspective of and one of the sort of strong voices should we say of the liberal establishment has been Joy Reid and I've just wondered How someone that has so strongly embraced the hysteria and demonization of Donald Trump will have adjusted to this moment.
00:19:04.000We'll be talking about all of that a little later, but first we're being joined by Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:19:09.000Let's talk about Vivek Ramaswamy, long fancied as a potential VP himself.
00:19:13.000One of the significant orators and instigators of the rise of this movement.
00:19:17.000There's a quick message now from one of our sponsors.
00:19:19.000When we come back, I will be with Vivek Ramaswamy, right here, right now, live, streaming on Rumble.
00:19:26.000If you're a member of the Bongino Army, thank you very much for joining us.
00:19:28.000If you're one of our regulars, thank you for being here.
00:21:13.000Because he's rallying and marshalling his army continually.
00:21:16.000But Vivek, I want to talk to you about, firstly, the general climate of this convention during a time of extraordinary, if not crisis, then transition for the party.
00:21:27.000Can you tell me what... I'm an outsider here.
00:22:06.000It quite literally isn't the Republican Party of last year.
00:22:08.000There's different people who are running it.
00:22:09.000There's different people who are in charge.
00:22:12.000And I think Donald Trump's confirmation, as it more formally happened yesterday as the nominee with J.D.
00:22:17.000Vance as the VP, but also even if you just think about the character of what this party has become, I think is aligned with what I think our policy vision should be for the future.
00:22:27.000Do I agree with every single aspect of what every other Republican says?
00:22:31.000But part of what, you know, I've tried to bring to the culture of this party, and I think J.D.
00:22:36.000Vance is actually really good in this regard too, is to say that we don't have to agree on everything, but what we do need to have is the space to at least be honest with each other, to actually openly share.
00:22:45.000Here's our beliefs, whether it's a particular question around aid to Ukraine, whether it's a particular domestic policy question.
00:22:51.000I'll actually tell you what I think one of the most interesting rifts is going to be going forward.
00:22:55.000But we need a culture within the Republican Party that provides that space for vigorous debate.
00:23:01.000And that's a good example for the rest of the country, too, because that's something we miss in America, is we used to have a country where you could disagree like hell at the dinner table and still have dinner at the end of it.
00:23:14.000I think Americans are hungry for it, and the best way for the Republican Party to lead the way is to demonstrate that even within the party, we have room for that.
00:23:22.000I miss that good faith discourse that you describe, where it was possible to disagree with people, but recognize that ultimately we have a kind of shared conviviality, but we are ultimately unified.
00:23:32.000Yes, I like that word, conviviality, because it's not that it's like, okay, we disagree a little bit, but we still kind of agree.
00:23:45.000Some of my best friends from a long time ago are people who did not have the same views as me.
00:23:49.000But that's actually what caused us to be more deep in our friendship.
00:23:53.000I wonder, Vivek, if part of the toxicity of our culture is the way that it divides and almost forbids people from different political positions to form alliances.
00:24:02.000I sense that there's a real fear about that.
00:24:04.000If I may pivot slightly, mate, I wonder how you feel about The emergence in online spaces now of conspiracy theories from both sides around the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
00:24:15.000A lot of people questioning the nature of the security and suggesting that the conditions were created for the shooter to have an advantageous position.
00:24:22.000But then on the other side, on the left, people are... Honestly, I've seen it myself, suggesting that this is a sort of an in-house false flag event.
00:24:29.000And when it happened, I thought, I bet we'll see people on the establishment left Now saying, aha, this is a conspiracy theory.
00:24:37.000What is the difference between the kind of healthy debate that you're describing, where people can sort of talk together about creating a unified country at a time when it's needed, and this ongoing absolute suspicion of everything, where some people think, oh, this is another CIA assassination, where people think, oh, Trump has done this as part of a political maneuver, and how do we ever bring about unity when there is such disparity?
00:24:57.000Yeah, so a couple different tracks here.
00:24:59.000One is, do I believe that Whether or not I agree with what you say, whether or not what you have to say is ridiculous, whether or not what you have to say is offensive, do I believe that you in the United States of America should have the right to say it?
00:25:11.000Let's just start with those basic table stakes.
00:25:54.000Now the question is, just because you have the right to express an opinion does not mean that you are doing good by expressing that opinion.
00:26:02.000I worry sometimes about verbal emissions, right?
00:26:05.000I don't think that we should forcibly stop people from expressing their opinion, but it does a disservice to our discourse when people are discharging their own impulse rather than actually engaging in a truth-seeking behavior.
00:26:20.000So that's where I draw the line, I draw a fork in the road.
00:26:23.000Because I think there are people who are authentically going to go outside the Overton window because they want to seek truth.
00:26:28.000And then there are people who are really just engaging in a kind of personal impulse, like a discharge, right?
00:26:35.000The discharge of oral diarrhea or the equivalent of a disgusting, you know, Disgusting bodily fluid-like ejection of words, right, is not helpful.
00:26:47.000A kind of involuntary ejaculation of almost psychic trauma, because to watch what's happening in the space online now, and I'm fascinated and grateful, in fact, that in addition to the great platform we're on now, Rumble, there is a platform like X, because I think a pre-Elon X would have certainly censored much of what I've seen on X since the assassination attempt.
