Orrin Prudentialist joins me to talk about the one year anniversary of the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, and why we should all remember it as a miracle that he survived. We also talk about why it s important to remember those who didn t survive the assassination attempt.
00:00:00.000Hey, everybody. How's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy. It's been a year since the miracle in Butler and a lot of people won't like that phrasing, but it is what it is. I think it's very clear that Donald Trump was saved by something that day.
00:00:20.780And yet, despite this incredible event, we rarely talk about it. We rarely think about its implications. We rarely honor those that did die in that moment. And unfortunately, also, we haven't learned much about the people involved. Donald Trump had multiple people try to assassinate him.
00:00:40.660And to this day, we hear very little about the motivations or where these people came from, why the security detail was not up to snuff for Trump. Very little looking into that by the administration so far. Wanted to talk about this on the one year anniversary. Also, Donald Trump is looking at possibly sending more weapons to Ukraine, despite many people hoping that we would be winding that war down as soon as possible.
00:01:08.800And the New York Times has just admitted that they now have evidence of what pretty much everyone knew, that Joe Biden did not sign his own pardons, that in many cases he did not even evaluate the people to be pardoned. And this brings in the question, are those pardons in any way eligible? Like, are these legitimate? Would they actually hold up if they were put under scrutiny? Joining me to talk about all that today is everyone's favorite frog, the Prudentialist. Thank you so much for coming on, man.
00:01:37.960Thank you again for having me on, Orrin. It's always a pleasure.
00:01:41.720Absolutely. So let's just go with the anniversary stuff first. Like I said, I, like a lot of people, found out about this live. I was actually just leaving church that day and checked social media and saw that Donald Trump had been shot at, did not know at first what had happened, had he survived, what was going on.
00:02:04.820Remember a lot of people around the church, you know, also simultaneously finding out they hadn't made any kind of announcement, but it's a large service.
00:02:12.580And we just so, you know, we kind of heard the pockets of discussion as each person started to find out what was going on.
00:02:19.180A lot of people very concerned about whether the president had survived in these things.
00:02:23.340And as the events unfolded, we learned that Donald Trump had very narrowly escaped death, had of course been hit in the ear by a bullet that otherwise would have exploded his head on live television.
00:02:35.920And the fact that he had survived this simply because he had tilted his head very slightly when looking at an immigration chart, I think it is a miracle.
00:02:46.620I know that's a lot of people are going to dislike that language, but I think the world is as enchanted as you want it to be.
00:02:53.880If you want to look for some kind of explanation for everything that's completely materialistic, you can do that.
00:03:00.520Yeah, I just happened to get lucky at just this moment with just this tilt to the head.
00:03:13.140I think, though, we often don't also talk about Corey Compitor enough, somebody who went out of his way when he heard these bullets flying to put himself between his family and those bullets.
00:03:26.420And tragically, he did not, was not spared this end.
00:03:31.420But he did go down, you know, doing something that I think is incredibly virtuous, incredibly worthy, incredibly masculine and something that deserves to be honored on a regular basis.
00:03:44.740So I just wanted to remind people that, you know, these are stories that are still incredibly powerful and relevant, even though our news cycle moves so fast that we barely talk about these things anymore.
00:03:56.040But Prudentialist, what are your thoughts on this one year anniversary of, you know, the missed the missed assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania?
00:04:06.460Yeah, like you, I was also getting out of church.
00:04:09.440I was having dinner with some friends and then all of a sudden someone's like, the president's been shot.
00:04:13.940And we all usually have like a no phones rule, but we all went for our phones to find out what had gone on and found out just the same way.
00:04:19.860I think millions of Americans did that day.
00:04:22.080And just like what we found out in the weeks that followed what happened a year ago, even to today, we still have little understanding of what took place.
00:04:31.600It is going to be this wasn't even the only time that the president had faced attempted assassination.
00:04:39.940It was something that had allowed him to look and turn his head at the right time to narrowly avoid probably whatever the assassin had wanted, whether it's whatever, whoever the parties or conspirators involved may have been.
00:04:53.680The goal was to have Donald Trump's head explode on live television for millions of people to see and to demoralize and to strike fear in the hearts of every American that supported him or had ideas that were similar to what Trump purports to stand for, which is making America great again.
00:05:08.160So, you know, thankfully that that didn't take place.
00:05:11.220And we're here today now in the second Trump administration having conversations about anti-white policy and being the cause for sanctions and talking about mass deportation.
00:05:20.160So, I mean, we would not have this had any of those assassins been successful.
00:05:24.280And again, we're very grateful for that, whatever history may provide for us coming down the line.
00:05:29.880But overall, right, it's we're not going to know.
00:05:32.280I don't think we'll ever get the true history of things.
00:05:34.520And just like what happened a year ago, I've had this conversation with other commentators and writers where if you were to ask someone our age or older, you know, what are the famous photographs of the 21st century?
00:05:48.200You have a pretty fine line where you can kind of tell, well, these will be famous photos like 9-11 or even in 2013 with that small Turkish or Syrian infant that had drowned off of Turkey.
00:06:00.160But even then, we are camera phones are everywhere. Smartphones come with three or five different cameras nowadays.
00:06:05.860So the value of a historical photograph like the one where Trump's bleeding out of his ear and he's raising his fist telling you to fight that kind of went and just became another photo of the Trump administration or the Trump phenomenon that has been now over a decade since he announced his candidacy coming down the elevator just earlier last month.
00:06:24.440And so it really does come to show that, you know, these things happened.
00:06:27.860They're very historical and that because of how fast our social media and our information comes to us now through our technology, we kind of pass over the historical or political significance of these events, whether it's Trump's survival or the loss of Corey Campatore's life.
00:06:44.520Yeah, and I think you make a good point, something that it's easy.
00:06:49.600A lot of people are angry with Trump right now, understandably.
00:06:52.400I think there have been some decisions recently that should have questions put to them.
00:06:59.040But it is important to remember how much worse this timeline could be, right?
00:07:03.080That, you know, we very easily could have been in a truly horrific position, you know, possible civil war, most certainly a Kamala Harris presidency or something equivalent.
00:07:18.200And so just extremely important to remember that just, you know, for the slight turn of a head, the entire world could be very different.
00:07:27.000And I wonder, you know, in retrospect, we'll get to the how quickly everyone's moved on in a moment, because I think that is a very important discussion to have as well.
00:07:36.220But, you know, in hindsight, I remember as soon as Trump got hit, you know, that visceral, you know, him standing up, pumping his fist, fight, fight, fight, the blood pouring from his ear, defiantly pushing back against Secret Service as they tried to haul him off stage.
00:07:52.160In that moment, of course, you know, it was all about glad he survived and, you know, feeling terrible for Compator's family and everything that happened there.
00:08:02.680But a few days later, after, you know, the natural feeling and everything was occurring, you start to, you can't help it, especially if it's your job to work in politics, you start to think about the political ramifications.
00:08:16.020And I remember at that time, you know, saying very explicitly, now is not a question of whether Trump wins.
00:08:21.400It's a question of whether or not he gets like a Reagan style landslide, right?
00:08:24.980If he gets a Nixonian landslide that really cements everything.
00:08:30.640And it's kind of amazing that for a while, that was not something people believed.
00:08:35.820After a few months, everyone, they all faded in the background.
00:08:41.360And, you know, she's got some video with a coconut on the Internet.
00:08:44.040So she must be super, you know, she eats Doritos.
00:08:47.080And so she's suddenly the social media star.
00:08:49.540There really was this attempt to take this like once in a lifetime event and almost immediately wash it out of the public memory and say, no, actually, this is a viable candidate.
00:08:59.460Now, I always thought that there was a lot of smoke and mirrors there.
00:09:02.860I always thought that she was very unpopular.
