The Auron MacIntyre Show - Defunding the Total State ｜ Guest： Nate Hochman ｜ 2⧸7⧸25

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00:00:30.360 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:31.940 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.600 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:38.140 You know, Vladimir Lenin had this famous quote,

00:00:40.780 there are years where nothing happens and then there are weeks where decades happen.

00:00:45.740 And we are definitely living in the weeks where decades happen.

00:00:49.440 Just last week I said, you know, Nate Hockman, he's a good guy.

00:00:52.480 He's been doing all this great work when it comes to NGO funding

00:00:55.120 and how all these different programs are actually funded by the government.

00:00:59.380 I'm going to have him on.

00:01:00.380 We'll talk about that a little bit.

00:01:02.220 And then this week, like, the whole thing has been blown open.

00:01:04.980 Elon has been going hard in the paint on this.

00:01:07.680 Trump, J.D. Vance, everyone is doing this full court press on knocking out USAID.

00:01:12.820 And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

00:01:15.360 So we're still going to talk about the NGOs, but there's just this entire sprawling thing that we can get into.

00:01:21.660 So, Nate, thanks for coming on, man.

00:01:23.820 Thanks so much for having me, man.

00:01:24.860 Good to be here.

00:01:26.100 Absolutely.

00:01:26.800 And I'm glad that you're finally the executive director over at America 2100.

00:01:31.200 So I don't have to, like, call you a journalist or something.

00:01:33.580 Thank God.

00:01:34.500 Yeah.

00:01:35.000 Journal days are over for now, at least.

00:01:37.120 Self-hating journal.

00:01:38.560 Some other ways.

00:01:39.680 Many such cases as one myself.

00:01:42.420 Welcome to the club.

00:01:43.520 We're working our way through the 12 steps.

00:01:44.940 So, yeah, I guess we'll start at the beginning here.

00:01:50.540 We don't have to rehash the whole thing because I talked a little bit about USAID yesterday in my piece for The Blaze.

00:01:56.720 But, you know, obviously, we both know that a massive amount of what constitutes the left-wing patronage network is really the U.S. government.

00:02:08.080 That the U.S. government is funding this stuff, grants all kinds of different programs through many different executive agencies and other parts of the government.

00:02:17.140 This money is being funneled through all these different organizations, both abroad and at home.

00:02:21.960 And that is much of what perpetuates the left-wing worldview.

00:02:25.700 Yes, I think these people actually believe in a lot of this, but ultimately, they're getting paid.

00:02:30.540 And when you're getting paid, your passion to spread this kind of stuff goes up through the roof.

00:02:35.500 And that's why we've seen so much of it throughout America.

00:02:39.900 Now, Elon Musk obviously has turned the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, on to USAID, which was the foreign aid arm of the United States government, or one of them, and was responsible for a large amount of funding throughout the globe.

00:02:57.440 And much of it was propping up left-wing journalism, pushing left-wing values, you know, funding operas and comic books for transgender rights in different South American countries.

00:03:09.100 We don't have to break down every bit of that, but what was your reaction to the way in which this kind of exploded into the news this week?

00:03:15.940 Yeah, you know, critics of the move on both the kind of squishy right and the sort of legacy left point out that the USAID budget is only a couple percentage points max of the overall federal budget.

00:03:26.900 But that's only because the overall federal budget is like the largest government budget in the history of the human race, right?

00:03:33.840 Like we spend so much, such an unbelievable, almost, you know, uncountable amount of money just on entitlements that hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars a year is like a drop in the bucket relative to that.

00:03:46.020 But it's still hundreds of billions of dollars a year. And what it's spent on is an extraordinarily powerful propaganda subversion, you know, political agitation empire, which touches not just the ends of Western civilization, but the entire world.

00:04:02.480 Look, I'm an American nationalist. I'm an America firster. I think that the fundamental and singular purpose of American government is to serve and advance the interests of the American nation and the American people.

00:04:13.360 With that being said, I do feel a common cause with people in the West. We share a civilization, we share a common heritage.

00:04:23.800 And the West is the civilization that gave birth to my country, right? We are tied not just by shared sort of heritage and ancestry, but all kinds of different, you know, civilizational bonds.

00:04:35.460 And also, you know, right wing nationalists in Western countries across the Western world, we do have material shared interests we should be advancing together.

00:04:45.260 So all of that being said, like my government was funding the subversion, not just of my country, but of every single country effectively in the entire Western world.

00:04:55.760 And as an American, you know, it outrages me first and foremost because of what it's doing to my country.

00:05:00.900 But what is happening right now in a really sort of world historical revolutionary sense is for the first time in well over half a century, the yoke is being lifted off of the backs of patriots and nationalists in Western countries, pretty much in every single nation in our civilization.

00:05:18.240 And it's difficult to overstate how significant that is.

00:05:22.000 Yeah, you know that ultimately you're working against an overwhelming force and you think, well, that's because they must have all the talent or it's because they must have all the skill or maybe maybe they really are on the right side of history.

00:05:34.880 And no, it turns out that actually there is an 800 pound gorilla on the scale.

00:05:39.220 And that's, you know, like you said, oh, it's just a rounding error in the federal budget.

00:05:43.360 Well, the rounding error in the federal budget is worth the GDP of several countries.

00:05:47.240 So it turns out if you turn loose the GDP of several countries into propaganda, even if it doesn't add up to the totality of social security, it's still a pretty big deal.

00:05:57.340 And actually, you can you can actually buy the opinions of several countries by just wielding that amount of money.

00:06:04.700 And I think a lot of people were shocked that media outlets like the BBC, its media action arm had to basically shut down operations because we're their second largest contributor.

00:06:17.240 You know, Politico was not able to make payroll because it turns out that like a large percentage of their subscription service is tied to the U.S. federal government's budget.

00:06:27.680 But, you know, it was a lot of people probably guessed that we were, you know, paying for the queering of dolphins somewhere in Zimbabwe.

00:06:35.180 But but I think they were shocked to find that even major first world media outlets were highly dependent on aid coming from a program that is theoretically out there to like ship AIDS medication to Africa or something.

00:06:48.600 No, totally. I mean, the word regime is sort of overused in our circle these days, but it does illustrate how much every single left wing institution, not just in the U.S., but global left liberal institutions and those sort of local arms and appendages of them across the Western world are connected to one another.

00:07:07.020 And one of the fundamental ways they're connected to each other other than these sort of transnational bureaucracies, which are themselves kind of extensions of the American government, is this gigantic, unending, perpetual tax dollar gravy train, which is just a redistribution of wealth from the American middle class to, you know, queer left wing activists in southern Germany or whatever, you know, pick your thing.

00:07:29.640 So I think most of us who sort of pay attention to these things had known for a while that this was going on.

00:07:35.600 We understood the sort of basic contours of the system.

00:07:38.360 You can dig through USAID grants and find out like X program that we're funding, X outrageous, like transgender orchestra in like, you know, Romania or whatever. 0.73

00:07:49.340 Right. Like you can kind of find that stuff. And on a case by case basis, you can point out that we're funding it and everyone gets mad for a couple of days and then they move on.

00:07:56.000 But you can't fully understand the extent to which like this was an entire system that was propped up this way until all of a sudden, to your point, they cut the spigot off.

00:08:07.360 And all of these major legacy dominant institutions are just like, we're broke. We have to lay off half our workforce.

00:08:12.340 This was 80 percent of our budget. Like that was a thing they're talking about in Ukraine.

00:08:16.360 Something like four or five out of five of the independent media outlets there were funded.

00:08:21.000 Eighty percent of their budget was USAID.

00:08:22.780 Yeah, that's how we do color revolutions, baby. 0.99

00:08:24.740 Exactly right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Exactly.

00:08:27.480 So the, you know, the entire Ukrainian independent media was just the USAID.

00:08:33.120 It was just the U.S. government, which, again, isn't totally shocking.

00:08:36.160 But I even even to me, the extent and the scope of it was breathtaking.

00:08:40.660 Yeah. And again, it's not like these guys were just stealing. It's not just graft, right, which would be bad enough.

00:08:48.620 Like there are people who can't afford houses. There are people who can't feed their families.

00:08:52.700 There are people who can't get an education, can't send their kids to a good school.

00:08:56.860 And you're just taking that money from them like that. That would be evil enough if you were just stuffing it into your mattress somewhere.

00:09:03.400 But it's not even that. It's yes, you're you're you're hiring leftists in these artificial jobs.

00:09:09.760 But like you said, we're specifically have a mandate to do things like USAID had a specific mandate to increase L, increase LGBTQI plus rainbow ABC coalition inclusion in these countries.

00:09:24.560 So we are specifically paying to to queer the children. We are specifically paying to groom the children of foreign nations. 1.00

00:09:33.420 We also had different programs that were designed to encourage and pay off organizations that lobbied for restrictions on social media in relation to U.S. companies.

00:09:45.080 So we were so the U.S. government was paying foreign nations to try to impose regulations on U.S.-based social media in order to encourage censorship.

00:09:54.220 They were paying NGOs across the across the globe to try to put pressure in their countries on our country to censor our own companies and our own speech.