00:27:10.000People saying he shouldn't have been able to get to that building.
00:27:11.000Why has this kid got no social media footprint?
00:27:13.000Who's that woman in the black hat in the background?
00:27:15.000Why were the Secret Service moving people immediately prior to the event?
00:27:19.000But what we're sort of seeing now and what I think is extraordinary in this environment of mistrust and this impulsive discharge where people are almost incapable of addressing what their own alliances, their own bigotry and own biases contribute to the conversation is An inability to really discern what is true here.
00:27:37.000And I wonder what you feel, particularly with your great preemptive and predictive ability.
00:27:41.000You were the first person that said that Biden won't even be the candidate and I know that you maintain that.
00:27:45.000What do you think, how do you feel this conversation around the assassination attempt will unfold?
00:27:51.000Will people say secret services have been remiss in this instance?
00:27:55.000Will people ultimately conclude that there is ulterior involvement?
00:27:58.000Or will people start to question whether or not there was involvement of the Trump campaign?
00:28:05.000How do you think those narratives will unfold, Vivek?
00:28:09.000I don't think that that type of, I would say, Speculation for the sake of speculation is super helpful.
00:28:18.000I think if I'm to go where I see in the convention here, like I'm just here on the ground, right?
00:28:22.000So give you kind of the pulse of where I think people are at outside of the online sphere.
00:28:26.000Because I think there is a bifurcation here.
00:28:28.000And I think as there isn't so much a modern life between what we see as internet dialogue behind
00:28:35.000avatars of people who are not really Expressing their own opinion with the with the attached
00:28:40.000accountability of who they are versus people in the real world
00:28:43.000What I'm what I'm seeing here in the 3d real world is slightly different for what people are taking away from
00:28:49.000the last three days is I'll say what I think needs to be done
00:28:54.000We need to get transparency of how this kind of Secret Service failure could have happened,
00:28:57.000how this type of security failure could have happened.
00:29:32.000The media is eager to sort of write a paper-thin version of this.
00:29:36.000I'm not talking about some fake national unity.
00:29:38.000I don't want some fake, artificial, astroturf version of this.
00:29:41.000But I'm talking about the deeper, real thing, where if that had been literally one centimeter
00:29:47.000on a path that was different in a different direction, a hair's breadth of a difference,
00:29:51.000that would have been a seismic change for the worst, not only in U.S.
00:29:55.000national history, but in world history.
00:29:58.000And so if you're rare in one of these rare occasions, given this chance, 9-11 was a chance that many people said, okay, the United States of America was united on the back of 9-11.
00:30:16.000And so I think this is one of those moments where I hope people feel a civic sense of responsibility to take a step back and say, I think I care about the United States of America, but why?
00:30:27.000And I think that that's what I'm most interested in right now is watching a little bit of the evolution of a lot of people here, I think I'm feeling it on the ground here, who are hungry for that kind of national unity but are a little bit constrained in the context of an election to actually be able to step up and say it.
00:30:45.000Which I find fascinating because I think there's a lot of psychological forces that constrain people from being able to admit it.
00:30:52.000I think you're right about that desire for unity, but when I think about how much fracture and conflict there's been in the last 4, 8, 12, 16 years...
00:31:01.000It seems difficult to imagine that that kind of unity can be achieved without decentralization, without acknowledging that there now appear to be several simultaneous Americas being run in silo.
00:31:13.000If you just take a few notable pundits, the kind of pundits that might have been considered to have contributed to the incendiary atmosphere that possibly could have fueled someone to think that an assassination attempt would be a positive contribution to American political life, Where does that rhetoric go now?
00:31:31.000Where does the kind of amplified hysteria of, and I'm just using one example, Joy Reid, but Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe, where is that going to go?
00:31:40.000How is that going to be alchemised into unity without significant decentralisation?
00:31:48.000What happens to the voices that you might regard as woke?
00:31:51.000How are those people afforded territory when it seems, let's be honest, that a Republican victory is likely, very likely in November now?
00:32:00.000Yeah, so I think that there is a fork in the road ahead for both parties, actually.
00:32:06.000The short term fork in the road for the Democrats is a tough one.
00:32:08.000Because Biden has built his entire message so far around the histrionics about Trump and the threat that he poses to the future of American democracy.
00:32:16.000Well, he's now said that he wants to tone down the rhetoric.
00:32:19.000But then if he goes the other way, he doesn't have a campaign message left.
00:32:22.000So personally, I believe that's one more reason probably the most Compelling reason why it's not gonna be Biden people cited the debate and I've said this for a long time But people say that that on the back of the debate I think actually even more compelling reason is he does not have a campaign message left If he goes one way, he's violating his own message to tone down the rhetoric if he goes the other way He doesn't have a campaign message left now there's a fork in the road for the Republicans to the fork in the road for the Republicans is Do we want to?
00:32:50.000Co-opt the administrative state and the levers of power to advance our own agenda?
00:32:57.000Or do we want to shut down and dismantle that apparatus altogether?