00:09:05.580But it really was something that even a lot of conservatives picked up and ran with.
00:09:09.440It was like this assassination attempt was almost immediately washed out of the public consciousness and replaced with this idea that actually Kamala Harris was a really viable candidate.
00:09:21.100Obviously, what ended up happening is that Donald Trump completely trounced her.
00:09:25.740We saw a large mandate, not a Nixonian second term or a Reagan second term win, but still a very substantial one, much more than any Republican has received basically in my lifetime, my adult lifetime for sure.
00:09:43.740And so ultimately it was clear, but but that Trump was winning.
00:09:49.360But how much of that win do you think can be attributed to the events in Butler and how much of it was just, you know, Kamala Harris was already terrible and Trump was already going to win anyway?
00:10:00.020Well, it certainly gave the Trump campaign a great optical you couldn't ask for a more theatrical style third act comeback for a main character.
00:10:11.780And in fact, our mutual friend, more guts review had kind of written this piece after the election of Trump, where it was like only Trump can embody this like echo of the 80s action star and the third act comeback.
00:10:24.960And because he was he's the living embodiment of that sort of 80s American capital and chauvinism and just that swagger that came with that decade.
00:10:33.720And now we get to kind of live that third act, so to speak.
00:10:36.700But also on top of that, I mean, we found out after the election that according to the Harris, as well as the Trump campaigns from internal polling, that there wasn't a single poll where Harris came out on top.
00:10:47.260You already had, I think, Trump more or less cemented in a good position after the first debate with Biden.
00:10:53.360And then you take a famously unpopular Democratic candidate by, you know, Vice President Kamala Harris didn't poll above one percent during any time in the 2020 primary.
00:11:03.920She was brought on board because she was literally a diversity hire and because Biden needed to win Jim Clyburn support in the South Carolina primary by promising he'd have a woman of color as his vice presidential pick.
00:11:15.720And so while Butler, for us, I think on the base kind of cemented that there was no greater avatar of middle American radicals like what Sam Francis would write about, even though he's not a middle American at all.
00:11:29.440So Butler really just came to conclude that, like, no, if there was any, even if you're not a believer, like the divine right of kings or divine providence or whatever, there was no greater sign right then and there to say, all right, this man is in charge of the movement.
00:11:42.580This man is in charge of the Republican Party.
00:11:44.600And this miraculous event more or less cemented that in the public consciousness.
00:11:49.700And I think whoever was going to vote for him just wanted to scream harder and vote for him more if they could.
00:11:55.420So I don't know how much of it contributes to the election, but it certainly contributes to the aura that this was a man.
00:12:01.580And I mean, even Trump said it just days after Butler going to the RNC to take on the nomination officially that, you know, he had been spared by God.
00:12:08.160Whether you believe that or not, it's a whole other story, but I mean, it does issue the optics there that this is the man that has been chosen by factors beyond human control.
00:12:18.320Now, as you mentioned, obviously, we we seem to go through this.
00:12:23.260The news cycle seemed to make this irrelevant almost immediately.
00:12:27.020It was shocking the speed at which this all moved.
00:12:30.760And a big part of that was the attempted assassins themselves.
00:12:35.160We know, obviously, as you mentioned, this wasn't the first time that there had been an intention to assassinate Trump.
00:12:41.800But obviously, getting hit on live television is a very different thing.
00:12:45.800And, you know, a lot of people looked at Thomas Matthew Crooks.
00:12:49.100They looked at basically his entire lack of presence online.
00:12:53.660Very little information was issued about his motivations.
00:12:57.540The left, of course, immediately is like, well, is a Trump supporter because what else are they going to say?
00:13:02.180Right. Like, obviously, their people are assassinating people.
00:13:06.940But there, you know, he had donated to an Act Blue cause at some point, but it wasn't anything serious.
00:13:13.460Seemed largely apolitical in some ways.
00:13:16.420His parents eventually reported that they had had concern about his mental health.
00:13:20.780But, you know, nothing significant was was found about, I think, his larger political project.
00:13:26.020And obviously, the circumstances around the assassination, the fact that he was allowed to get on a roof so very close that it seemed that the Secret Service was relatively incurious about a guy, you know, crawling around on a building very close to the president during that time, that his details seem woefully unprepared for this kind of situation.
00:13:51.700They weren't even, you know, we could we sorry, we can't clear the roof because it's.
00:13:56.020Got an angle on it, you know, like just insane justifications for this.
00:14:01.480You know, you think back to the assassination of Kennedy and obviously this is a successful assassination.
00:14:07.800So it's going to hold on to the public imagination more.
00:14:10.820But, you know, that has been something that people have been obsessed about for years and years and years and years.
00:14:16.440And it has been such a huge part to this day.
00:14:19.640People want to see all of the Kennedy assassination files.
00:14:22.700And yet we hear almost nothing about the fact that, you know, the Secret Service seemed to put little to no effort into actually securing the most important candidate, opposition candidate of that moment.
00:14:36.420That we know very little about the shooter.
00:14:39.040We also know very little about Ryan Routh and who who attempted to ambush Trump later on on the golf course.
00:14:46.280It just seems that the American public is very incurious about these events.
00:14:51.920And the question is, has something shifted in the American psyche where like violence against the president just isn't as big a deal or is it really the media?
00:15:02.580The fact that the media does not feed this and without the media feeding the constant attention, Americans will just go wherever they won't focus on it no matter what happened.
00:15:11.240Well, you know, it's funny, as soon as we started talking about this, the Republican Study Committee apparently is hosting some kind of press conference on, you know, the anniversary of the Butler shooting.
00:15:21.820We'll see if we'll see if they have anything to say.
00:15:24.320Maybe hopefully some breaking news there.
00:15:28.380But I'm not holding my breath if they're going to tell me anything new.
00:15:31.140So just just like with other big political events, things usually get kicked to Congress or some committee or some investigation or a commission, and then we're buried left trying to dig through whatever report Congress produces and things like that.
00:15:43.660I mean, for JFK, you know, it's the Warren Commission for the 9-11 attacks.
00:15:48.920It's the 9-11 Commission report where people are still questioning and talking about stuff to this day.
00:15:53.140I mean, we've become so partisan, and also it's just because there's no collective American sense of Americanism.
00:16:02.620There's no American identity that really holds the country together anymore, like even 9-11 or with the JFK assassination.
00:16:09.820There's no greater understanding of like, oh, well, you know, I didn't vote for Kennedy or I was going to vote for Goldwater in 64 against Kennedy, but he's still the president and I still respect him.
00:16:20.740And it's the same thing with 9-11, even though, you know, the country was still different then.
00:16:24.280Like that was an attack on American soil, something that we hadn't really seen since Pearl Harbor in 1941.
00:16:30.040And so now all of a sudden you're like, well, what do we do?
00:16:32.600And of course, America has been radicalized by a facilitated invasion, both through legal means of various immigration laws, as well as the Biden administration and others just shipping random third world, you know, nationals into middle America.
00:16:47.620Or, you know, the open migrant invasion that Biden ushered in in hopes to sort of permanently demographically suppress the country and, you know, stop Trump from winning or stop Trump from getting anything done.
00:16:59.040And so it's hard to say like, oh, well, why aren't we covering this more often?
00:17:04.420And you have a media institution, an apparatus of government, partisans, activists and the rest.
00:17:10.680I mean, this is, of course, all with the violence that happened in 2020.
00:17:13.920This is everything on top of the fact that the entire world had declared since he went down that escalator a little over 10 years ago that this man is somehow a, you know, New York reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, despite the fact that, you know, his closest friends and advisors are all individuals of Jewish background.
00:17:34.260And he was a real estate guy, not a politician or a war veteran or anything like that.
00:17:38.340And we decided, you know, that the anti-fascist state was going to be all on board.