00:10:04.760 Again, you know, it's bad. You know, that that that government is going to siphon off a certain amount of money, that there's going to be waste and fraud and abuse.

00:10:13.480 And that's what I think most people thought of when they saw Doge at first.

00:10:16.660 Like, oh, great. Another Ron Paul. Let's cut, you know, 10 percent out of the budget by looking at the waste.

00:10:22.760 No, this is, you know, the real Ron Paul plan, right?

00:10:27.100 Like, no, let's get let's get after it. You know, somewhere someone's screaming the Fed next, the Fed next.

00:10:31.920 But you know what I'm saying? Like the fact that this wasn't just graft, it wasn't just theft, but it was active harm, active evil done in the name of the U.S. people is just horrible.

00:10:42.180 Absolutely. You know, I'm most certainly not a libertarian, but something that I have come to understand and appreciate more over the last couple of years.

00:10:52.520 And this is something that both like the paleo libertarians and the paleo conservatives were talking about decades ago.

00:10:57.520 So it's not an original insight. If anything, it's worse now, is the extent to which all of the cultural institutions that we hate, all of the sort of subversive actors and activist groups and gigantic NGOs and advocacy lefty, you know, XYZ groups, both in the United States, in all of these respective Western nations, 0.89

00:11:17.440 and on the sort of international bureaucratic stage are essentially extensions of the American federal government to one extent or another.

00:11:24.560 Even if it's not a one to one where it's like the American government is directly paying their salary, they're funding some gigantic foundation, which is handing out grants.

00:11:34.600 You know, you go down the line and you can find upstream the American taxpayers funding it to a substantial extent.

00:11:42.220 And to your point, you know, it's not just that it's happening because it's an international system.

00:11:48.220 It's not just that it's happening here and in other countries.

00:11:51.860 We're funding these international bureaucracies, which are turned into weapons and then aimed right back at the American people. Right.

00:11:58.180 So the American government for some time has been outsourcing the things that are so egregious that it can't quite get away with it because of sort of the the remaining sort of constitutional protections that still exist.

00:12:11.640 There's still some limits on what they can do directly. So they outsource censorship to big tech.

00:12:16.180 They outsource, you know, the promotion of degeneracy to, you know, all these sort of international NGOs.

00:12:21.500 But it's still fundamentally the U.S. government that is at the heart of this entire system.

00:12:26.660 And this is why Doge is not just the sort of kind of libertarian cost cutting efficiency and budget hawkishness project.

00:12:35.280 It's actually a gigantic and again, world historical cultural victory that that is being waged and is being won.

00:12:42.340 Yeah, I know that this is my my moderate and centrist position.

00:12:48.040 I know I'm very squishy on this, but I think a lot of people need to go to jail for the rest of their lives.

00:12:52.920 Again, I know that's like the moderate thing to say about this.

00:12:56.380 But the fact that the U.S. government on both ends, like we know this for a fact now, this isn't some conspiracy theory.

00:13:02.260 This isn't me donning my Alex Jones, though Alex is right as often as he is wrong.

00:13:07.020 Like, you know, this isn't me donning my tinfoil hat here.

00:13:09.820 We know for a fact that both ends, the U.S. government was actively pressuring corporations and hiring their employees and inserting government operatives into those corporations in order to censor people in the United States and bribing foreign entities to pressure their governments to censor United States citizens.

00:13:30.480 That is a violation of the First Amendment at every level.

00:13:34.700 That is a betrayal of the United States government.

00:13:37.160 That is a betrayal of the United States people.

00:13:38.740 That is treason.

00:13:40.640 It's just straight treason.

00:13:42.400 There's no other explanation for it.

00:13:44.300 These are treasonous people who specifically conspired with foreign governments and foreign entities to censor and violate the Constitution of the United States and censor the people of the United States.

00:13:56.300 They should be in jail for the rest of their life because I'm a bleeding heart liberal like that.

00:14:01.700 That is the situation that we are in.

00:14:04.100 And we only got through the first audit.

00:14:07.280 Like, this is just the first one.

00:14:09.500 This is just the smallest bit of what Doge is going to do.

00:14:13.020 It's absolutely insane.

00:14:14.380 Well, and with USAID, they really shot themselves in the foot.

00:14:18.980 Speaking of the moderate centrist option, this was something that Rubio was talking about in an interview where he's getting pressed by, I can't remember, some lib journalist about taking over USAID.

00:14:28.400 And he said, originally, we just wanted to do an audit of what they were funding.

00:14:33.320 And they refused to cooperate and then sued us, you know, because they have been used to being this totally unaccountable insulated entity for so long that does not conceive of itself and functionally does not have any democratic accountability or even any oversight from other bureaucrats, from political appointees that is completely insulated from anything that could be recognizably described as democracy or self-government or republicanism or whatever.

00:14:58.860 And they've been used to winning for so long because for generations, they have had no effective oversight.

00:15:05.580 And when anyone tried to do any modicum of oversight or at all, they kind of kicked into gear and defeated those efforts that they thought they could get away with it.

00:15:13.020 And this time was different.

00:15:14.080 This time you counter sue and they say, OK, well, you're not in charge of the USAID anymore.

00:15:19.060 This is ours now.

00:15:19.820 We're going to cut, you know, 90 percent of the people who work here and the secretary of state is going to be running this bureaucracy now.

00:15:25.860 So it's, you know, it's insane from top to bottom.

00:15:28.980 And to your point about treason and people going to jail, it's true of censorship.

00:15:33.740 It's also true.

00:15:34.880 I mean, this is true in every node of this system, but it's also very visible in immigration.

00:15:40.540 You've got these gigantic NGOs which exist singularly.

00:15:46.000 This is something people have to understand.

00:15:47.340 Their singular purpose of existence, their modus operandi, is to subvert and undermine U.S. immigration law. 0.82

00:15:53.680 That's what they exist to do.

00:15:55.760 That's what they're funded to do.

00:15:57.240 That's what their day-to-day activities are directed towards.

00:16:00.260 And that is the fundamental purpose of those organizations.

00:16:05.560 And their budgets are largely comprised of U.S. tax dollars, primarily, though not exclusively, from the U.S. State Department.

00:16:12.180 So the federal government is funding groups to undermine the laws it's supposed to be enforcing, right?

00:16:17.720 You know, it's funding groups like HIAS, for example, which Mayorkas was on the board of before he served as DHS secretary, to literally run an end-to-end mass migration network where they have way stations all down through South America and Central America and humanitarian transportation vans ferrying people up to the U.S.-Mexico border.

00:16:39.880 And then have an army of lawyers waiting at the border there to tell them how to subvert U.S. immigration laws.

00:16:45.960 And then they've got vans waiting there and cash and envelopes, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer, waiting to ferry them into the interior.

00:16:53.620 So that organization gets billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars from us every single year.

00:17:00.480 You know, that, if you want to talk about treason, I think that's pretty much a textbook definition of it.

00:17:04.980 Yeah, absolutely. Again, that was our original discussion we were going to have, right, is you did great work finding out that, you know, Springfield, Ohio, was not the only town that had had the kind of mass immigration directed specifically by the government that we saw there that sparked so much of this immigration debate.

00:17:23.020 And so, you know, that was going to be our original topic.

00:17:26.300 But obviously, like you said, immigration now is just one node, one aspect of this giant network.

00:17:33.660 And the importance of this network can't be overstated.

00:17:37.560 Because as you and I have talked about before, and as the good old boys, you know, Bogbeef and Merrick are famous for pointing out, patronage is the lifeblood of politics.

00:17:48.420 I'm going to say this over and over again. I'm going to beat the GOP to almost unconsciousness with this point until they get it, because they still have not got it at all.

00:17:59.320 And it's very clear from the behavior. The left is not winning because they won the argument.

00:18:05.000 The left is not winning because they have the moral superiority.

00:18:08.680 The left is winning because they pay their activists.

00:18:12.960 They pay their activists. One more time for the people in the back.

00:18:18.540 They pay their activists.

00:18:20.640 When you're left wing, you get hired.

00:18:23.240 You get defended.

00:18:24.580 You get funded.

00:18:26.100 You get rich.

00:18:27.800 That's why people are leftists.

00:18:30.220 A lot of them adopt the belief.

00:18:32.140 They eventually, I think, actually believe it because it's hard for people to both act on a ideological system and profit from it and not eventually absorb some of its tenants.

00:18:42.620 But ultimately, people are like, oh, how can all these leftist media outlets go woke and have no viewers, but they don't go broke?

00:18:50.940 Oh, because you're paying for it. 1.00

00:18:53.340 You're the sucker. 1.00

00:18:55.120 That's why. 1.00

00:18:56.160 As you point out, so many of these leftists, oh, they got fired from a job.

00:19:00.060 No, they didn't.

00:19:00.420 They bounced to another NGO.

00:19:02.020 They're on their feet two minutes later.

00:19:03.540 They've got a new job somewhere else.

00:19:05.360 They're making a ton of money.

00:19:06.500 There's a vast network of your tax dollars out there in every aspect of government, NGO work, everything you can imagine.