00:33:02.000And I think that that's an interesting fork in the road ahead for the conservative movement.
00:33:05.000And I think there are a diversity of voices in the Republican Party, even in the America First movement, on that question.
00:33:10.000I come down in a more what I call national libertarian direction.
00:33:14.000That's different than a national protectionist direction.
00:33:17.000But I think the question is, do we want a muscular federal bureaucracy to achieve good for American workers and manufacturers?
00:33:24.000Or do we want actually a dismantling of the administrative state that I think was the source of that cancer in the first place?
00:33:31.000So I think both parties face our forks in the road.
00:33:33.000The Democrats' fork in the road plays out over the next four months.
00:33:36.000The Republican fork in the road, I think, plays out over the next four years.
00:33:39.000But the good news is I hope the Republican Party is now in a place where we can have those types of debates within the Republican Party in an earnest way, in a respectful way.
00:33:49.000You know, one of the things I like about J.D.
00:33:50.000Vance, for example, who was selected as Vice President, I've known him for...
00:33:54.000Over a decade, we went to law school together.
00:33:57.000I grew up in southwest Ohio, maybe 10 minutes from where he grew up.
00:34:01.000He and I don't agree on every particular policy, but we actually spend most of our time, we agree on 90% of things, but on 10% of things we don't, we actually spend most of our time talking about the areas where we disagree, and where there's daylight, at least sharpening what the other person thinks by actually pushing each other to be the best version of ourselves.
00:34:20.000I think that we live in a moment, both within the Republican Party and the country, where we could revive that part of our old culture.
00:34:27.000Now, as it relates to the Republican Party, I gave a speech on this recently and I am a strong proponent of keeping our eye on the ball of what I call the shut-it-down agenda.
00:34:37.000That fourth branch of government, the unelected bureaucrats, the kinds of things I talked about during the presidential campaign.
00:34:42.000I think there will be a temptation To say that we want to use those levers to achieve conservative ends or our own ends.
00:34:50.000And I think the original sin was the existence of that administrative managerial apparatus, that bureaucratic class in the first place.
00:34:57.000And so my own perspective is that we need to get in there and actually be laser focused and principled about actually shutting it down.
00:35:05.000And I think that's going to be a healthy discourse within the Republican Party going forward.
00:35:10.000Yes, I think that's an excellent diagnosis when you offer us those two fissures, the fissures within the Democrat Party movement and within the Republican Party, and therefore likely government.
00:35:19.000And it's interesting how you describe J.D.
00:35:23.000My particular interest... I think he's going to be a great vice president, as just a model of a leader that somebody who's...
00:35:30.000Forget about the content of the views, but somebody who's energetic, and somebody who is actually an original thinker, instead of somebody just reciting the slogans that somebody handed them to say.
00:35:39.000I think we need more of that in politics.
00:35:41.000Yeah, it's a pretty extraordinary story.
00:35:42.000As I wasn't aware until recently about the book he wrote, and how it made him a movie, and his humble origins.
00:35:49.000All of those things are pretty fascinating to me.
00:35:51.000But do you imagine that the same energy will be applied to the influence of corporatism and in particular the
00:35:59.000commercial power that I think you and I have discussed before as being sort of representative of kind of
00:36:03.000global forces or at least forces that are somehow transcendent of American national interests. Do
00:36:08.000you think that the same kind of opposition will be applied to confront that aspect of
00:36:13.000global power as will be applied to the, in your view at least it seems, the dismantling of
00:36:22.000Well those two things go together, right. So as you know I am passionate about making sure that
00:36:27.000we end the culture of capture in frankly the government of not only the United States of
00:36:32.000America but many western democracies today as we know it.
00:36:36.000The node that they use to do it is that administrative state.
00:36:40.000So if you dismantle the administrative state, right, and by the administrative state, I mean the people who are never elected to their positions, but the bureaucrats who are actually setting policy, that's the lever that they use to capture the government in terms of outside interests, corrupting influences. And so once we get to that head of
00:36:57.000the snake, shut down what you call the deep state, the administrative
00:37:00.000state, the shadow government, the fourth branch of government, whatever you want to call
00:37:03.000it. The people who were never elected to run the government, who are actually running the
00:37:07.000They're talking about four million federal bureaucrats right there. People talk about
00:37:10.000the mass deportation of millions of illegals from the United States.
00:37:13.000Well, one of the mass deportations we really need to talk about is the mass deportation of millions of illegal federal bureaucrats out of Washington, D.C.
00:37:21.000That is actually the wedge, the entry point For corruption in the United States of America.
00:37:27.000So once we get rid of that, you stimulate the economy, you bring back the lifeblood of our constitutional republic, but you also end the most dangerous node of corruption in the first place.
00:37:46.000But go to the head of the snake, the root cause.
00:37:49.000It is the administrative state, the managerial class, the culture of bureaucracy, the unelecteds who are wielding power as though they were elected.
00:37:57.000Shut that down and we will have, I think, a A beautiful national revival in this country.
00:38:03.000And I know they're going to pull me out in a second to go to the next event, the convention.
00:38:07.000I did not want to miss meeting you in person.