00:17:42.620And so, yeah, anything to stop, you know, the second coming of this great 20th century devil.
00:17:48.340And you and I have kind of read, you know, the works of Renaud Camus and how, you know, the great replacements become a thing.
00:17:55.400And that's heavily implicated in that is that anti-fascism.
00:17:58.480So, yeah, we're not going to cover it.
00:18:07.340We've seen the worst kind of Democratic spokesperson.
00:18:10.180I mean, let's keep in mind that their idea of winning young men back is to have people like Destiny and Hassan on their side.
00:18:16.780And they're celebrating the death of girls who had drowned tragically in Kerrville, Texas, due to natural disaster.
00:18:22.980So, of course, they're not going to cover this and treat this like a great American tragedy because to the progressives, to the left, to their ethnic voting box, the representation of white Americans is worthy to be destroyed.
00:18:37.700So, of course, it's not going to have the same coverage as national tragedies and events of the past because there is no collective American sense of identity where all of us can come together and be like, this is a great, important event that we should take stock of.
00:18:50.840Well, and, you know, many people find this cynical, but I think that, you know, being people who assess politics and the flow of power, these are questions that have to be asked.
00:19:05.680Obviously, when the Democrats had something like January 6th, they leveraged it as hard as possible to eliminate their political enemies, right?
00:19:14.320They, a bunch of MAGA grandmas walked around, you know, a building and, you know, we were ushered inside, stayed inside velvet ropes, you know, that kind of thing, took some pictures.
00:19:27.860And that was used to chase down, you know, purge the American military and get rid of all of these, you know, different groups, different organizations on the right, you know, prosecute people, hunt down, you know, basically just a blank chat for all of the administration's enemies.
00:19:45.500If there was any way they could make their lives hell, they did, right?
00:19:49.260They used this as a casus bell against basically all of the right.
00:19:54.880Now, you would think that a presidential assassination would be a pretty good excuse to do the same thing, right?
00:20:01.260You can order commissions, you can do inquiries, you can subpoena people, you can look for connections.
00:20:09.260Hey, this guy was inspired by Antifa, this guy was inspired by this ideology, you can start getting names, you can start getting roll calls, you can start going after these people in a very real way.
00:20:22.340And yet we have not seen any of this for the Trump administration.
00:20:25.460Now, currently, obviously, the Trump administration is having a lot of problems where we promise we're not going to spend a lot of time on this.
00:20:34.880But, yeah, the Epstein files has really grasped a lot of the conservative conversation, what's going on.
00:20:42.120And the Trump administration's excuse to not really addressing that stuff has been more or less, well, the DOJ is really busy, right?
00:20:49.080We're really busy working on all these other cases and the FBI has to go after real stuff.
00:20:53.060And so we just don't have time to chase down all of this, you know, all of this Epstein stuff and figure it out.
00:21:00.240And, you know, there would probably be a lot, I'd be more receptive to that explanation if we were rolling up Democrat, you know, organizations left and right.
00:21:09.380If we were booking thousands of Antifa violent rioters and protesters and organizers, if we were defunding and stripping away credentials and disbarring people and having them lose medical licenses and professional licenses,
00:21:25.740if they were in any way involved in any of the organizations that ultimately helped to fuel the ideology of shooters.
00:21:32.660If we were doing these kinds of things with our time, I'd say, OK, you know, I don't like that this is getting pushed to the side.
00:21:40.020But look at the Trump administration just throwing our enemies in jail for, you know, for or destroying their organizations that helped to create this really violent attack against the president.
00:21:52.060And this air of, you know, being able to take shots at the president in a very literal sense.
00:21:58.920If there was more of that, then I'd be more persuaded on the idea that the DOJ is too busy to mess with the Epstein stuff.
00:22:06.340But we haven't seen any of this leverage.
00:22:08.860Do you think this is just because the Trump administration generally just has goodwill towards these people?
00:22:14.440They don't want to see it be seen abusing power.
00:22:18.080They just haven't gotten it together yet or these things are coming.
00:22:21.020What are your thoughts on why the right has not used this very obvious attack against the American way of life and the political norms inside our society to roll up their enemies in the way that the Democrats have?
00:22:36.900Well, I think a lot of it does have to do with just how power is wielded.
00:22:42.260I mean, yeah, I think a good example of this would be like all the work that Christopher Ruffo has done with some doctor who had blown the whistle on a lot of transgender child mutilation stuff that has happened.
00:22:56.540And at no point in time has Governor Greg Abbott stepped in to try and clear him or to provide political cover or coverage on any of these issues.
00:23:04.000And if you're doing these in red states, that should be like this is a basic culture war victory 101.
00:23:08.440And it like gives red meat to my base because oftentimes, you know, red state governors will do a lot of things that the base likes and then a lot of things that they don't.
00:23:17.120I mean, Abbott's a really good example of this.
00:23:19.240But even on top of that, you know, you've got for the Epstein stuff, regardless of whatever your position might be on that issue.
00:23:26.660Number one, it is a very, very bad PR 101 screw up.
00:23:31.900You do not go back a couple of months ago where Pam Bondi is talking about the thousands of hours of footage, all the files.
00:23:39.640I've got the list and we're going to invite all these conservative influencers to talk about that.
00:23:44.160And this isn't to denigrate the influencers.
00:23:46.160I would take an opportunity if someone at the White House was like, hey, do you want to come on board and talk about this like a major story and break it to your audience?
00:23:53.500Yeah, I would say take that in a heartbeat.
00:23:54.700My my froggy self would be right up there right now.
00:23:57.940But, you know, you can't go from there.
00:23:59.860And then to say he did kill himself, we have no client list and we're not doing this, despite the fact that Epstein died during the first Trump administration and got Alex Acosta in trouble.
00:24:11.780And we had to go back into his history back when he was in Florida in 2007, 2008, when they had to have charges dropped against Jeffrey Epstein with allegations of trafficking and the rest.
00:24:23.220And then, like you had said, number two, I would probably be I'm still upset about it.
00:24:28.120But at the same time, I probably would be a lot less upset about that if I don't know, we were opening investigations into Representative Ilhan Omar and the false marriage allegedly to her brother and trying to process on getting all these Somalians out of there.
00:24:41.120Meanwhile, another anti-American, anti-Trump Somali guy wants to run for the mayor of Minneapolis in Minnesota.
00:24:47.640And it's like, oh, interesting how all the people that are ruining Minnesota just happen to not be from Minnesota to begin with.
00:24:53.780And all of those things are on the board.
00:24:55.900And, you know, you and I have joked about tanks in Harvard Yard and stuff like that.
00:24:59.640And it's just like, well, none of that's happened.
00:25:01.140But we also have to kind of understand, like, yeah, there's no magic wand or poof.
00:25:05.160Everything that we get is going to be magically granted to us in politics.
00:25:08.320But when you're scrambling and going back on things that you had said just months ago about one of the greatest areas of political intrigue, foreign influence and foreign intelligence operations not happening just inside the United States, but globally, there's a lot of things that we're not going to know about.
00:25:26.100I'm sure there's probably cause that maybe we don't want to cause an international scandal or worse, that there is foreign pressure on the American government.
00:25:33.120And that's also a huge red flag because the American government should be only held and sovereign to the American people, not a foreign nation.
00:25:40.620But overall, like, you know, if they were doing more, I would appreciate that.
00:25:45.540But I also have to understand, just like with the first Trump administration, everything is stacked against them.
00:25:50.460But it does put a lot of questions of confidence and competence into who Trump has at these positions of power.
00:25:58.800So speaking of kind of promises that Trump has made, you know, when he was on the campaign trail, Trump said repeatedly, you know, I'll have a deal done the first day I'm in.
00:26:11.040You know, the Russia, Ukraine, your war would have never happened if I had been in charge.