00:19:17.220 And you are funding the left wing revolution while the right's like, yeah, but have you tried managing a Panda Express? 0.95

00:19:25.000 Enough of this garbage. 0.99

00:19:26.600 Enough of this. 1.00

00:19:27.440 I never want to hear about this again.

00:19:29.920 Right wing people need to start funding their politics. 1.00

00:19:33.620 You want to win?

00:19:35.320 Make an investment.

00:19:36.840 Stop talking to me about Panda Express.

00:19:39.040 In the meantime, dismantle the patronage network of the other guys, which is just the beginning of what is happening here.

00:19:44.480 Absolutely.

00:19:46.280 And this is something that, you know, James Burnham and then and then Sam Francis wrote about pretty extensively.

00:19:51.500 It's it's structurally laced into the nature of the political system of the regime, which is to say, as you were alluding to.

00:20:00.120 So. All of these ostensibly independent institutions, media, big tech, the federal bureaucracy, the academia, et cetera, the NGO industrial complex are not independent, really, in any meaningful sense of the word at all.

00:20:15.820 They're the the sort of walls of separation between the two are fictional.

00:20:20.600 People move through them fluidly.

00:20:22.920 So you leave one job.

00:20:24.420 Maybe you get fired, quote unquote, from that job.

00:20:26.600 You bounce up at another institution in a few weeks.

00:20:29.400 All of these people are educated at the same institutions.

00:20:32.100 They live in the same sort of concentrated geographic enclaves.

00:20:35.660 They profess the same worldview.

00:20:37.500 They're reading from the same book, et cetera.

00:20:39.600 And and in many cases, they know each other or they know people who know people who know each other.

00:20:44.480 And that's only been even more true in the sort of digital interconnected age.

00:20:48.980 So you've got these power centers, Silicon Valley, New York, D.C., et cetera, where a lot of these institutions are centered.

00:20:56.460 And these institutions are not independent from one another at all.

00:21:00.300 It completely makes the sort of public private distinction anachronistic that doesn't exist in any meaningful sense anymore.

00:21:07.660 So you saw, you know, big tech in the Biden administration, for example, when Biden staffed up, his transition team was stacked with big tech people.

00:21:17.960 And all of those big tech people were alumnus of the Obama administration.

00:21:21.160 So they had gone into the Obama administration.

00:21:23.740 When Trump came into power, they left and took cushy C-suite jobs out in Silicon Valley or sort of Silicon Valley adjacent NGOs.

00:21:30.540 And then when their guys got back into power, they came right back into the federal bureaucracy.

00:21:34.280 Guess where they went when Biden left office?

00:21:35.860 Back to Silicon Valley.

00:21:37.380 Right.

00:21:37.660 Or some NGO that was related to Silicon Valley.

00:21:40.620 So that's how gigantic this patronage network is.

00:21:44.600 And it's a trans-institutional patronage network.

00:21:49.340 It exists across all of these different institutions.

00:21:52.340 And the right, if it wants any chance of victory long term, to your point, has to start building those systems out now.

00:21:59.040 We have the power, finally.

00:22:00.960 But more importantly, and this is what makes this moment unique.

00:22:03.680 We have people in power who understand what that power is and how to use it.

00:22:08.680 This is the moment not just to burn down the old patronage networks, although that does have to be the first order of business, but to start establishing new ones.

00:22:17.000 Exactly.

00:22:18.000 Exactly.

00:22:18.280 And, you know, a lot of people look at what is happening here and they say, oh, man, you know, how can we ever overcome this?

00:22:26.160 How can we ever dismantle this?

00:22:27.620 How can we ever get through this?

00:22:28.960 But the answer is as rapidly as possible.

00:22:31.680 We're seeing the importance of just rapid action, right?

00:22:35.600 Moving so quickly, you have no idea where Trump is going to go next.

00:22:40.020 And you can see this, you know, the flurry of executive orders.

00:22:43.020 The left was already reeling when it came to Trump's election, and they did not expect him to have the mandate.

00:22:48.520 They did not expect him to kind of have the overwhelming majority that he had.

00:22:53.600 They also did not expect him to come out of the gate acting as quickly as he did.

00:22:57.960 And the fact that he has moved from one thing to another so quickly means the left has not had a narrative that they can grab onto.

00:23:04.800 And then with this one, the USAID one, they thought that they had the big one, right?

00:23:08.720 Like, we're going to show all these starving, poor people in foreign countries and, you know, the people, everyone's going to recognize what a big, mean, old billionaire Trump and Elon are.

00:23:17.600 And we're going to be so angry at them.

00:23:19.440 This is going to be it.

00:23:20.260 This is going to be our moment.

00:23:21.920 And all it's done is have the Streisand effect, right?

00:23:24.120 Like, you have this thing where people are like, oh, well, what is going on there?

00:23:28.240 What is happening there?

00:23:29.360 And all of a sudden, these floodgates open, and it becomes so clear what is happening.

00:23:34.820 And it's just critical for the administration to continue this pace.

00:23:39.580 They've been incredibly impressive up to this point.

00:23:42.560 There's still a long road to go.

00:23:44.280 But speaking of impressive steps by the regime, the new regime, the better regime, speaking of new steps from Trump and company, the fact that there's this guy, Marco Els, and he's one, I probably said that wrong, but he's one of the staffers working with Musk on Doge, right?

00:24:07.140 He's over at SpaceX, and he joined him.

00:24:10.440 He got brought over to, like, be one of these guys who's auditing everything.

00:24:13.360 And so I guess the Wall Street Journal, like, figured out that this guy had an Anon account, and he had said stuff that, I mean, they're like, oh, he said things like the Civil Rights Act should be abolished.

00:24:24.540 Well, yeah.

00:24:26.120 No!

00:24:28.040 But, yeah, he said something about, like, he wouldn't want to marry outside of his ethnicity, which, again, is like, okay, I think pretty sure he's allowed to decide who he wants to date.

00:24:35.540 So, ooh, very scary.

00:24:36.840 But, like, they said, you know, they brought this stuff up, and all of a sudden he resigned, right, which we know was not the case.

00:24:45.380 And everyone said, hey, what are we doing here, right?

00:24:49.400 Like, the response from especially the online, right, was I thought we were done with cancel culture.

00:24:54.380 I thought we rejected this at the ballot box.

00:24:56.360 I thought leftist cancellations, especially journalists digging around in someone's Twitter history.

00:25:02.000 Like, I thought we had moved beyond that.

00:25:04.500 And, you know, the fact is that if you start off the administration, if you look at the first Trump administration, right, he had a number of people he wanted to bring in who were on his side, who believed in his mission.

00:25:17.180 But the media got a hold of them.

00:25:19.480 They started getting into the vetting process.

00:25:21.860 They started throwing out all this dirt and, you know, pulling up all these obscure things.

00:25:25.960 They couldn't get the Senate confirmations.

00:25:27.540 People got fired.

00:25:28.460 Guys like Darren Beattie get thrown out for going to a Vidare meeting at some point.

00:25:32.720 And all of a sudden, all these, like, heavy hitters who were critical to getting the work done, they get pulled out of the administration.

00:25:39.880 You get John Bolton slotted in, and nothing gets done.

00:25:43.200 The swamp takes over, right?

00:25:45.200 You can't let that happen again.

00:25:46.720 You cannot let that happen again.

00:25:48.520 And so many people, myself included, said immediately, this is a huge mistake.

00:25:52.820 You cannot let the left have this power.

00:25:54.520 You cannot go around canceling people.

00:25:56.180 And to their credit, Elon immediately said, hey, should we be hiring this guy back?

00:26:00.840 Should we be letting him back in?

00:26:02.560 And J.D. Vance, the vice president of the United States, the man, the second poster in chief, comes on and says, you know what?

00:26:12.660 I don't agree with everything this guy said, but we shouldn't be doing this.

00:26:17.000 We shouldn't be giving left-wing journalists wins.

00:26:19.200 We should be getting this guy back in.

00:26:20.980 We should be rehiring this guy.

00:26:23.640 That's amazing.

00:26:24.400 Imagine any Republican, any Republican at all, but especially like Mike Pence doing something like that, standing up for the Anons, like standing up for the Anon posters and saying, you know what?

00:26:36.260 This guy's effective.

00:26:37.160 He's doing his job.

00:26:38.160 Who cares what he said online?

00:26:39.860 Let's get him back in there.

00:26:41.340 You know, do like a basketball player who said something weird, right?

00:26:45.540 Like, oh, yeah, sorry about whatever.

00:26:47.520 Let's move on.

00:26:48.200 I got to, you know, score some more baskets.

00:26:50.340 Like, just, you know, do that little thing and just get out of here.

00:26:53.340 And boom. 0.96

00:26:54.400 Like this, I don't know what the status is as of now, but I've got to imagine with Elon and J.D. Vance both saying, hey, should we hire this guy back?

00:27:01.580 I think we're probably pretty back.

00:27:02.980 Yeah, I'm optimistic, cautiously.

00:27:05.840 Look, who knows what's going to happen, but the sort of momentum right now, it follows a sort of a path that we have seen many times over the last 12 months where the conversation that starts online gets endorsed by sort of heavy power players.