00:38:18.000I might ask, when we talk about restrictions on Congress people becoming lobbyists, why would we not offer people in Congress should not be able to invest in stocks and shares of companies that they regulate, and that the profession of lobbying itself ought be, if not significantly curtailed, ended altogether?
00:38:41.000I don't know how close you were following the campaign.
00:38:43.000If you were following the campaign closely, you've heard me say exactly these kinds of things all the way through the course of the campaign.
00:38:53.000So anybody should be able to talk to a legislator and express what their own opinions are without somebody saying, oh, well, you had some self-interest at stake or whatever.
00:39:01.000But what I, what I dislike is the massive influence of mega money on American politics.
00:39:20.000So you and I both share a vision of the ideal state, and I think you're doing your job well by continuing to open up conversations that politicians are afraid to have.
00:39:32.000The lane that I'm occupying is one where I want to translate some of those visions into reality, so that these aren't just from the realms of conversation, but how do we actually translate that into reality?
00:39:45.000But I just think that when I say, okay, yeah, I mean, I would want to end everything that could potentially have a corrupting influence altogether, but without having any adverse consequences or side effects of that, you know, ideally, that'd be the ideal state.
00:39:55.000But in the meantime, let's get to the next milestone of, you know what, if we had a law
00:39:58.000in this country that said nobody who served in elected office or in the federal government
00:40:02.000could lobby that same federal government for at least 10 years after they leave, that would
00:40:26.000And I think that if we do it, I think we're going to lay the groundwork for saving this
00:40:30.000Well, Vivek, thank you so much for your time, and thank you for your ongoing contributions to this conversation, and for your clarity of thought, and your ability to pull together all of these complex ideas, and I've found so much that I can learn from and benefit from in these conversations, and I appreciate you, and I wish you all of the best with the rest of this convention.
00:40:46.000I'm excited to see you tonight, just after 8.30, you'll be able to see Vivek speaking live, and If we are slightly more mature, I'll give you a few words to drop in.
00:41:01.000If you were in AwakendWonder, you would be aware that we offer additional content to our friends and community members, including my analysis of comedy, like, you know, I'm a big fan of Bill Hicks.
00:41:13.000Also, you get first access to conversations that we have, like my conversation with Candice Owens.
00:41:18.000A recent conversation that I am still ruminating on, baffled by and excited by.
00:42:22.000I suppose that's what heroes are supposed to do, is they're supposed to not be a tool
00:42:28.000to berate or flagellate yourself, like, oh my god, Bill Hicks would have done amazing
00:42:32.000stuff during COVID, but sort of go, hold on!
00:42:40.000So consider joining us over there in the midst of the Republican National Convention.
00:42:46.000Part circus, part trade fair, an extraordinary moment in American history where we have to for ourselves discern the difference between authenticity and spin continually.
00:42:58.000One of the things that's very strange to experience is the sort of changing dynamics within media.
00:43:04.000Because I can tell you one thing, you get the sense that independent media There's now significantly position for dominance just when you walk around the space.
00:43:13.000There's a place called, I think it's called the Media Mile or something.
00:43:17.000We're in the middle of a stadium right now.
00:43:19.000And over there are the booths of the Daily Wire and Benny Johnson.
00:43:24.000I've yet to see any of the kind of CNN booths or the various legacy media booths.
00:43:31.000It's so extraordinary to be in the midst of this.
00:43:33.000Because you know, is that, you know that in the midst of this, That we are just having that because I mean really what I could do is a live commentary on Marjorie Taylor Greene over there.
00:43:44.000I mean like Marjorie Taylor Greene's talking to Dan Bongino.
00:43:47.000It's just literally happening over there.
00:43:50.000I want to talk to her because do you know what I really liked about Marjorie Taylor Greene when she went like that and you felt she when she you little prick what did you do to those beagles?
00:44:03.000And like, you feel like, you know, as I said at the time, if she was on the different side of the aisle, she'd be spoken of as a kind of feminist icon.
00:44:11.000But because she's sort of like a right-wing figure, she's sort of detested in legacy media circles.
00:44:18.000I'm very interested to see her over there.
00:44:20.000Anyway, look, I guess what we're trying to understand culturally, what we're trying to diagnose as best we can is How is the Republican movement and the Republican National Convention in the immediate aftermath of an assassination attempt on Donald Trump?
00:44:33.000How do the various occupants, whether they're political figures or media figures, find their orientation?
00:44:40.000How do they reposition themselves in this weird new landscape that presumably is going to lead to election?
00:44:46.000I want to say hello to some of the members of our community.
00:44:51.000I mean, I can possibly politely invite her, but I can't very much lasso her when she's talking to Dan Bongino.
00:44:58.000I mean, look, there are probably areas where I might feel comfortable in some sort of conflict with Dan Bongino.
00:45:04.000Say, if we were doing a sudoku, or a crossword, or, you know, sort of maybe juggling.
00:45:10.000But I think hand-to-hand combat would be one of the areas where I might yield to Dan Bongino, just on the basis of, he looks like he was I ran into him in the bathrooms over there.
00:45:22.000I thought, how many urinals away from Dan Bongino is it polite to stand?