00:26:15.580And as soon as I'm back in charge, I'm going to clean this out immediately.
00:26:18.900Now, Trump obviously is very bombastic.
00:26:21.740He makes a lot of, you know, hyperbolic claims.
00:26:24.320I don't think anyone really believed day one he was going to immediately just make a phone call and end this thing.
00:26:29.860But obviously, his rhetoric gave you a general sense that we were moving towards the end of this war.
00:26:35.180And let's be honest, the war only exists because the United States is funding Ukraine.
00:26:40.040There's a functionally a proxy war between the United States and other NATO partners and Russia using every man in Ukraine as long as they can.
00:26:50.400And so as difficult as it would be, ultimately, I think for these guys to kind of take a lump on this one.
00:26:57.120If the United States simply walked away and said we are no longer funding Ukraine and the chips are going to fall where they may, then the war would end itself more or less.
00:27:07.160Russia would probably win, take a decent amount of what it wanted, and then we would move forward.
00:27:14.860It's not like I'm pro-Putin in any way.
00:27:17.180But those are just the realities on the ground.
00:27:19.600You know, Russia may not have had the easy time it would have wanted in Ukraine, but it also is very clearly, I think, winning that war decisively, even despite having to face down the funding of a large amount of the Western world.
00:27:32.940And in the process, we have sent a lot of our munitions to Ukraine.
00:27:38.600Like many other countries, we have delved dangerously deep into stockpiles of limited resources in order to continue to use, you know, because it, well, as Lindsey Graham would say, as long as, you know, we're killing Russians with, you know, they can kill Russians with our ammunition all day long.
00:27:54.000And we end up in the scenario where Trump is now saying he's going to have to send the Patriot batteries to Ukraine.
00:28:05.980You know, these are not just completely defensive weapon systems.
00:28:12.180And so we have the scenario where Trump, you know, said we were getting out of this war.
00:28:17.580Obviously, we had the strike in Iran, which is its own animal, and we're continuing to fund Ukraine.
00:28:23.760Now, a lot of people pointed out, and I think there's a lot of truth to this, that ultimately Trump wants to be in a position to negotiate with Putin.
00:28:30.740And much like Iran trying to get a bomb so that it can, you know, not so that it can fire it at the U.S. because it could in any way, but so that it can have that threshold potential in order to put itself in a better position in the negotiating table and force people negotiating table.
00:28:46.720It feels like Trump is basically sending these weapon systems not because he ultimately believes that Ukraine is going to use them to win the war, but that this will somehow give him a better negotiating position with Putin, who otherwise seems resistant to making a deal.
00:28:59.940So, you know, as somebody who focuses a little more on geopolitics and international relations, what do you think the move is here?
00:29:07.620Is this Trump doubling down on the war in Ukraine?
00:29:09.940Is he looking for a continued and extended conflict in this area?
00:29:15.340Is he going to maintain the status quo?
00:29:17.140Or is this, you know, a 40 chess move to set himself up to actually do the deal he wants to get done?
00:29:23.580Well, there's a lot of pressures, I think, on the Trump administration to maintain a presence in Ukraine.
00:29:29.720I mean, not just the neoconservative or Ukrainian lobby that wants to keep this war going, either A, in perpetuity, or B, or until Russia is completely repelled out of pre-2014, you know, to return to that, you know, pre-2014 territorial border and the political borders that existed then.
00:29:50.000But also that you have European allies that are greatly concerned.
00:29:53.560I mean, as soon as Trump had gotten to office or taken on this de facto role that he was going to be the guy to win the Republican nomination, I mean, it was Britain and France that talked about trying to do things on their own, or at least act as some sort of political and strategic tripwire to keep the United States involved.
00:30:10.600And, of course, there's the looming Article 5 question.
00:30:13.920But at the end of the day, let's not kid ourselves.
00:30:17.080I mean, the United States doesn't actually completely control Ukraine.
00:30:22.220You know, during the course of this conflict, there had been talks between then Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and the Russian Ministry of Defense and Foreign Minister about what had been going on, sort of trying to talk to each other about, you know, was this something that you guys signed off on?
00:30:39.180And despite attempts to negotiate or offer ceasefires and have peace talks, either Zelensky would not go or Putin wouldn't acknowledge it or the United States would be pursuing terms that neither party really liked.
00:30:51.460And that even while you're negotiating, as we see in conflict and as we see during all these, you know, they're called like rational choice theories or the bargaining model of war, that even while you're negotiating, you're still going to pursue and maneuvers that are going to put you in a strategically advantageous position and thus in a diplomatically advantageous position because you now have more tactical leverage over the battlefield and thus the negotiating table.
00:31:15.140Both Russia and Ukraine have been going at each other's throats. There still hasn't really been any stop to the conflict. There's been an increase in air attacks. There's been an increase in drone usage.
00:31:24.860And that, of course, drags in countries like Turkey and Iran and China and North Korea now for munitions and the rest of things like that.
00:31:32.680So trying to end this also means it's not just the Russians we're dealing with here. It's also the Ukrainians and it's also the nations that I had just mentioned that want to be involved or have a, you know, leverage at the negotiating table.
00:31:43.960And with our European partners as well. I mean, you know, the Trump had announced with the new secretary of NATO about what they're going to do in a press conference in the White House just the other day, and that we're selling upwards of about $10 billion of equipment is what I had read.
00:31:59.440And it's a sale and it's meant to, you know, say that this isn't the United States doing it directly.
00:32:05.060So you're trying to give yourself that strategic and political distance from your own actions, even though you're openly supporting this military power in this conflict.
00:32:13.140It's difficult because at the same time, you know, there had been discussions that Secretary of Defense or Secretary of War, as Trump likes to now call them, you know, Pete Hesketh and Marco Rubio had been doing these reviews about munitions.
00:32:25.520But the main question is still at the end of the day, like, how can we replace these things?
00:32:29.220We're still not producing as much of our own munitions and we're selling a lot of surplus that we might need in another conflict or anything that we might want to pursue for our own defense capability.
00:32:40.000It puts us, I think, in a strategically precarious position, but also that, you know, Trump has tried his best to negotiate over the last five months and has tried probably talking behind the scenes as well during the campaign trail.
00:32:52.320Nothing has managed to successfully come to a conclusive piece in that area in the same way that there really hasn't been a conclusive piece to what's been going on in Gaza or in the Strait of Wormuz with Iran either.
00:33:02.860So, you know, you're going to have to pursue the pressure.
00:33:06.060And if that means sending more offensive or defensive armaments, that's a very blurred, fine line between that term, that you're going to have to deal with the fact that, OK, we haven't been able to get any of these guys to come to the negotiating table, get a managed settlement.
00:33:20.220So we have to continue to pursue all options available on the battlefield.
00:33:24.920Does that come with risk of escalation?
00:33:37.620So at least in my perspective, probably not what Trump had wanted to do to get the war to end.
00:33:43.360But I think that he has tried to pursue peace at every available option, at least publicly speaking.
00:33:48.160And now to be doing this, yeah, I'm sure it does irritate a lot of the anti-war, the anti-Ukraine crowd inside of his base or inside of Congress.
00:33:55.440But at the same time, it's not like Russia is a particularly strong ally of the United States either.
00:34:01.560And, you know, the United States has unfortunately gotten itself involved with two very corrupt Eastern European powers, one of which we've been playing, you know, what's been known as the great game between either England or now the United States and Russia for centuries.
00:34:14.140And this conflict is going to continue to see itself out until it's a logical conclusion on the battlefield.
00:34:20.840But hopefully this renewed pressure does bring parties back to the negotiating table.
00:34:27.640Is there any scenario where the United States simply walks away from this, says, look, if we stop funding Ukraine, then whatever happens, happens?