00:27:20.940 And then, you know, the thing that people were talking about online eventually becomes a political reality.

00:27:26.920 As an aside, this is what we were talking about offline before we went live.

00:27:31.300 It's a self-serving narrative, but it happens to be completely true.

00:27:35.280 The online right now is a major faction in the conservative movement infrastructure.

00:27:40.220 Undeniable.

00:27:40.940 Even people who hate everything about the online right and hate what they stand for, they have to admit this begrudgingly.

00:27:48.080 Because the online right now is where all of these major new power players in the administration and the kind of right wing more broadly are.

00:27:57.060 They're either a part of it or they're directly influenced by it.

00:28:00.020 And what that means is you have something like this happen, which, to your point, during the first Trump administration or any time before that, you know, the Wall Street Journal writes this hit piece.

00:28:09.120 It's over, right?

00:28:09.960 That kid's out.

00:28:11.060 You probably can't find a job for a while, if ever. 0.69

00:28:13.080 He might be screwed long term.

00:28:14.200 Certainly, you're not going to have the vice president of the United States and the richest man in the world going to bat for him.

00:28:20.900 But that's what we're seeing now.

00:28:22.720 And Vance, I think, is a particularly potent example of this.

00:28:26.740 But what Vance said, and this is true, you don't even have to endorse everything the kid said to make the case for rehiring him.

00:28:33.920 It's a structural argument.

00:28:35.780 You cannot give journalists a veto over your staffing decisions.

00:28:40.040 That's what they've effectively had for my whole lifetime, much, much longer than that, probably, where essentially, if they think if they get to decide the Overton window of your administration, your enemies get to decide the ideological limits of your administration.

00:28:54.140 If they just don't like somebody and they write a big hit piece and, you know, dig up something that they said online or something like that, you go, okay, yes, sir.

00:29:03.220 You know, they ask, they jump, you ask how high.

00:29:05.760 That, again, just structurally cannot be permitted to continue if the right actually wants to be a real political opposition force in America.

00:29:14.880 And the fact that you're seeing those arguments made now by the vice president of the United States just goes to show how far we've come.

00:29:21.660 Yeah, you have this scenario.

00:29:23.640 Yeah, there has forever been this imbalance, right?

00:29:28.140 You've had this scenario where the left basically had veto on every right-wing decision.

00:29:34.480 The minute that they found anything in someone's past, anything that they might have misstepped on, missaid, even an association, they went to the wrong meeting at some point.

00:29:44.400 The minute they have that, it's over for that person, right?

00:29:47.520 And so if they ever say anything, if they ever do anything in office, if they rub the wrong people the wrong way, even though they're Republicans, they immediately get canceled by the left.

00:29:57.040 And the right will just entirely abandon them, if not pile on to them, right?

00:30:01.340 And that's really the key.

00:30:02.880 It's up to this point.

00:30:03.900 It's not just the pressure that the left could bring.

00:30:06.800 It's that the right joined in because they thought that made them somehow, like, morally good.

00:30:12.160 Like, oh, I'm one of the good ones.

00:30:13.360 I don't like the racism either.

00:30:15.180 Oh, that guy, he posted a thing.

00:30:17.000 Oh, yeah, who did a racism?

00:30:18.600 We got to get rid of him.

00:30:19.300 Like, somehow, like, being, you know, the David French, you know, being the strange new respect guy for the left was so important to so many people on the right.

00:30:28.560 And that's because so many conservatives were just echoing a bunch of left-wing beliefs, but slower, right?

00:30:33.840 And now you're at this point where the right is actually gaining some momentum.

00:30:38.500 It actually has its own beliefs.

00:30:40.040 And it recognizes the importance of backing up people, right?

00:30:44.120 And you're somebody who has dealt with this before, had to face cancellation pressures.

00:30:47.760 You understand the value of having a bunch of people who are standing right behind you, right?

00:30:53.200 Saying, look, you're not going to get fired.

00:30:55.540 Or if you do get fired, you're going to have a place tomorrow, just like the left does.

00:30:58.760 You know, if a left-wing activist declared himself a communist, said he loved Mao and Stalin, no one cares, man.

00:31:05.940 Like, they don't care.

00:31:07.060 You're going to have a professor job tomorrow.

00:31:09.100 But if you said you love mid-century German guys, and you shouldn't, but if you say that, you're completely employable for the rest of your life.

00:31:16.740 That is just an asymmetry that is insane, right?

00:31:20.020 Like, you shouldn't be doing either of these things, but the fact that the left can do them all day long, and the right can, if they just, you know, signal in a direction one time that they may agree with something someone said, and that's cancelable for the rest of their life.

00:31:34.020 You just can't allow that to continue to exist.

00:31:36.660 And so the fact that, you know, J.D. Vance is willing to get up there and say, no, that's not what we're doing anymore.

00:31:43.760 That era is over.

00:31:45.160 I mean, that is not, that's big for this one guy, of course.

00:31:48.100 That's huge for Marco, right?

00:31:49.620 Like, good for him, and I'm glad he has that backing.

00:31:52.420 But this is huge for everyone.

00:31:53.660 Everyone, this signals a change across the entire network of conservative activists and organizations and everything else.

00:32:05.260 This is the tone now.

00:32:06.700 This is what we believe.

00:32:08.220 This is how the vice president handles it, and it's how you better handle it as well.

00:32:12.080 That is huge.

00:32:13.420 That completely changes the game, especially for young people who are trying to get involved in this, but had to constantly be worried that somewhere online, there was some post that was going to completely destroy their lives.

00:32:24.400 And now the vice president says, guess what?

00:32:26.680 We don't do that anymore.

00:32:27.680 We don't care what the left thinks.

00:32:29.020 We're hiring the best people.

00:32:30.420 We're moving forward.

00:32:31.900 No, you're absolutely right.

00:32:33.200 And one of the fundamental problems with the right dating back decades and decades when it came to this dynamic is partially it's exactly what you said, which is that you have all of these sort of legacy conservatives who are eager to prove how non-racist and how neutered they are to the left, to prove to them that essentially they're the loyal, controlled opposition.

00:32:55.260 They wouldn't put it in those terms, but that is fundamentally what these people's orientation is.

00:32:59.320 The other problem is that every time a left-wing hit piece on some right-wing or kind of hit the mat, conservatives who were part of sort of different internecine factions would see it as an opportunity to enact their own internecine grievances on enemy factions within the right, right?

00:33:18.840 And this was especially true of the sort of hegemonic conservatives because I've been canceled multiple times, but part of what also informs my experience of this thing is like,

00:33:29.020 I worked at National Review out of college, right?

00:33:31.980 Which is kind of like the legacy conservative publication par excellence.

00:33:36.580 And I have to say, like, one of the things that really struck me as this young conservative is still kind of figuring out ideologically what he believed was these guys hated people to their right way more than they hated people to their left.

00:33:50.320 Like, they really, a lot of these people got out of bed every day, you know, and the first thought they had was like how much they hated people to their right, and they went to bed every night, and the last thought they had before they went to sleep was how much they hated people to their right.

00:34:02.060 So when you have that mentality in dominating those sort of legacy conservative institutions, where you hate people to your right, with a much more bitter passion than you hate people to your left, when the left wing hit pieces comes on against someone to your right, like you're gonna, you are going to boost it, you're going to endorse it, you're going to celebrate it, because those are your real enemies.

00:34:22.320 That's who you see as your real enemy, the people to your right, not the people to your left.

00:34:26.020 And that dynamic has been totally inverted as well, because that sort of gatekeeping institutional function on the old right is essentially, has been completely taken out.

00:34:37.940 It doesn't rule the right, it doesn't govern the right anymore.

00:34:41.100 Those people themselves have been marginalized, and they've been deprived of their political power.

00:34:46.320 So the result is, the people who are in power now, when they receive a hit piece from the left, everyone circles the wagons.

00:34:53.180 And in some ways, I have a degree of sort of marginal survivor's guilt, because I came of age, I got canceled at least twice, probably more than that.

00:35:03.180 And I came of age as a young guy, right as the right's disposition towards these things was totally fundamentally transforming.

00:35:11.080 And I look back at young guys who got canceled for sort of similar transgressions, even a couple years before me, who got totally nuked from orbit.

00:35:19.580 And there isn't like a grandfather clause, you know, you don't get to sort of get back when you were when you were nuked.

00:35:24.160 And a lot of them ended up doing fine for themselves. 0.97

00:35:27.180 But the kids coming of age now, who are going to make stupid decisions and get a hit piece, which they will, because that's what young men on the right do very well. 0.97

00:35:34.600 They have a support system and a kind of instinctive circling the wagons impulse that just did not exist a decade ago. 0.99

00:35:42.640 And it's going to serve them and us, the entire institutional right, very well.

00:35:46.400 Yeah, and I think it's really important to focus on what you're saying there about the, you know, you have the dynamic where these established institutions like National Review, all they want to do is punch right.

00:35:56.420 They hate everyone to their right.

00:35:57.880 You know, that's their most aggressive thing.

00:35:59.900 Their mission in life, and there are several other institutions I won't name because they constantly come after me.

00:36:05.220 But they're constantly attacking people to the right.