00:45:27.000I went for five urinals away from Dan Bongino.
00:45:32.000Now, please, someone says here, please stick to politics, religion is divisive.
00:45:35.000Oh man, politics is divisive though, isn't it?
00:45:39.000Extraordinarily divisive time, and that's one of the things that I want to talk to you lot about a little bit.
00:45:45.000Like, if you watch a lot of Alex Jones, and over the years I've watched a bunch of him, you'll be so aware of how often Alex Jones's extraordinary predictions, you're gonna have to at some point start calling them prophecies, come true.
00:46:36.000And how will, as I mentioned to you before, and as I sort of approached with Vivek Ramaswamy, I feel bad for continually using Joy Reid as the example, it's just she's the sort of, in a way, the best example, along with perhaps Joe Scarborough.
00:46:48.000Of someone who constantly participated in the amplification and demonization of Trump as madman and proto-fascist, that has likely led to the conditions which have led to this assassination attempt, if you're not going to entertain conspiracy theories from either side.
00:47:05.000How will Joe Scarborough, for example, go, well, I don't know, it seems that I was wrong about this, or it seems that me continually comparing people to Hitler has had a negative effect?
00:47:15.000Or how will they campaign, as Vivek Ramaswamy said?
00:47:21.000Can the Democrats, particularly under Biden, continue to campaign on the basis that if you don't vote for Joe Biden, you're voting for fascism?
00:47:30.000Now that this extraordinary event has taken place, they're going to have to dial down that rhetoric, and that rhetoric was all they had.
00:47:37.000One good thing that's come from this is that Bobby Kennedy finally has a security detail.
00:47:43.000What I'm really interested in seeing now is how will the culture, in particular the legacy media culture, which is irrelevant in terms of its broadcasting and reporting, certainly to you and I, but it's still, I would say, a good way of taking the temperature of where the culture is.
00:48:01.000Let's have a look at the Let me see this.
00:48:05.000Let's start with Morning Joe, which has been pulled.
00:48:09.000They couldn't even put Morning Joe on anymore.
00:48:10.000It's like reality couldn't handle Morning Joe.
00:49:18.000Denying that he knows who David Duke is, denying that he knows that the KKK was a malignant force in American history, equating neo-Nazis and white supremacists to democratic protesters, trying to undo democratic progress across Europe.
00:50:06.000It's what Hitler and all of Hitler's people and I'm not comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler just like Flake wasn't comparing him to Stalin.
00:50:16.000Donald Trump is continuing to tell us and with more rapidity That he is an autocrat, and if he takes power again, he will be an autocrat.
00:50:29.000And this worshipping of Hitler's power, just like this worshipping of President Xi, just like this worshipping of Kim Jong-un, just like this worshipping of Vladimir Putin, it all comes from the same disturbing place.
00:50:42.000He has an anti-American bent to authoritarianism.
00:51:12.000Use the F-word for Donald Trump, morning in America for Joe Biden.
00:51:16.000The statement that the ex-president made, as I said, is part of a pattern.
00:51:22.000He was in favor of keeping up the Confederate monuments.
00:51:25.000He talked about, back in the day, when somebody said something to him about David Duke, but he didn't really know, but he took his hat.
00:51:31.000He talked about, in Charlottesville, there being both sides to that issue.
00:51:35.000This is a tip of the hat to white supremacy and white nationalism, which is unfortunately There's a difference between conservatism, radicalism, and fascism.
00:53:09.000When I saw you taking down Anthony Fauci and showing him those pictures of the beagles and everything, I thought that if this was a woman who the narrative suited, you'd be held up as, oh look at this, a strong woman attacking the patriarchy, a woman having a confrontation with Antony Fauci.
00:53:25.000But because that's not the appropriate narrative, it seems that you're sort of attacked by the liberal establishment on the basis, and I've been watching it for a while, of a kind of assumption that someone with your accent, and I'm assuming background, shouldn't be allowed into a position of power.
00:53:38.000Is that sometimes how it feels to you?
00:53:39.000Do you feel that you're not afforded the credibility and kudos that women within different political movements would be given?
00:54:40.000There are many differences between your country and my country, I reckon.
00:54:43.000But one of the things that I've noticed a lot is like liberal politics has clearly started to hate working class people.
00:54:48.000They've tried to find a variety of ways of masking that, amplifying their connection to particular causes that seem to be supportive of minorities.
00:54:55.000But what I sense is when they actually are confronted with a working class person, or a person from a normal background, they don't like them.
00:55:09.000When in your country did, like, the politics of the, let's call it establishment left, neoliberal left, start to be hateful of ordinary working people?
00:55:57.000The people I know in my district, my family, my friends, people that have worked in my
00:56:02.000construction company all my life because I grew up in it and it's my family business,
00:56:07.000These are people I respect far more than anyone serving in government.
00:56:11.000Anyone that receives that paycheck because they're an unelected bureaucrat, but yet they hold power and weld it over people and actually hurt hard-working Americans every single day.
00:56:23.000I think the answer to your question is the powerful elites could never be Be the hardworking people.