00:34:38.780You have to work out things from all sides.
00:34:41.160I mean, I know ultimately that's ideal.
00:34:44.020You secure a certain level of global stability and, you know, you save a certain amount of face, makes it clear that you're still a major player that everyone has to bend the knee to, you know, ultimately sets you up in a situation where trade and other things are much safer without this constant conflict.
00:35:01.540But is there is there any efficacy to the idea that America just stops the funding and walks away?
00:35:07.800Or is that just a political impossibility at this point?
00:35:11.940Well, I think it's a political impossibility because I don't think Congress would allow it.
00:35:15.560And they're still, constitutionally speaking, the ones in charge of the purse.
00:35:18.660I mean, yes, there's a lot of leeway, the executive branch, I mean, since really Eisenhower onward in American history, where the executive branch can kind of do what it wants without really congressional approval, as long as they submit some kind of notice, as we see with authorized use of military force, war powers, the rest, etc.
00:35:35.420But I mean, there's also the European question in mind.
00:35:39.900A lot of people see Trump's actions as, you know, either abandoning its sort of security mantle in Europe from the post-war order.
00:35:47.680There's been a lot of discussion about from the French, as well as from other European leaders about trying to decouple itself from the United States.
00:35:54.460And typically, that, excuse me, usually means just going closer towards China, which has been what a lot of American pundits and a lot of American security experts, both Republican and otherwise, have said would not be an American interest at all to see one of America's closest trading and security partners now be closer to its greatest geopolitical threat in terms of the economy, as well as its strategic and political influence and infiltration inside the United States.
00:36:19.500So I don't see a situation where Trump says, you know, we've done everything we can, we're walking away.
00:36:26.300Also, Trump has threatened this before.
00:36:28.360I mean, this administration has threatened to sort of walk away from things and let things go where they lay.
00:36:32.200And they've kind of always come back to it for a variety of reasons.
00:36:37.360I think that personally, Trump probably wants the nice big peace treaty or some kind of negotiated settlement where he can say peace and that I managed to accomplish this in my administration.
00:36:53.360But to me, I don't see ourselves upping and leaving anytime soon.
00:36:58.700So obviously, this conflict is a ugly meat grinder, and I don't think that ultimately the Russians want to send their young men into it more than anyone else does.
00:37:07.760But is there a level at which this conflict is advantageous for Russia because it's become an Afghanistan of sorts that's just siphoning the munitions and the all these other.
00:37:19.460I mean, obviously, Russia would rather just win this war, but it is, you know, in a way, the US was like, haha, we will kill so many Russians without having to put any of our troops on the ground.
00:37:37.700You have to burn all these munitions, all this political and and military capital is being extended on a regular basis.
00:37:45.260And we're going to win this inevitably anyway.
00:37:47.100So we're just grinding your resources and your political will while we move towards inevitable bill, inevitable victory.
00:37:54.960Is that a possible way that Russia is looking at the conflict now and why they may not be interested in running to the table to get this deal done?
00:38:05.320It was it was funny when the conflict had started or right before the invasion in Ukraine had started.
00:38:10.880I had said that two things happen, either, you know, the increased presence on the border from America and NATO allies kind of deters Russia from doing anything.
00:38:20.820Or this conflict turns into something akin to the Syrian civil war, where there's going to be millions of dollars and billions of dollars of weapons pouring in.
00:38:29.520There's going to be militias and terror groups that will get a hold of this stuff and cause untold damage.
00:38:35.520Now, I hope we're not there for a decade, but so far we've been there now for several years and we've spent billions of dollars trying to train people to give away vital munitions.
00:38:45.820And of course, there is nothing more advantageous than for our enemies to look at how our munitions interact with their own military equipment, as well as the fact that even we have had to respond to that.
00:38:57.160I mean, Secretary of Defense Pete Hesketh had already talked about, you know, unleashing America's drone potential because everyone and their mother has now seen hundreds of thousands of people, you know, through footage online that we can all go look up where people are blown away and mutilated and killed almost instantly through, you know, FPV and other drone footage of, you know, just people getting blown up with loitering munitions that they can just drop at will from a long distance.
00:39:23.060It's not like what we were doing in Afghanistan and Iraq with predator drones, far more different, far more dehumanizing and far more up close and personal.
00:39:30.420I think that the Russians kind of have benefited from the fact that this wartime economy has kind of allowed them to show off their industrial muscle.
00:39:37.280They have produced a lot of things domestically, even more neoliberal commentators and The Economist magazine have pointed out that the Russian economy has not suffered the effects that a lot of people thought would from sanctions or trying to cripple them internationally on the world stage.
00:39:51.080And, of course, we're still watching other countries go and find ways to get around sanctions when it comes to purchasing Russian oil and natural gas, whether it's via India and it being resold at a higher rate back to European countries or even to the United States and others in the Western Hemisphere.
00:40:07.480So, you know, there's probably a benefit in the Russian calculus where they're like, well, we can throw people in from, you know, the backwater or the former Soviet satellite states or even those from North Korea.
00:40:17.880So, you know, we'll throw as many as we can to do this in the same way that I'm sure the Ukrainians are happy to have militias and other groups come in and do these things, which, of course, makes it a hotbed for terrorism and makes whatever kind of peace or ceasefire harder to attain.
00:40:33.180Because now people that are on a mission, either to, you know, achieve some ethnic blood feud and accomplish a genocide or whatever, they now all have access to weapons, intelligence and arms dealers.
00:40:45.580So the that area becoming a terror hotspot in the decades to come doesn't wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
00:40:52.220So I think peace is going to be harder, but I'm sure it's somewhere in the Russian calculus where they know that they can keep the United States and Western Europe effectively bogged down politically, economically and militarily in this region for several years to come.
00:41:06.560So our last topic today is, you know, the fact that the left has the media has been slowly rolling out the fact that.
00:41:15.580Joe Biden obviously wasn't the president of the United States and this has been, you know, it reminds me very much of the covid stuff where obviously they were lying about the origins of the disease and silencing anyone who had any questions about it.
00:41:32.320And then over time, when it became clear that the lab leak theory wasn't just crazy or conspiracy theory, but the obvious truth, we got this slow drip of information coming out of liberals.
00:41:45.880Sources. Well, maybe it was the lab and maybe the wet market thing wasn't real.
00:41:51.300And eventually we got the full blown New York Times story and it was OK for your aunt who read the New York Times to admit the thing you had known for three years that she had screamed at you for being a conspiracy theorist about.
00:42:03.240And we're undergoing the same thing, this this like, you know, this disclosure after the fact in an attempt to kind of smooth over and repair the media apparatus and trying to basically stitch the reality back together after they've torn it apart with one side saying, no, everything you see is a lie.
00:42:23.160And actually, we dictate reality. At some point, they have to kind of like go back and stitch it together and be like, no, we kind of always said this.
00:42:30.540They've been admitting that that Joe Biden has not been in charge. One of the things that's really been focused on is the use of the auto pen.
00:42:36.260Obviously, the president has to sign a lot of things, you know, traditionally, the auto pen was thought of this way to like sign birthday cards and proclamations and all the dignitary stuff that the president does that, you know, doesn't have a policy load bearing aspect to it.
00:42:55.140And you can just churn it out in that way. The president isn't spinning large chunks of his valuable day when he could be governing the nation, signing a bunch of cards for the Boy Scouts of, you know, Tupelo, Mississippi or something.
00:43:08.220And instead, what it's become is this way for basically the autocracy or I should say the oligarchy to really run the presidency without the president.
00:43:19.540It gives them the ability to sign his name when he's not cogent or, you know, can't can't be pushed for more than a few hours a day because he's too old to function.
00:43:29.060And clearly, Joe Biden was in this position quite often, rarely making any serious decisions, often having other members of the administration, lots of speculation, whether Blinken or, you know, Mayorkas or who was really having tons of influence in these scenarios.