00:36:08.640 But it's not just the institution versus kind of the vanguard dynamic, which, you know, is there.

00:36:15.440 Again, as you pointed out, the left embraces their vanguard.

00:36:18.340 The right attacks their vanguard.

00:36:20.480 But on top of that, it's the young versus the old, right? 0.83

00:36:24.000 As you said, the young right wing guys tend to be much more to the right, just like the young left wing activists tend to be much more to the left.

00:36:31.860 And while the left, you know, entertains and elevates and incorporates those more left wing elements into their movement with their vanguard, the right actively attacks them.

00:36:41.480 So they're not just attacking people to the right.

00:36:42.980 They're attacking all their young activists.

00:36:44.600 They're destroying all their young talent.

00:36:46.660 And that's why for so long the right just had this complete dearth of young talent coming up because who wanted to be a part of this movement?

00:36:53.860 Like if you're on the left, you know, you're cool.

00:36:56.580 You're trendy.

00:36:57.300 You're making money.

00:36:58.420 You're set in this network that's going to take care of you.

00:37:01.040 You can say whatever you want, believe whatever you want.

00:37:03.700 You're only going to hear good things from people.

00:37:05.620 Women are going to want to be a part, whatever. 1.00

00:37:07.200 Like all this stuff is great.

00:37:08.740 If you're a young person on the right, it's like, well, if you move to the right of Paul Ryan, you're going to get fired and be completely unhirable for the rest of your life.

00:37:18.700 Who's signing up for that project?

00:37:20.140 Like no one in their right mind.

00:37:21.860 So this not only shifts the political dynamic, but also the age and talent dynamic.

00:37:27.420 So young right wing guys who are talented, they want to get involved now because there's a future there.

00:37:33.200 There's a promise of really being able to say what you believe, fight for it, and have a future.

00:37:39.740 You're not just going to get completely destroyed.

00:37:41.440 You're not going to just step on a landmine and explode the minute you say anything that might have made Bill Clinton uncomfortable at some point.

00:37:50.300 And so I think that's a huge deal because it's a generational win for the right.

00:37:54.520 It really changes the dynamic inside its institutions and just across the political map.

00:37:59.640 That's exactly right.

00:38:01.480 I think the other dynamic that has infused the right with a kind of youthful vigor, even as the left becomes kind of enervated, is that for the first time, again, at least in my lifetime, like the right is the cool side.

00:38:14.320 I hate the phrase conservatism is the new punk rock.

00:38:17.320 It might be true.

00:38:18.100 It just makes me viscerally cringe.

00:38:20.020 You know, I can't fully explain it.

00:38:21.180 But it is true to an extent that like not only is the right transgressive now, whereas the left, you know, in the 90s, the left was the sort of challenging the social order and the right was the kind of fuddy-duddy religious right moral Puritans.

00:38:34.860 They happen to be right about all of those moral issues, but that was kind of the perception that you're this young person.

00:38:39.900 Young people have a kind of desire to self-actualize, to challenge the existing norms and social order, et cetera.

00:38:46.820 They are predisposed, especially young men, towards a kind of transgression and a not just a good society, but a good political movement channels that impulse towards productive things.

00:38:58.160 For a long time, that was the left.

00:38:59.420 The left used that impulse to basically create militant foot soldiers to challenge the existing social order.

00:39:05.820 Now that the left is the social order and people who came of age in my generation as Zoomers, we came of age by the time that was already stale and cliche.

00:39:16.200 I think one of the big differences between us and millennials, no offense to the base millennials who are out there, is-

00:39:23.680 Some of us might be interviewing you right now.

00:39:25.600 I know, that's right.

00:39:26.560 I was, you know, present company accepted, of course.

00:39:28.920 Right.

00:39:29.540 Is when millennials came of age, the sort of proto-wokeness was just taking shape and emerging.

00:39:35.180 And it was kind of like the hip new thing, all the language and the new norms and everything about it was widely adopted because it was very much enmeshed in youth culture.

00:39:45.920 By the time we came of age, it was already the butt of a joke, right?

00:39:49.620 It was already cliche and stale and played out and cringeworthy and something that like these dorky HR bureaucrat kind of like janitors yelled at you on college campuses.

00:39:59.840 So it engendered this counter-reaction and simultaneously on the right, especially the sort of young online right, there was an entire universe of not just transgressive but funny and compelling sort of communities, political communities that was available to people.

00:40:18.640 So the right is funnier than the left.

00:40:21.620 They have all the sort of appealing transgressive elements that make them appealing to young people.

00:40:27.020 And, you know, especially on the online right, they make better arguments.

00:40:30.360 Like this is the thing is the left has not had to make real political arguments for decades precisely because of the political system that we were just talking about.

00:40:36.940 And they have no idea how to respond to the actual arguments being made by the young sort of ascendant right, like the young ascendant right.

00:40:45.140 They're not just cool and they're not just making good arguments.

00:40:47.840 There is a sort of memetic power to everything they do that is just stunning to the left, which is why the left is is fighting a rear guard action right now.

00:40:56.980 Yeah, I feel like for the very first time in a long time, because the right was trained on Arrakis, you know, we can we can fight in ways that they just can't. 0.99

00:41:07.980 Right. Like for the first time in a long time, we figured out the new mode of mode of communication, the new way that technology was going to work before the left did.

00:41:17.120 And they were just not ready for that. They had been so dominant for so long.

00:41:20.740 They had locked down everything, you know, music, movies, television, like news media, books.

00:41:27.500 Like it was all theirs and they owned all in the end, every bit of the process. 0.92

00:41:32.340 And they knew it, you know, at most, you know, conservatives could could knock out some Christian movie that played in like 10 theaters somewhere with an actor who hadn't worked in 20 years.

00:41:43.020 Like that that was the extent of right wing media and its ability to communicate with the culture.

00:41:48.340 And because for so long, what was building under the surface was well, building under the surface, the left was able to.

00:41:56.420 Well, we can censor it. We can throw the algorithm at it. You know, we can we can bury it on YouTube or Twitter or whatever.

00:42:02.140 And ultimately, yeah, maybe these guys kind of dunk on us whenever they get the opportunity.

00:42:07.220 But we've got control of this. Right. Like we know how to manipulate the market.

00:42:11.660 But because we got so good, you know, that, you know, Arrakis was made to train the faithful, baby.

00:42:16.980 And like we got good at moving around this, manipulating, you know, evading the censorship, evading the algorithms, finding different ways to to assess and attack from different positions.

00:42:28.860 And they just couldn't handle it. They just didn't know what to do.

00:42:31.240 And the fact that that has just been bootstrapped into the administration itself is pretty surreal.

00:42:36.520 But here we are. You know, it's especially in moments like this one, which, you know, only come along.

00:42:44.020 It may be once every few centuries. We're very privileged to live in a moment like this.

00:42:49.760 You know, most of the time people can't fully understand the character of the moment until much later.

00:42:56.680 Right. Historians look back and they analyze all of these different things that led to this happening.

00:43:00.800 It is remarkable how many things had to converge perfectly to be in this kind of revolutionary moment.

00:43:07.860 You had to have a senile, highly unpopular president who ousted, who couped the prior president and then immediately set the country and the world on fire.

00:43:18.280 You had to have him replaced with an extraordinarily unpopular vice president who in many ways embodied all of the modern pathologies of the left.

00:43:26.140 You had to have censorship lifted on Twitter. You had to have this sort of decade of bubbling under the surface, like molten kind of online right beginning to take shape.

00:43:36.560 And then you had to have Trump win. All of these things happening at once converged.

00:43:40.480 Lifting of censorship online, Trump victory, this kind of new hip digital native online cadre with arguments and a kind of mimetic power that the left just wasn't expecting.

00:43:51.340 All converged at once. And even for me, it's shocking at what that the moment we're in now.

00:43:58.020 It feels like people said 2016 was the death of an old world and the birth of a new one.

00:44:03.040 In many ways, it increasingly feels like 2016 to 2024 was the sort of transitional period where the old world was dying and the new world was struggling to be born.

00:44:10.820 And now finally we have entered the new world. I have no idea what's going to happen, but it does feel like all of the old rules of politics are gone and and everything is possible.

00:44:21.500 Well, and like we were saying, you know, this is just the beginning.

00:44:25.780 You know, it's only a few weeks in USAID.

00:44:28.500 While it has a budget that is noticeable, as we pointed out, you can easily buy and sell a few countries with it.

00:44:34.800 It is not itself. It's only the beginning.

00:44:37.520 You know, the Department of Education, the Department of Defense, like so there's so much corruption, so much graft.

00:44:43.780 And most importantly, so many specifically political jobs that still need to be ferreted out.

00:44:50.460 And I hope that Elon continues.

00:44:52.100 You know, the name of the episode is defunding the total state.

00:44:56.520 And, you know, we've seen what the beginning of that looks like.

00:44:59.220 But the conclusion of it is way more severe.

00:45:02.060 Right. Like you need we already saw Marco Rubio say we're cutting the staff down to like, what, 20 people or something.

00:45:08.120 Right. Like they're like they're literally I made the joke.