00:56:34.000Marjorie, do you believe that the Republican movement, which will presumably now be elected in November under Trump and Vance, will be able to represent the interests of all working people, regardless of culture or class, well not class, but in particular working people, And of all cultures and classes, and of both sexes.
00:56:54.000Do you think that they will be able to represent them in the way that those people believe?
00:56:59.000Or do you think that the Republican Party movement will similarly be co-opted by the kind of commercial interests and financial interests that have dominated politics, institutional politics, for, you know, for many, many years, perhaps always?
00:57:12.000Well, you're asking someone who I repeatedly attack my own party because I ran for Congress because I was more angry at Republicans than I was at Democrats.
00:57:22.000They tell us every day and they actually follow through and they get their job done for their policy positions.
00:57:27.000Republicans have failed over and over again.
00:57:29.000I was an angry Republican voter when I decided to run for Congress because I was sick and tired of the failures of my party.
00:57:36.000And I am here purely for one goal, to change the Republican Party to actually be a party for the people and serve the American people, to secure our borders, to protect the worker, to protect the family, to protect our God-given freedoms.
00:57:52.000And I'm telling you, I think people can expect more failure from the Republican Party, but we have to fight it, and we have to fight it to change it, and we have to continually push the problem people out until we're able to get it to a point where it's actually serving people.
00:58:07.000Marjorie, can I ask you this important question, I think?
00:58:09.000As well as the problem of border security and sovereignty because of the obvious impact that it has on a nation's infrastructure and the competition it creates for lower-wage jobs, I wonder if you are similarly concerned about the impact of global corporatism on the American economy.
00:58:26.000And let me just give you one off-the-top-of-my-head example.
00:58:28.000It seems that the Ukraine war particularly facilitates and benefits the military-industrial complex and that any post-war Ukraine situation might benefit BlackRock.
00:58:38.000Is that the kind of thing that a Republican Party ought be standing against?
00:58:42.000Ensuring that BlackRock, Vanguard, can't from behind the scenes run the world.
00:59:15.000And the heartbreaking effect on these small towns is, you know, the decades and decades of sending our manufacturing jobs overseas, really for corporate greed, so the people at the top could make all the money, and the people at the bottom lost their jobs.
00:59:30.000I'll tell you what the result was, Russell.
00:59:32.000It's heartbreaking, but I think this is probably, you know, all over the world, is in these small towns, when dad lost his job because the factory closed, he went home and was jobless.
00:59:56.000Mom and dad are fighting, there's alcoholism, divorce happens, and then a family is ripped apart, and then you go on some more years.
01:00:04.000Maybe their son, maybe an uncle or a cousin has to go off and serve in some stupid fucking foreign war that completely radically changes them forever.
01:00:14.000And then they're addicted to drugs because of painkillers and they can't sleep at night because of the dreams that they have and the nightmares and they can't get rid of them.
01:00:21.000And then they come home changed back to that small town where there's not an opportunity, there's no more jobs because of the corporate bastards That basically sought higher profit margins.
01:00:34.000And I get that because I'm a business owner.
01:00:54.000Marjorie, does America have to have a vision that goes beyond a kind of economic vision based sort of on America first, bringing back manufacturing and bringing back industry?
01:01:03.000Because when you describe that, you're describing a spiritual crisis, it sounds like to me.
01:01:07.000You're describing a country that has lost its way.
01:01:09.000Do you think it's part of the function of good leadership in America to provide that kind of spiritual vision, to ensure that there's a revivification and a re-sacralization?
01:01:18.000Of America, and American domestic life, and American public life.
01:01:22.000Because that's one of the things I've noticed.
01:01:23.000There's something somehow godless about America lately, and maybe even a point sort of demonic, I've almost sensed.
01:01:29.000But would you say that it is the role of government, when you continually discuss the reducing of government because of the corruption of bureaucracies, what then is the function of government?
01:01:38.000Is it simply managerial, and let people get on with their own bloody lives?
01:01:41.000Or does America have a responsibility to provide some kind of spiritual vision?
01:01:44.000Because what you're describing sounds like a spiritual crisis.
01:02:16.000Inflation has driven the cost of food to be unbearable.
01:02:20.000Senior citizens are choosing between rent and being able to pay for their medications.
01:02:24.000And then, you know, instead of being able to be a stay-at-home mom, many moms are working, and then moms and dads are working multiple jobs to afford just to be able to feed their kids.
01:02:34.000Yeah, this is the government's fault, and it is spiritual, though.
01:02:39.000Look at the ways of the federal government.
01:02:42.000Look at the things they sell to the world.
01:02:44.000In order to take our money, you know, foreign countries, if you want our money, if you want us to give it to you, You have to accept the fact that transgenders need to be elevated in your country.
01:02:54.000You need to accept the fact that we're going to push abortion on pregnant women in your country.
01:02:58.000You need to accept the fact that we're going to push an agenda on your people that you don't believe on.
01:03:03.000And that's because that's the agenda that has been promoted and pushed on the American people.
01:03:11.000And the whole lie, this transgender lie, that you can be as many genders as you want when there's only two, and it's male and female because we're created in the image of God, is the worst lie because it's an absolute assault on God's creation.