00:43:44.940But it's very clear that the auto pin played a role. And recently, the New York Times confirmed something a lot of people had suspected that Joe Biden had very little control over or involvement in his pardoning process.
00:44:01.760Rather than having individual names brought to him, for the most part, his staff brought him entire blocks of people under particular criteria.
00:44:11.240So, OK, well, we might want to write them a pardon because they meet X or Y criteria.
00:44:18.460He would look at the criteria, say, OK, that looks fine. And then they would go and find the individuals that they were going to pardon.
00:44:25.720And in many cases, they were signing revisions on the pardon with the auto pin.
00:44:30.740And so the question, of course, is what is the legitimacy of those pardons?
00:44:35.280And people had already raised this idea that the pardons may not be legitimate because Joe Biden was not cognitively there.
00:44:45.460But on top of that, we now have confirmation that he didn't even evaluate individually or sign most of the intermediate paperwork involved in actually preparing and delivering those pardons.
00:44:58.140And this matters because a number of critical people who were involved in different cover ups, be it COVID or the election, they have been identified as people who were pardoned with this auto pin mechanism.
00:45:14.000And so especially with Donald Trump recently releasing this post saying, well, we're not going after Epstein or wasting our time on that because we have all this other stuff to do.
00:45:22.700And one of the main things he pushed was election integrity. The election was stolen and we are going to be going after that.
00:45:28.480Pam Bondi is going to track these people down. The FBI is going to investigate, you know, and if these pardons don't hold up, if they are actually something you can challenge,
00:45:37.920then perhaps that means there is more leeway to get some kind of retribution, some actual penalties for the people who abuse the American system.
00:45:47.220Do you ultimately think that the administration will pursue any of these individuals, that they will try to overturn or challenge any of these pardons?
00:45:56.280Or is all this information just going to be this post hoc rationalization, you know, this disclosure after the fact that kind of takes out the trash and knits the narrative back to reality?
00:46:08.000But the Trump administration just doesn't take any any shots at it.
00:46:12.620Well, you had mentioned early on when we had talked about the Epstein files that, you know, you would probably be a little more OK with it if the Trump administration's DOJ was so busy going after its leftist and progressive enemies.
00:46:25.380Like it would be nice to see RICO, you know, act being read all over for those organizing Antifa or various organizations responsible for helping facilitate, you know, migrants and human trafficking.
00:46:38.400But we're not seeing that either. So I don't know if anything will come out of this at all.
00:46:41.660I think that it's very similar to what we had with covid where, oh, what you and I already knew gets confirmed by the media.
00:46:48.560And then everyone's given this collective, you know, like, oh, hand wave.
00:46:52.640Like, oh, yeah, it's OK. You know, like you can forget about all this time that had passed.
00:46:55.740And it's that old American tradition where it's just like, hey, you remember that like terrible thing that we did that you never had proof of?
00:47:01.840Well, we declassified it. So what are you going to do about it? Huh?
00:47:04.280And I feel like that's going to be part of this American tradition, because you and I've already talked about, I think, in previous episodes, as well as on Twitter, where you have all these CNN journalists that are trying to rehabilitate Joe Biden and say, like, well, he obviously wasn't.
00:47:19.500He was obviously non-composmentous. He was obviously not always there.
00:47:22.820And, you know, we're here to tell you the truth and shine light on it.
00:47:25.600It's like, OK, you're trying to rehabilitate your image after you've been a sycophant for Biden and the Democrats for as long as I've been alive in longer than that.
00:47:33.860So why am I to believe you now? Like, you're not sunshine is the best disinfectant.
00:47:38.240You're here covering your own butt. Like, that's all that you're doing here.
00:47:41.980If the Trump administration wants to say and challenge either in court or preferably just say, listen, these were signed with an auto pen.
00:47:49.800The president of the United States at the time was not mentally competent to do that.
00:47:53.060And I think even Peter Ducci or however you say his name in the White House press corps had even pointed it out during the last waning days or the early days of the Trump administration.
00:48:02.840Like, listen, the only one that has an authentic Joe Biden signature is the one that pardons his son.
00:48:09.300The rest are all in auto pen. Like, what are we going to do about this?
00:48:12.240I don't think that there was ever really an official answer given.
00:48:15.060Does this hopefully light a fire under the Trump administration's rear end under the DOJ to do something?
00:48:20.900I think it would give Pam Bondi a necessary optical win in the media, especially for conservative media if she said, yeah, we're looking into this and those pardons are probably going to be reneged.
00:48:31.160And now we're going to open investigations into Fauci and everyone else that had been done so, because clearly these were illegitimate pardons.
00:48:39.620And, you know, we have the legal history to prove it until that happens.
00:48:43.340I feel like this is going to be just like you said with COVID, something where the right wing is affirmed by the mainstream press years later, where nothing is going to happen as a result of consequence.
00:48:54.300Unfortunately, I think you're right about that. And it's it's very dangerous.
00:49:00.020You know, I know. You know, we're always saying maybe at some point we'll hit an edge, right at some point we'll hit a limit and people won't take this anymore.
00:49:10.320And I'm after COVID, sadly, my trust in the American people to actually, you know, have a line that won't be crossed is pretty much gone.
00:49:22.460You know, I think that people are going to take almost anything that's been handed to them at this point and swallow it.
00:49:28.640So it's not that I think that tomorrow people are going to wake up and recognize what's going on, but it does just degrade the ability of any Americans to believe that there are political solutions and political participation has any kind of consequence.
00:49:45.320And that's a really dangerous place to be, I think, ultimately, especially when we're in the position we're in, where you recognize that even if you win this election, you put someone like Trump in charge.
00:49:57.220Can you actually get any kind of justice? Can you actually get any kind of retribution?
00:50:02.660Will anyone pay a cost for locking everyone in their homes, getting people killed because they couldn't get cancer treatment?
00:50:09.300Will anyone pay a cost for shooting at Donald Trump? Will anyone pay a cost for not, you know, not protecting this man?
00:50:16.600Will anyone pay a cost for these different, you know, all these different things that will will will the Biden administration ever pay the toll for basically, you know, having a coup in the United States and taking over the presidency and putting up a puppet that in no way actually ran the country and then trying to swap them in for another puppet?
00:50:34.080That, you know, as people see that then that the other shoe never drops, you know, that this is going to constantly, I think, create a huge rift in American society and nothing good happens for the body politic.
00:50:47.900But sadly, I feel like your assessment is more realistic than than I'd like it to be.
00:50:53.940So that said, we have a number of questions that people stacking up here.
00:50:58.040So, Mr. Prudentialist, now that we've ended on this glorious and happy note, where can people find your excellent work?
00:51:04.780You can find me anywhere where you see this amphibian on screen.
00:51:08.100I'm on Twitter at Mr. Prudentialist on on Substack, theprudentialist.substack.com, as well as on YouTube.
00:51:13.620I have a brand new video out called Tweet Me Deadly talking about our media ecosystem and how it affects our ability to be very A-B when it comes to politics.
00:51:22.700Like, you know, like the Epstein thing is a really good example where we can we can say it's either one thing or the other.
00:51:28.380And there's no ability for us to discern what's actually going on because we've kind of been programmed to post and we're not really looking into how we can discern actual truth because that's basically been destroyed.
00:51:38.160And, you know, it's really important, Oren, as you had said, like all of this does is it gives people the illusion that there is no political solution or that it tells people that there is no political solution.
00:51:46.320And what that gives people is the sense of illusion where they can take matters into their own hands.
00:51:51.340And we already know that the left has no problem doing that because they've tried killing ICE agents.
00:51:55.360There were, you know, it was like a trans terror group that killed one in the transition period between Biden and Trump.