00:45:11.160 And this this is one of the tweets that went really wide that I had, you know, when when Elon first took over Twitter and cut like 80 percent of the employees.

00:45:19.360 And, you know, it still basically ran the same as like, imagine if Elon could do that with the federal government.

00:45:25.080 And here we are like we are actually in that timeline.

00:45:29.740 And so so to to defund the total state, as you pointed out, is not just these government agencies.

00:45:35.920 It's not just, you know, the foreign aid, but it's this vast network of NGOs, of educational institutions, universities, everything else that needs to be pulled out.

00:45:49.320 Like you've got to get all of it.

00:45:50.520 You can't if you you know, I said this in my piece, you know, the Machiavelli quote, you know, if you're going to do an injury to your enemy, make sure it's so severe that you do not have to worry about reprisal.

00:46:00.860 So that's got to happen here. If you just wound these agencies, then they will come back and destroy you.

00:46:07.140 Right. Like they've got to be inoperable by the time you are done.

00:46:11.400 If you don't do that, if you if you do half a revolution, you'll be digging your own grave.

00:46:15.980 Right. And that that that's what the right needs to grasp.

00:46:18.360 Now, they have struck at the core of the enemy.

00:46:21.220 They're not just, oh, we're going to adjust the budget a little bit, might get another one of those, you know, vetoes.

00:46:27.560 So don't worry, marginal tax rates.

00:46:29.780 But no, we are talking about, you know, there's a reason the left is just absolutely losing their mind right now, because they know you are really attacking the base of their power.

00:46:39.440 And you can't do that and then just walk away.

00:46:42.100 You either finish it off or it will finish you off.

00:46:44.480 Yeah, I was thinking about the Elon example this morning, actually, because it is a perfect example.

00:46:49.600 He cut something like 80 percent of Twitter's workforce at the time, Twitter.

00:46:55.540 And rather than collapsing, there were marginal technical difficulties.

00:47:01.260 Right. Like that was the effect of cutting 80 percent of the employees is that there were glitches.

00:47:06.520 It went down every once in a while and it was up within a few hours.

00:47:09.960 You know, there were like minor display problems like that's what cutting 80 percent of the workforce did to Twitter.

00:47:16.460 What people have to understand, and this is where the right sort of storytelling power really needs to kick into gear.

00:47:23.560 And we have plenty of material, but we have to like puncture through kind of legacy media narratives is all of these institutions are fake.

00:47:30.740 I mean, they're very real in terms of the political power they exercise.

00:47:35.200 But in terms of their actual function relative to their sort of the stated story they tell about themselves, the story they tell about what they do, totally unrelated.

00:47:44.920 They they do very little of what they claim to do.

00:47:47.700 And their actual function is political activism, subversion, supporting this gigantic lefty activist NGO industrial complex.

00:47:55.320 You know, I've got dear liberal family members who I love very dearly, but, you know, are politically wrong about everything and read The New York Times and think it's true, who there's a full court press happening in legacy media outlets like The New York Times right now to portray the poor plight of the federal bureaucrats as this like new agree victim class.

00:48:14.280 And there's all these hilarious. I'm surprised it hasn't caught on a right wing Twitter more.

00:48:18.160 There's all these hilarious stories of these like dramatic photos of federal bureaucrats posing outside their walk up in Capitol Hill.

00:48:24.820 And they had to move it to move neighborhoods because because because they got, you know, their their cushy hundred and fifty K dollars a year salary cut a little bit or something.

00:48:34.320 You know, what people what the American people have to understand, because you do as regardless of how much you think any of this is related to the Democratic will, like you do need a degree of sort of of political support to continue carrying this out, because politicians do care about their poll numbers.

00:48:53.760 They care about getting reelected and they do get skittish if you do something that's super, super unpopular.

00:48:58.320 What has to be communicated to Americans is that all of these institutions are fake.

00:49:04.080 They're not doing the things that they're telling you that they're doing.

00:49:07.060 They're not doing the things the media is telling you that they're doing.

00:49:09.920 And just like in Twitter, like 80 percent of the workforce is not necessary for the functions that people think they perform at Twitter.

00:49:17.800 Right. When you want Twitter to work, cutting 80 percent of the workforce isn't going to deprive you of that.

00:49:23.560 Right. Those people are, again, basically this gigantic bureaucratic system of lefty sinecures.

00:49:29.480 As we go, I think you'll see more and more and more of that.

00:49:33.200 And you'll see exposed just how fake so many of these jobs are.

00:49:36.780 But the right needs to continue hammering that because that's how you maintain political support for this stuff.

00:49:41.120 Yeah. The third level of diversity consultant, they're not going to prevent the government from shooting a bad guy or turning on the power if they get fired.

00:49:52.980 Like it doesn't matter. They can just be fired. And the only thing that happens is the government gets more efficient.

00:49:57.680 That's actually all that happens. But yeah, so we've got a stack of super chats here that we should probably get to.

00:50:03.860 But before we do, Nate, where can people find your great work?

00:50:07.700 They can follow me on X at NJHochman, N-J-H-O-C-H-M-A-N. I post all my stuff there.

00:50:15.760 Excellent. Make sure that you are, of course, checking out Nate's work.

00:50:19.940 Jonathan Dinan says 1400 USAID employees, 200 will remain, says Marco Anthony Rubio.

00:50:29.460 So rage is being implemented. This is Bloom. This is World. We simply live in it.

00:50:36.780 Yeah, it is pretty wild that like they actually did do a version of rage.

00:50:41.960 And I think it was something like like 40 or 50,000 government employees took it.

00:50:49.140 So like just right there, like off the bat, you know, Trump was able to fire 40 or 50,000 government employees by just being like,

00:50:56.160 yeah, here's your severance pay for a few months. Get out of here. Like it's just just a beautiful thing.

00:51:02.920 Matt Grader says, do we know yet whether all the money that's going to Politico was in innocently for Politico Pro subscriptions?

00:51:13.940 I have a hard time believing it costs nine million for a few dozen Politico subscriptions.

00:51:18.500 Yeah. So again, I think Politico has put out a statement on this.

00:51:21.800 The blaze actually has a article digging into this because, you know, the left is like, oh, this is a conspiracy theory.

00:51:28.100 It's a conspiracy theory that, you know, that the U.S. government is funding Politico.

00:51:32.440 Well, it turns out actually they're buying a large amount of these subscriptions.

00:51:35.700 So, yeah, not all of the eight or nine million or whatever came from USAID.

00:51:40.400 But it was true that a large amount of the Politico's income, like no small amount,

00:51:46.060 was coming off of U.S. taxpayer funded subscriptions to their service.

00:51:52.140 And so I don't know if ultimately you want to say that each one of those was like overpriced or if there was some kind of deal.

00:52:00.060 Like it's very clear that the federal government and I think the blaze article said like in totality,

00:52:06.140 like almost 30 million dollars going to Politico through this.

00:52:09.500 I kind of doubt that it was all just because the quality Politico reporting is just so high that it was government could not do their job without sending them 30 million dollars.

00:52:19.480 So, yeah, I feel pretty confident saying that this was a quid pro quo and wasn't just them collecting their benign subscriptions to this very critical political magazine.

00:52:29.040 The other thing really quick is that and this is where government funding and spending is directly connected to political power is by cutting off Politico.

00:52:37.480 You are fundamentally depriving them of the political power they had.

00:52:41.020 Right. When you're funding Politico subscriptions, you're funding a set number of subscriptions from a set number of outlets for all government employees.

00:52:48.060 That's a legitimating function. It's saying like these are the sort of formal magazines that if you work in the government,

00:52:54.200 like these are the ones you should be reading. These are what people who work in the government read,

00:52:57.540 which gives journalists at places like Politico a direct line to the most powerful institution in the history of human politics.

00:53:04.780 When you deprive them of that, you're depriving them of their legitimacy, not just the money.

00:53:08.900 What if you turn that around and said, let's just buy a bunch of Frontier magazine subscriptions.

00:53:13.880 Everybody gets a subscription to the blaze. Now that's what the White House staffers are watching.

00:53:18.880 That's what all the federal government employees are watching instead of Politico. 0.75

00:53:22.500 What does that do? How does that change the dynamic? You're exactly right.

00:53:25.820 It's not just the money. It's legitimization. It's the fact that this is where the news comes from.

00:53:30.800 The government says this is what I should be reading. It's what they pay for.

00:53:33.460 So this is where my information comes from. And these are the people I'm going to give access to.

00:53:37.040 That's as important as the funds themselves flowing in.

00:53:40.100 We need to be funding right wing sub stacks. Those are going to be the new Politico. 0.99

00:53:43.560 That's right. That's right. I want all my friends sub stacks blown up by Doge.

00:53:47.740 I want to see it. Will McDuffie here with just a super chat. Thank you very much for your support, sir.

00:53:53.760 Really appreciate it. Florida Henry says, can we get Doge on the local level?

00:53:57.880 Police and fire is a minimum 30 percent waste.

00:54:01.140 Yeah. I mean, obviously there hopefully there's a snowball effect from this.

00:54:05.720 Right. You see what happens, the reform that happens at the top.

00:54:08.440 And all of a sudden governors start saying, hey, why aren't we doing this with our states?