01:03:45.000As a man new in Christ myself, I feel that my first priority is to be loving and open-hearted to all people.
01:03:51.000And I certainly don't believe that anyone should be subject to strong messaging.
01:03:55.000And I reckon that people that do believe in transgender stuff felt that they were obligated and pressurised into roles like, this is what you have to be to be a man, this is what you have to be to be a woman.
01:04:05.000It seems to me that there is a number of ways to be a human being, and my personal belief is in absolute freedom, even though I am a new convert to the Christian faith, and I believe in our Lord and Savior.
01:04:16.000My priority is love, love wherever possible, and non-judgment, for if judgment was going to be part of my deal, I'd be finished.
01:04:25.000Marjorie, I've been so happy to speak to you, because I watch you on the TV, and even as I became more open to different types of politics, you were one of my favourite people to watch, because I like the way you run your mouth.
01:04:34.000I like the way you confront people, I like the way you shut people down, and I like the way you represent your constituency.
01:05:57.000Well, I'm really, really trying my best to evolve and be as open-minded as I possibly can without, as they say, letting my mind fall out.
01:06:04.000Now, firstly, I'd like to say your family must be in a sort of really unusual and difficult moment.
01:06:09.000To be in the midst of the hysteria, hyperbole and excitement of a convention, having suffered such a very personal affront and assault, in which someone, of course, lost their lives, are you able even to assess how you feel on an emotional and personal level, mate?
01:06:24.000Yeah, listen, the pendulum swings in this world in crazy ways, and I've seen that my entire life, but I've never, I don't think I've ever had a 48-hour show like that, right?
01:06:31.000I mean, one second I'm watching my father go down, you know, blood on his face, blood on his hands, being tackled by Secret Service as gunshots ring out.
01:06:39.000Exactly 48 hours later, I'm voting for him as a delegate in the state of Florida to become the Republican nominee for President of the United States.
01:06:46.000I don't think you get a bigger dichotomy between You know, the feelings of not knowing if your father's dead and the feelings of making him the Republican nominee for president.
01:07:00.000Um, it was a breakdown, frankly, of our government.
01:07:02.000I mean, it's, it's disgusting to see that somebody with a rifle in modern day America could get within 130 yards of a guy, you know, who's running for president and was a former president.
01:07:11.000Um, you know, at the same time, you know, he walked out last night and there was kind of a humbleness to him.
01:07:30.000He's a remarkable guy and so proud to be his son.
01:07:33.000Well, yeah, of course it must be a complex and extraordinary thing to be a child of Donald Trump.
01:07:41.000In particular at this moment where now it seems all but a foregone conclusion that the Republican Party will win in November unless, as some people on the periphery of the culture claim, there might yet be further events of this nature.
01:07:56.000Whilst it is sort of an extraordinary sort of celebration, and as you say, a kind of coming together of America, even though it would be naive of me not to acknowledge, because I go on the internet, that there are still sort of, it seems at least, because they might be small, they might be, maybe these are small vocal groups, I sometimes wonder that, constituencies of people that, people that before would never talk about conspiracy theories going, This is a staged event in which someone, of course, lost their life tragically defending and protecting their family.
01:08:26.000It must be astonishing, and as you said, the vicissitudes of the terror of thinking you're going to lose your father to the excitement and overwhelm of seeing him officially become the Republican candidate.
01:08:38.000Do you really believe that this party and this movement is capable of creating unity, or do you think that there might be an appetite for a kind of victorious admonishment of the vanquished?
01:08:49.000Yeah, well, listen, I certainly hope so.
01:09:06.000The respect I was showing by Savannah Guthrie on NBC was incredible.
01:09:10.000And I actually said to both of them, Caitlyn Collins and Savannah, I go, wouldn't this be nice if this was a world where, like, you know, you could have real meaningful dialogue without the personal insults with it?
01:09:19.000Like, shouldn't this really be the recipe for politics in this country?
01:10:07.000Yes, certainly the demonization of your father in the legacy media, but not only your father, because it of course in the end extended into all Americans that were supportive of your father and the MAGA movement more generally.
01:10:20.000Has led to a kind of an unaccountable hysteria, which will continue, and indeed has continued.
01:10:27.000Like, some people have made frivolous comments and jokes, and you would kind of expect that, and as a comedian, I would be sort of sympathetic to that.
01:10:35.000I guess you must have developed, Eric, a kind of a thick skin.
01:10:38.000Is that true, as to being your father's son?
01:11:16.000Yet the media has been telling all America that, you know, he's phenomenal.
01:11:18.000That he's the greatest auditor since X, Y, and Z.
01:11:21.000That he may as well be the modern day Albert Einstein, right?
01:11:24.000And everybody knows this nonsense, right?
01:11:26.000I mean, I think America has seen their true colors.
01:11:29.000America has seen the media's true colors.
01:11:31.000Honestly, you know part of your success is the fact that people can trust you because they're not being told by corporate America as to what to say.
01:11:37.000You have your own voice with your own message being delivered the way you want to give that, and that's beautiful.
01:11:46.000You know, guys like you are picking up that entire market share because people can actually have different, diverse voices, but voices that they trust, whereas they no longer trust the media soundbites that are giving them the same nonsense.