00:52:00.800I think it was in November of last year after the election.
00:52:03.080We've had people try and shoot up ICE facility raids.
00:52:05.820We've had makeshift, you know, basically almost not IEDs, but we've had very close things trying to take out ICE vans carrying agents as well as illegal immigrants that they're sending off for deportation.
00:52:15.680And all of this is really telling the left is that the Trump administration isn't going to do anything about their actions outside of posting some really cringe memes about swiping right on, you know, marriage fraud with ICE.
00:52:27.860And don't get me wrong, it's good to shut down marriage fraud.
00:52:29.960But you have to understand that there is an active network of left wing paramilitaries that would love to reenact the days of rage against your administration.
00:52:36.980And I think that that's really more important than anything we discuss here is, is that for Trump's enemies and by the extension, the enemies of the people that voted for him, that's the that's their mindset that they're under if he doesn't crack down.
00:52:49.600Yeah. And, you know, while I appreciate the Department of Homeland Security taking one of my memes, you know, it would be nice to see them arresting Antifa members, not just not just posting my internet work.
00:53:01.660So really hoping that we do see some significant consequences, because if we don't, then, like you said, it really becomes, you know, people, you know, recognize that they have this kind of learned health helplessness, no matter what they vote for, no matter who they're supporting.
00:53:18.720It's not going to make a difference. And then your question is, like, do you just not care what happens at all?
00:53:23.620Or do you take actions to your own hands? And as you point out, the left has already done this. It's extremely dangerous.
00:53:28.780It's not a place you want to be as a country. All right, guys, let's go to the questions of the people here.
00:53:37.020Manayude says, if there's anything that can be said about what happened in that day in Butler, it proves that God still plays in human affairs and that history hasn't stopped.
00:53:47.900Trump was shot, but Fukuyama is dead. Yeah, I think that's correct.
00:53:52.000Again, I know some people will get worked up over the idea that, you know, there's any divine interaction with our affairs, but sorry, there is.
00:54:01.300And obviously there was there. And I think that that's going to continue to be the case.
00:54:06.380And you're going to have to work harder and harder to deny that the things you see are somehow influenced by forces beyond your control, whether you like that or not.
00:54:15.400That's very true. Although for not to do the um, actually or fact check thing, but Fukuyama is still alive.
00:54:21.440And of course, I know like his book is a meme that a lot of people use, but I would really recommend people actually read it because Fukuyama spends a lot of time talking about the critics of his thesis towards the end of the book.
00:54:32.800And he's more terrified of the right wing critique of his idea than he is the left wing one.
00:54:38.220So I'd recommend it. And if you ever get the chance, Warren, you might want to give him a might want to give him a call.
00:54:43.340Well, the problem is I read, you know, was it liberalism and its discontents?
00:55:22.640Yeah. Yeah. So Cripper Weirdo says, are we going to talk about blue and on in depth?
00:55:29.300Yeah, I know that there are people have, like, tried to brand the left and their conspiracy theories as this thing.
00:55:37.080And yeah, I'm sure it has some validity.
00:55:39.100I'm not here to tell you not to, you know, do good propaganda if you can.
00:55:44.320I just think it has less of an impact because the main way the left sells the idea of conspiracy theories is they control the media outlets.
00:55:51.640Right. So, like, you are, of course, entirely reasonable to ask questions about Jeffrey Epstein or COVID or any of these things.
00:55:58.380But the left controls whether or not that has any traction because they just get everyone on their platforms to say, oh, that's crazy.
00:56:09.440It doesn't work for the right because we don't control enough of the mainstream opinion shaping apparatus to drive that.
00:56:15.320It's a little less true now than it used to be.
00:56:17.200You can get a little more traction with that.
00:56:19.360But trust me, even though your wine aunt on MSNBC has been completely brainwashed into believing the Russiagate scandal and supporting Ukraine and buying into every 19th shot on COVID, none of this will register as a conspiracy theory for them.
00:56:35.200It's just never going to matter to them that you call them conspiracy theorists, because ultimately the sources that tell them what are right and wrong are telling them that, yes, they are correct to continue to believe in these these lies.
00:56:47.580And I just don't think that's going to change.
00:56:51.660Florida Henry says, looking at the numbers, both candidates got below 50 percent.
00:57:10.220I mean, I'm sorry, like you win if you win every branch, like if you want to run the numbers and find the razor's edge, you can do that.
00:57:18.340Obviously, Trump won the Electoral College by the most in quite a while for a Republican and actually won the popular vote or, you know, very close, depending, I guess, on how you want to parse this.
00:57:32.400But ultimately, I think it was a significant win for Trump.
00:57:36.300And I really don't think it does anyone any good to play that down.
00:57:40.720It is again, it was not a Nixonian or Reagan like victory.
00:57:45.800I'm not trying to pretend it was that kind of landslide.
00:57:48.600But I think calling it a mandate is pretty fair.
00:57:51.040I don't understand what it gets you to deny that.
00:57:54.360Yeah, I mean, it's the first time that the Republican won the popular vote since George W.
00:58:00.660But also, I mean, you know, we can split hairs on the voting numbers.
00:58:04.840The reason why we're never going to have a Nixonian or a Reagan-esque sort of mass landslide where it's like 48 or 49 states go red is because we do not have the demographics of 1972 or 1984 America.
00:58:18.460If we ever return to those demographics again, then, yeah, those kind of landslides are possible for Republican candidates.
00:58:24.060But until the tide of that is stemmed and that is lowered, then, you know, we can split hairs like that and it would be justified, in my opinion.
00:58:32.840But Trump did do something that is politically unseen as a comeback story.
00:58:39.280Yeah, I get pretty frustrated with people.
00:58:41.480Like, if you want to look at what Trump's doing right now and be angry at him, by all means, I'm not I'm not going to pretend that's not the case.
00:58:47.380But guys, don't don't do the you know, the pro-lifers made this mistake with Trump where, you know, oh, he doesn't use exactly the rhetoric I like and therefore I need to completely abandon him and run DeSantis in his place or something else.
00:59:02.160And they all just ended up looking really idiotic.
00:59:04.920And, you know, Trump got Planned Parenthood funding removed.
00:59:07.960He got Roe versus Wade overturned, not by himself, obviously, but he presided over those victories.
00:59:13.800He's he's won more victories than all the people who used your rhetoric when when you wanted them to.
00:59:20.940And I feel like the same thing has happened with some of the right, you know, the online right now.
00:59:24.580They're like, well, Trump isn't doing everything I ever wanted.
00:59:27.180And we should criticize him when he doesn't do the right thing.
00:59:30.540But like, don't just immediately throw the baby out with the bathwater.
00:59:33.780Don't ignore the accomplishments that Trump has made.
00:59:36.520I don't don't ignore the fact or rewrite history and pretend like he did not win in a spectacular fashion just because you're currently angry at him.
01:00:12.960Like they're desperately hoping we get into some kind of extended war.
01:00:16.800So they at least have something to talk about, because ultimately all they can do is push like what?
01:00:22.440You know, defending wife beaters and drug dealers and gang members and pushing some foreign, you know, Africa, India by way of Africa socialist in New York.
01:00:38.960You know, the immigration riots and terrorism in L.A.
01:00:42.900Like that's that's what they're going to stand on.
01:00:45.140The left is still floundering at the moment.
01:00:47.480They still have not found a place to stand.
01:00:49.180We're working really hard to give it to them, but at this moment, I just don't think they have much.
01:00:53.820Well, I I'm I'm probably going to disagree.
01:00:56.500I think that what has kind of come to pass in this instance is that the left, sure, on a national level may not have much to flounder or, you know, put out morbidly obese Mexican women to talk about how to win back young men.