00:54:12.500 Local and municipalities are saying, hey, why aren't we doing this?

00:54:15.620 Why don't we have a Doge? Why isn't there someone like this for our our governments keeping them accountable?

00:54:21.180 So hopefully you do get that right there. There is a snowball effect.

00:54:27.320 Jonathan Dinan says, did you see the Wall Street Journal Journal that got the Doge employee fired?

00:54:33.280 Who is being rehired? Thanks to Elon, Vance and Trump was a USA employee.

00:54:38.280 Yes, I meant to bring that up. I say that the Wall Street Journal has their access to the White House strip.

00:54:43.800 Yeah. So apparently this journalist, I didn't want to I wasn't sure because I have I still want to verify.

00:54:49.120 But I was seeing tweets going around that she was she at one point was a USA employee that she was also had been in Vox and these other leftist outlets as well.

00:54:57.720 So, yeah, this is this is a leftist journalist who may or may not have been directly employed by the very agency that she is trying to defend by doxing this guy.

00:55:08.480 And like I said, yeah, it's so important that Vance stood up and said, we do not give these people a win.

00:55:14.040 They do not get a scalp like that is so critical.

00:55:16.620 And I cannot be happier that that was actually the response.

00:55:19.360 I will say just really quickly to the last question about police and firemen, I'm all for cutting waste, but police and firemen are basically the only appendage of the patronage system.

00:55:29.440 That's like a right wing patronage system.

00:55:31.060 Yeah, that's very true.

00:55:31.560 So if we're going to cut waste anywhere, that would be the last place I would want to cut it.

00:55:35.200 Hit the diversity hires at the library system before you get to the police. 0.80

00:55:39.460 That's right.

00:55:39.760 Yeah, that's true.

00:55:41.360 Skeptical Panda says lefties, but I called you racist, the new right. 0.82

00:55:45.580 And this gives you power over me.

00:55:47.360 Do you feel in charge?

00:55:48.400 Which, yes, we are all throwing the Bane meme back at them now.

00:55:53.780 Michael Robertson says, J.D. Vance explicitly and directly supported the return of the racist Doge employee.

00:55:59.600 This should end any and all debate about whether J.D. is our guy.

00:56:03.220 Yeah, I think it's really that simple.

00:56:05.460 I have been a J.D. Vance fan for a while, not just because he's followed me for a very long time, but also because I think that he is an excellent heir for Trump.

00:56:18.000 Like, I think that handing the movement off to him would be incredibly important.

00:56:21.720 Some people have told me, oh, well, he's a creature of Peter Thiel or he's owned by whatever.

00:56:25.800 And so he can't be trusted.

00:56:27.320 But I don't know, man.

00:56:28.520 Guys, what do you want at this point?

00:56:30.300 Like, the guy is literally fighting for Anons to keep their jobs in the federal government. 0.97

00:56:34.420 Like, I don't know, man.

00:56:36.360 Like, I really don't know.

00:56:37.360 What can these guys do if not this?

00:56:41.220 Let's see here.

00:56:42.080 Robert Weinsfeld says, relishing the W's, Trump continues to deliver for us MAGA chuds.

00:56:48.880 Also, Nate doing the RFK and slipping a ZIN in.

00:56:51.960 Good stuff, man.

00:56:52.880 That's right.

00:56:53.700 Powered by ZIN.

00:56:55.600 You guys haven't memed me into doing chewing tobacco yet, though.

00:56:59.240 Good try.

00:56:59.960 I appreciate it.

00:57:00.180 Oh, that's the hardcore, yeah.

00:57:01.680 Chewing tobacco.

00:57:02.460 Well, I mean, you're just doing a modified version, but yes.

00:57:05.500 Yeah, I know.

00:57:06.260 But yeah, the hardcore chuds do chewing tobacco. 0.88

00:57:09.240 Yeah, I grew up in the part of the country where, you know, you put the chow in and you 0.87

00:57:14.060 had the spit bottle.

00:57:15.100 So that's what I see.

00:57:17.520 Real America. 0.99

00:57:18.500 Tiny Stupid Demon says, I'm not tired of winning, but I have found myself getting lightheaded 0.99

00:57:23.660 a couple times in the last week or so. 0.99

00:57:26.580 Had to break out the smelling salts.

00:57:28.080 Yeah, I mean, from time to time, you know, pour yourself a glass of tea, sit on the porch,

00:57:33.160 you know, but we're going to get back in there.

00:57:35.040 You know, we're not tired of winning yet.

00:57:36.980 Don't throw your back out.

00:57:38.080 Pace yourself.

00:57:38.840 But make sure you're ready because the winning will continue.

00:57:43.860 Jonathan Dianen again says, Eternal Black Pillars once again blackpilled because they

00:57:48.440 keep taking L after L. 0.72

00:57:50.260 Yeah, it's a rough time for the nothing ever happens, guys.

00:57:54.180 You know, you really got to be committed to that cause at this point, if you're echoing

00:57:58.020 that at this point.

00:57:59.300 I will say really quickly, in the recent blow up over like the Trump, the U.S. is going

00:58:03.020 to take over Gaza stuff, which I very much don't think is going to happen.

00:58:07.180 But it's worth saying it's like a very bad idea.

00:58:10.400 The people, the sort of right wing voices that were, you know, condemning it the loudest.

00:58:16.400 It was clearly like a gloating thing.

00:58:18.520 Like there is a there is a sort of section which everyone who watches the show, I'm sure,

00:58:21.480 is familiar with the people on the right who stake their entire political reputations on 0.95

00:58:26.540 opposing Trump and saying he was a cuck, he was a squish, he was going to sell out to 0.93

00:58:30.000 Israel, you know, do X, Y, Z, whatever your line of critique is. 0.98

00:58:34.340 That obviously didn't happen.

00:58:36.120 Right.

00:58:36.540 If you look at the last few weeks and all of these people have been totally humiliated

00:58:40.640 by the last few weeks and are obviously desperate for it.

00:58:43.760 Now they're actively rooting for Trump to fail because it can it sort of intersects with

00:58:48.920 their their personal interests.

00:58:50.760 Yeah.

00:58:51.100 If they don't, then their entire commentating career just explodes.

00:58:54.400 Exactly.

00:58:54.580 Where's their audience go?

00:58:55.680 If Trump keeps delivering and doesn't like completely just, you know, collapse at some

00:59:00.240 point, then what does that mean for these guys?

00:59:02.820 Right.

00:59:03.180 And for those guys, like you could just it was transparent with with the Trump Gaza comments

00:59:07.720 like they they it was the first thing they could latch on to because it was the first

00:59:12.340 like comment he made that you could argue was a bad idea from the right wing perspective.

00:59:16.020 Those people should just be ignored. 0.99

00:59:18.240 Like it's obviously ridiculous and they totally humiliated themselves and discredited themselves. 0.96

00:59:22.820 So just, you know, everyone should keep that in mind going forward, I think.

00:59:26.040 Yeah, I really think that ultimately, you know, I've been interviewed on this a couple

00:59:30.500 times and I think that his statements there were mainly was like the same thing with the

00:59:34.080 tariffs in Canada.

00:59:35.520 Like, did he really think that we were going to be imposing 25% tariffs on Canada for four

00:59:40.340 years?

00:59:40.680 I seriously doubt it.

00:59:42.100 It was a rhetoric.

00:59:42.920 You know, it's a it's a negotiation chip.

00:59:44.780 He does this kind of stuff all the time.

00:59:46.820 I think it's the same thing of Gaza.

00:59:48.060 I think he knows that he's not going to develop it and turn it into like Las Vegas.

00:59:51.960 I think as as as bomb bombastic as Trump can be, he's aware of that.

00:59:57.820 But if he isn't for some reason, then, yeah, let's let's go ahead and just put ourselves 1.00

01:00:01.580 on record saying that's a super stupid idea. 0.98

01:00:04.380 The United States should not be, you know, doing anything in the Middle East and not taking 0.99

01:00:08.800 over any territory or taking responsibility of it.

01:00:11.200 You voted for America first. 0.86

01:00:12.380 That's what we want.

01:00:13.180 That said, I seriously doubt that was going to be the case.

01:00:15.980 And yeah, the fact that he's on stage with BB, it's over, you know, he's sold out.

01:00:20.560 I was like, calm down, guys.

01:00:21.580 Just give the man some time to work.

01:00:24.060 The funny thing is, like, if you looked at Netanyahu's face, I don't want to get like

01:00:27.680 too into reading it, but I'm sure you saw the clips.

01:00:29.120 He looked horrified.

01:00:30.200 Yes.

01:00:30.580 When Trump said it, which even more suggests is like not going to happen.

01:00:33.620 Right.

01:00:33.840 That's what I said.

01:00:34.420 What?

01:00:34.960 Exactly.

01:00:35.260 That's exactly what I said.

01:00:36.040 From the body language, it's very clear that these guys are like not best buddies.

01:00:39.040 Like, sorry.

01:00:39.780 Like, I know that that's, you know, the storyline for a lot of people, but I just think that's

01:00:44.420 very clear, which, you know, much again, you know, one of the things that will make like

01:00:48.560 both Ben Shapiro and what's his face?