01:11:58.000You tune into Memphis, Tennessee, and you tune into California, and it's the exact same script being read by different people over and over and over.
01:12:05.000People don't want to be spoon-fed anymore.
01:12:25.000I know for some time that the neoliberal establishment has been completely corrupt, that the only argument they've had is, we're going to be better than Trump, Trump is a lunatic, Trump is the new Hitler, right?
01:12:34.000That's the only tune they've been able to play.
01:12:36.000And over time, I've witnessed their ongoing corruption, their hypocrisy, the way that they clearly operate on behalf of the military-industrial complex and Big Pharma.
01:12:43.000Now, what my concern is shifting to, now that I'm having more conversations, don't take this the wrong way, but like a member of the Trump family, or Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Vivek, or, you know, the very fact that I'm at the Republican National Convention is this.
01:12:54.000Do you believe that the Republican Party, under your father and J.D.
01:12:58.000Vance, second time round, will truly facilitate the growth of ordinary Americans of all colours, of all religions?
01:13:05.000I know there are certain things in the Constitution that have cultural biases that appear to be towards, you know, like Thomas Paine and the founding fathers.
01:13:11.000These are Christian people, so it's likely that as a nation it will bear that inflection, even as a secular project.
01:13:17.000But do you truly believe that This could be America that can lift up and be open and loving and can put behind it the vitriol and the combativeness of the last four years.
01:15:40.000Why do you think the fentanyl aspect of the conversation is controlled?
01:15:43.000Because when you're describing this, Eric, I think that the requirement to, for example, curtail the power of big pharma would involve, for a start, like, shutting down the control of big food.
01:15:56.000You know, we know that Americans are eating badly.
01:15:58.000People across the world are eating badly.
01:16:00.000It would involve shutting down the ability of the lobbying industry, and maybe even the donor class.
01:16:06.000Like, aren't the problems, when you say America has a hole in the roof, this is not a Band-Aid fix, it's like, it's not just secure the border, it truly is drain the swamp, and whatever happened between 2016 and 2020, a swamp draining weren't it, because Biden, in 2020, was able to almost continue business as usual, which was one of his campaign messages to the financial industry, wasn't it?
01:16:45.000I have a lot of properties over there.
01:16:47.000You look at the difference between the ingredients in a cereal in the United States versus the ingredients in a cereal in, call it the UK, or a lot of other countries around the world.
01:16:58.000It's the same thing, it's the same brand, but they have one-tenth the amount of ingredients.
01:18:21.000If you wanted to turn out of your driveway and go left and drive 300 miles and go pull into the middle of the woods and go camping, you could do that.
01:18:27.000If you wanted to go into the middle of a big city for dinner or to an opera, you could do that.
01:18:30.000That's how American society was created.
01:18:33.000You have so many other societies around the world that were really based on the train, where you got on at a certain time, at a certain location, you went one direction, you all got off together.
01:18:41.000And those societies became very monolithic.
01:18:43.000And I really do believe that created a unique way that Americans think.
01:19:58.000Literally, protect our society, educate our society substantially better than they're educating our society, and get government out of the way and let people live their lives.
01:20:34.000Why don't you and I just chew the facts?
01:20:36.000I really enjoyed your metaphor system, by the way.
01:20:38.000The difference between rail travel and automobile travel and how that would enter the sort of molecular psyche of a nation.
01:20:44.000A nation that's built on the idea of autonomy and independence will have different forms of expression than an older and arcane nation like ours.
01:20:58.000I suppose what I feel is that ultimately we default to talking about economic and industrial and financial achievement when discussing the success of a nation because they are the easiest metrics to measure.
01:21:08.000As your father famously said, it's a good way of keeping score.
01:21:12.000But doesn't America at this time actually need a vision that is to some degree a spiritual one?
01:21:16.000really the role of government, certainly the role of leadership to provide people
01:21:21.000with a vision for America, to provide people with an idea of America that they
01:21:26.000can participate in and indeed it seems to me Eric that there's going to be an
01:21:29.000extraordinary task ahead because elsewhere on the peripheries of this
01:21:32.000convention beyond the sort of unimaginable boundaries of Milwaukee
01:21:37.000There are still people that I saw a truck today, like, oh, J.D. Vance and Trump, it's
01:22:36.000Why is so much funding trying to defund churches, trying to take away their tax-exempt status?
01:22:42.000Why is there so much of an effort to tell priests, religious figureheads, what they can and cannot say, what's protected by free speech and what's not?
01:22:51.000You know, why have they tried to strip my father off of Twitter and Instagram and Facebook?
01:24:05.000That is how America has always succeeded.
01:24:07.000Stop with the rest of the nonsense that's counterproductive for society.
01:24:11.000Eric, thank you so much for explaining so articulately and gently and kindly so many interesting ideas.
01:24:17.000I particularly like the metaphor of the train and the automobile, and I also like getting a little inside window into the running of hotels.
01:24:24.000And I'll level with you, at points during I was thinking, I bet I can get a good deal on a suite somewhere if I'm able to maintain this friendship.