01:01:08.400But when we look in the cities and we look in places where they have the the numbers, whether it's in New York or Minneapolis, we're seeing the future of what the Democratic Party is, which is the logical conclusion of, you know, invade the world, invite the world.
01:01:22.640And we're going to witness a 2025, you know, Africa, a deal play out in virtually every Democratic institution in the United States.
01:01:31.200Like David Hogg will get kicked out. Yeah, sure, because he's straight, white and male in the same way that you have a lot of podcasters trying to rebuild rehabilitate and try and make sort of this moderating, you know, masculine force of Gavin Newsom something.
01:01:43.120But at the end of the day, I mean, what we're really kind of witnessing here for like what is the left doing or what are Democrats doing is they still have a variety of institutions that will support them and will happily relent and offer their support.
01:01:54.460Like people that are considered moderate Democrats have already thrown their support behind the presumptive new mayor, incoming mayor of New York.
01:02:01.740I'm sure that there'll be a lot of support for the guy running for the mayor of Minneapolis, who's a Somalian.
01:02:06.240I just think that, you know, they're going to just probably embrace in a very camp of the saints fashion, the people that they've imported as their liberators, as they burn the oak door that their ancestors crafted.
01:02:16.380It's fair. And you're right that in the cities where the demographics have permanently shifted and they feel that they can fully embrace this third world ism, this hatred of the United States and its people unapologetically.
01:02:30.280You're right. They are getting bolder in those areas. You wonder if that if that necessarily loses them anything with the remaining American population.
01:02:39.560Uh, the answer might be, no, it might be that doubling down on this kind of woke ideology, uh, especially when it comes to this third world worldist, you know, derivative, uh, then yeah, it could, it could ultimately be that that is the winning strategy for them.
01:02:54.260I do wonder if it won't cost them something nationwide, but you're certainly right that in, it is significant that in urban areas where they have this footprint, where they have this stronghold, they do feel emboldened to double down on it and they don't see themselves losing much for it or they don't care.
01:03:30.780I would not be okay with the Epstein stuff getting, uh, put under the rug and in any sense, but if you were at least, like I said, like we both said, if you were deporting, if we had, if we were had 10 million deportations on the, on the slate and you know, we were rolling up Antifa cells and we were, you know, defunding everyone.
01:03:51.580One of the organizations that had ever had any contact, uh, with any of the assassins or, uh, taking a donation from any of these guys.
01:03:59.360If we were really leveraging all this stuff and Pam Bondi was just putting, you know, left wing terrorists in jail all the time while we airlifted millions of illegals out of here, I'd probably be a little less, you know, preoccupied with whether or not there was any there there for the Epstein files.
01:04:18.020But since we're getting none of that, it, it, it becomes very obvious very quickly.
01:04:22.840And there was a great thread by, uh, a gentleman, I think he goes by like Tom Brady, T H O M Brady on Twitter, where he says, you know, Pam Bonnie's getting a lot of the flack because she has no PR wins in the way that Stephen Miller or Tom Homan have when it comes to the, the issues that they've placed her in charge of.
01:04:41.360And so she's getting most of the flack and rightfully so, because the DOJ, while I'm sure it has done a lot of things that would constitute wins, um, it doesn't appear so to the American media and especially to the conservative base.
01:04:52.700Cause we would be covering them if we thought they were good or she had really racked up something we thought was like a big W, but it does come to show that, you know, we're, we would like to see more happen.
01:05:04.920I understand that, you know, you can't wave a magic wand and undo decades of, you know, what the deep state or whatever, like it is going to be a problem.
01:05:12.500I do agree, but at the same time, um, a little more aggression would be great.
01:05:16.880And thirstworm follows up saying, I can understand that Trump doesn't want to lose five Senate votes and his term gets absorbed, absorbed by the Epstein stuff, but Bondi isn't doing anything else.
01:05:28.060And again, the, I can't help but agree.
01:05:29.680I, I actually, sorry, I actually basically just made the same case to, to Tom Woods.
01:05:35.620I was just on his show, uh, you know, and, and I said, look, I, under no circumstances would I be okay with burying the Epstein stuff.
01:05:42.300But yeah, I understand why the Trump administration doesn't want this to take, I mean, the likelihood is that releasing this would unspool most of the Western ruling class.
01:05:51.620And while many of us hearing those words would get very excited, the truth is, if you're a guy like Donald Trump, who really just wanted to close the border and have a good economy, he would recognize that none of that stuff would get done.
01:06:02.280And this would basically engulf his entire presidency.
01:06:05.640I don't think that justifies anything he's doing, but if you, if you do ultimately make that calculation, then yeah, you got to get some wins on the board, right?
01:06:14.140Like you have to justify why you are sidestepping this.
01:06:37.320And again, uh, you know, Trump has already doubled down behind Pam Bondi and, uh, you know, I, I think a lot of people aren't happy with that decision, but yeah, then you need to make some, you know, we got to see some deliveries.
01:06:49.520If, if, if you're not delivering on any front, then you're going to get pushback.
01:06:54.320And by the way, say what you want about, you know, the administration or MAGA fans.
01:06:59.640I think this proves once and for all that, you know, the Trump following, the MAGA following is not a cult that it does have principles.
01:07:13.100They're willing to give him a lot of leeway, but ultimately there is a result that has to occur.
01:07:17.880And the low, the more we're not seeing that result, the more people are asking questions, uh, the more of the Trump administration delivers, uh, the more good faith it has to say, Hey, we know you want this, but we trust us.
01:07:30.460We've delivered on these 10 other things.
01:07:32.280And if this one thing isn't getting a priority, it's for a good reason.
01:07:35.760I am a little more inclined to listen to that when I've gotten 10 huge wins in a row.
01:07:40.160But when you're coming to me with not very many wins and saying, just trust the plan.
01:07:47.700And again, if we see more deliveries and the, uh, you know, I know people listen in the administration to your show.
01:07:53.720I know that plenty of people are tapped in and a lot of our former Twitter mutuals are now working in this administration.
01:07:59.520I, I know that they want us to have faith in them.
01:08:02.540And I know that they've kind of, they've, they've earned it in a lot of ways over the years, but at the same time, I think it's really important for them to recognize you taking some actual meaningful action against demographic change.
01:08:14.220And radical left-wing terrorism that is funded by plenty of people.
01:08:17.740Like we know the names of the people that did the majority of the funding for the no Kings protests.
01:08:22.640Like you could investigate them under the DOJ for a variety of reasons.
01:08:26.320In the same way that Obama had the IRS target conservative groups in the wake of the 2012 election or in the way that, uh, we saw under Joe Biden with January 6th and pro-lifers and everything like that.
01:08:36.600The, the precedent is there and the tools are at your disposal.
01:08:39.340Um, you know, we had said this after the, the, the Butler shooting a year ago, you know, like there is a crown in the gutter and your head has been spared by the powers that be to ensure that you can pick that crown up and rule effectively.
01:08:53.160Um, and as much as I like Tom Homan and Stephen Miller and others in the administration, um, if we had the same zeal that those individuals had in all facets of the executive branch, um, I'm sure that we would have a much different tone.
01:09:05.240And I think I don't, I can't speak for you, but I think that this is pretty safe to say for both of us that, uh, we want Trump to succeed.
01:09:11.720We do, but, um, I would like to also make sure that success actually happens.
01:09:17.020I don't spend all my time becoming emotionally incontinent and railing against Trump because it's not productive.
01:09:22.080And I think ultimately it's not fair in a lot of levels, but as you point out, victory is its own argument here, right?
01:09:28.180Like if you guys are stacking W's, you're going to gain my trust on these issues much easier.
01:09:33.240If you're, if we're, it's always an excuse and we can't quite get this done and we're not quite there yet across the board, I start to get very concerned.
01:09:41.800So you, you want it, you want to silence the critics.
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