01:00:52.400 Um, um, why have I suddenly forgotten, uh, Nick Fuente is angry.

01:00:56.900 Like both, both of them will be angry if it turns out that Trump isn't actually obsessed

01:01:00.860 with Israel and in the thrall of BBNet not.

01:01:02.860 Yeah.

01:01:03.220 So, uh, sorry for both of them, I guess, if that ends up to be the case.

01:01:07.460 Condolences that both of you have the same hope that, that he's desperately sold out to

01:01:11.340 these people.

01:01:11.920 You tell me which one's right wing.

01:01:13.740 Um, Nate, uh, Matt Greeter says, uh, the problem with the racist tweets thing is that I think 0.97

01:01:19.280 Elon believes all the anti-racist crap that these journalists cry out for 24 seven, he 0.95

01:01:23.920 called all of us racist for hating HB1. 0.99

01:01:25.960 Yeah, whatever, man.

01:01:27.280 Like, I get it.

01:01:28.260 Like, yes.

01:01:29.280 Would it be great if he was, you know, um, not giving any of this stuff credence a hundred

01:01:34.100 percent?

01:01:34.940 Yes.

01:01:35.280 That would be fantastic.

01:01:36.160 But take a W to just, just, just, just let it, let it happen, man.

01:01:40.860 And eventually if, if, if having an errant tweet or two doesn't in your career, that

01:01:47.820 opens the door, like the left knows this.

01:01:50.500 That's why they're screaming about it.

01:01:52.040 Okay.

01:01:52.300 They understand that not getting fired for this speech is the first step in saying, okay,

01:01:57.280 well, maybe people can just hold opinions and it doesn't matter.

01:02:00.060 Right.

01:02:00.680 Like, and, and they, they recognize this the minute that you don't immediately get fired

01:02:04.580 and destroyed for having these opinions is a minute that people are just allowed to have

01:02:07.960 opinions because, you know, America, that's the point.

01:02:10.940 Uh, and so I, I think it's a win.

01:02:12.740 Like, would it be great if Elon didn't buy into some of the leftist rhetoric?

01:02:16.540 Yes, of course.

01:02:18.040 Does he employ the guy?

01:02:19.480 Fine.

01:02:20.080 He wins.

01:02:20.680 I'll give him credit.

01:02:21.580 I don't care.

01:02:23.300 Uh, Florida Henry says, are any boomer conservatives involved in this current auditing going on?

01:02:27.880 I got to say, I'm pretty sure that Elon, uh, prefers to have younger, hungrier guys.

01:02:32.440 And interestingly enough, another aspect of this that I don't think is properly being

01:02:37.060 discussed right now on the right is the fact that the left is screaming about every one

01:02:42.280 of these guys being under 30, right?

01:02:44.480 Like they are just, every headline is, can you believe a 24 year old had access to nuclear

01:02:49.500 codes?

01:02:50.240 Can you believe a 26 year old had the ability to see my social security number?

01:02:55.640 Yeah.

01:02:56.320 Yeah, man.

01:02:56.820 Like these are the guys who launch weapons of mass destruction.

01:03:00.560 Like that's the average age of the guy in the military doing these jobs.

01:03:04.220 So yes, I'm not surprised that a 24 year old engineer is the one doing this.

01:03:08.040 And by the way, Democrats, if you don't think any 24 year old should ever have a position 0.57

01:03:12.480 of power, should ever have a successful career, should ever be a professional.

01:03:16.180 Great.

01:03:16.720 Please keep saying that.

01:03:18.080 Please keep selling that to young people. 0.99

01:03:20.480 We hate you and you should never have a job of any consequence.

01:03:23.800 Please make that a center, a central aspect of your platform.

01:03:27.160 Or I can't pay you enough to do this.

01:03:29.560 Please do that.

01:03:30.720 Well, the other irony is like the left has spent the last, you know, 50 plus years talking

01:03:34.960 about how we need to listen more to young people and young people are the future and

01:03:38.660 young people are so inspiring.

01:03:40.120 And, you know, we should lower the voting age. 0.80

01:03:42.020 We, you know, these young sort of high school activists who, you know, they're the ones who

01:03:45.960 are really the authority on these things.

01:03:47.300 And we need to listen to them.

01:03:48.260 That was like a central plank of, of the left-wing worldview was that really young people were

01:03:54.020 like the font of political wisdom in America, even though they obviously weren't, you know,

01:03:59.240 speaking as a young person.

01:04:00.660 So it's just ironic, right?

01:04:02.200 Well, that, that was clearly only contingent on young people having left-wing opinions.

01:04:05.880 It wasn't actually anything more than that.

01:04:07.920 Yep.

01:04:08.440 Now that they're right wing, turns out we can't have them near any power.

01:04:11.720 Just make me, you know, maybe they can all go work at Panda Express.

01:04:14.340 That's going to be the Democrats.

01:04:15.600 Go, go manage a Panda Express.

01:04:16.960 That'll be their new campaign platform.

01:04:19.380 Good luck.

01:04:20.840 Let's see.

01:04:22.100 Something in German.

01:04:23.760 Don't, don't expect me to try to do that.

01:04:25.700 I think we shouldn't discard the Cthulhu swims left just yet.

01:04:30.480 We still need it to explain the greater span of history.

01:04:33.920 Yeah, I actually agree.

01:04:36.200 To be clear, a moment of victory doesn't address the structural problem of leftism.

01:04:44.120 That doesn't mean that you should say, oh, well, the right can never win.

01:04:47.960 That was never the point of saying Cthulhu always swims left.

01:04:50.640 The point was to explain why there's a structural drift to the left when it comes to especially power and intellectual spaces and large bureaucratic organizations.

01:05:01.220 And so that that saying never meant that the right can't win and you shouldn't try to win.

01:05:06.480 That's the misunderstanding of that phrase.

01:05:09.100 It was talking about the way in which the left kind of seeks to operate on a principle of entropy.

01:05:15.140 And so, you know, understanding that theory is important and I think it's still true, but don't, don't meme-ify that into the idea that like, oh, well, the right can't win.

01:05:24.820 So if the right does win, the theory is wrong.

01:05:26.760 That's not how it works.

01:05:27.840 And Matt once again says, how could the old regime claw its way back knowing what we know now?

01:05:35.740 Their legitimacy has been destroyed more and more every day, still have four years left.

01:05:40.220 The answer is if Trump doesn't follow through.

01:05:42.700 If Trump does not follow through, if they leave the enemy wounded but able to retaliate, they will retaliate.

01:05:49.460 And as amazing as it seems to you now, the public can immediately forget this stuff in two months.

01:05:56.120 They really can't.

01:05:57.840 Do not have trust in the public.

01:06:00.480 Sorry.

01:06:00.920 Like, I don't know.

01:06:01.760 I know we're using populist energy here, but the first rule of elite theory is don't, don't ever think that the populist cannot be led to believe something.

01:06:10.140 If the left snaps back and recovers all the institutional power and starts pushing all its propaganda again, they can forget all of this.

01:06:16.700 So how do they win?

01:06:17.760 If Trump doesn't follow through, that's the answer.

01:06:20.440 I will say just really quickly on that too, like there are no permanent victories or defeats in politics for the most part.

01:06:26.580 As heady as this moment is now, as good as victory feels, and we should savor it.

01:06:31.560 We should celebrate it.

01:06:32.560 You know, this has been a long, a long time coming.

01:06:35.340 There will be setbacks and losses.

01:06:37.200 Like Republicans will lose elections.

01:06:39.960 The right will be fighting rear guard actions on certain things.

01:06:43.520 The left will have cultural victories.

01:06:45.400 These are still extraordinarily powerful institutions and actors that we're up against, and their power is not going to go away overnight, right?

01:06:52.880 Like they still, it takes a generation to undo the kind of entrenched power that we're talking about.

01:06:58.100 So people shouldn't assume that because we're winning now, we're going to keep winning forever.

01:07:02.360 We are going to lose battles, but if we keep pressing at this pace, I think, you know, we will win the war.

01:07:08.240 Yeah, don't let the it's over, we're back cycle kind of destroy your psyche.

01:07:12.560 Remember that this is a long battle, and it's great to win now, and you need to continue to win.

01:07:16.960 You need to have the passion to continue.

01:07:18.840 But that doesn't mean, like you said, there won't be setbacks, there won't be moments of loss, and it doesn't mean you don't need to continue to keep up the work that you've won the victory, and now you can just go grill or whatever.

01:07:29.040 All of these things need to be remembered as we move forward.

01:07:31.920 All right, guys, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up.

01:07:33.620 As always, it's great talking to Nate.

01:07:35.160 Make sure that you're following his work.

01:07:36.920 And if it's your first time on this channel, you need to go ahead and subscribe on YouTube, click the bell, notification, all that jazz.

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01:07:54.280 If you'd like to pick up my book, The Total State, you can do that both in print and audio.

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01:08:04.240 Thank you, everybody, for watching, and as always, I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - February 10, 2025

Defunding the Total State ｜ Guest： Nate Hochman ｜ 2⧸7⧸25

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