Once again we have another magical election for the Democrats, this time in the mayoral election for Los Angeles. Also, we have yet another attempt at peace in the Middle East. Can you have peace while two sides are actively firing at each other? A question that only Donald Trump can ultimately solve.
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. Once again, we have another magical election for the Democrats, this time in the mayoral election for Los Angeles. Also, we have yet another attempt at peace in the Middle East. Can you have peace while two sides are actively firing at each other? A question that only Donald Trump can ultimately solve.
00:00:24.280joining me today to discuss this is Tom Sauer he's a Navy veteran and a Lincoln fellow at the
00:00:29.960Claremont Institute thank you so much for joining me Tom thanks for having so much for having me
00:00:33.920brother I'm glad to be back on here of course so I want to start with the mayoral election now I'll
00:00:39.560be honest months ago people were like watch the LA mayoral election this one's different there's
00:00:44.600something else going on there and like pretty much any good you know southern republican I was
00:00:49.360like it's adorable poor kids like you know that's a california will vote in a republican mayor or
00:00:56.460at least a not insane leftist mayor i'm sure you know but actually you know for the last few weeks
00:01:01.980as this is built it's become clear that there was some there there to the point where um now we're
00:01:07.240watching uh some of the most fortified elections uh one has ever seen in american history and
00:01:14.060that's saying something because i've done podcasts on the election of like 1876 so uh let's get into
00:01:20.820this i think like a lot of people you know i was just not paying a huge amount of attention
00:01:25.660to spencer pratt and what was going on here so who is spencer pratt where did he come from is he
00:01:31.540running as a republican what's going on well i mean i don't know if i call him a republican but
00:01:36.420i think he's one of these guys that just like wants to be able to make some things work i'd
00:01:40.560say he's notionally probably a democrat but you know i don't know like to those you know maybe some
00:01:45.320members of your audience might be too young to remember him but you know i'm old enough to
00:01:49.240remember i was not a reality tv uh fan never really have been but you know he played like
00:01:54.640the villain so to speak uh on that show the hills i think it was and uh you know yeah that's that's
00:02:02.700where he came from originally and then you know and then he went through his hippie phase where
00:02:06.440and like crystals and stuff. I mean, like on brand for LA, right? I mean, very much so for
00:02:13.280wealthy Angeleno. And then, you know, when the fire happened, lost everything. And then all of
00:02:18.280a sudden, you know, that, that obviously radicalized him in a lot of ways. And, you know,
00:02:22.440I live in the DC area now, but I've only been back here for a few months, but, you know, I always
00:02:26.500still look at Southern California as my home. I only moved out here from Orange County, which is
00:02:31.560the same part of California. I moved out here back in January. And, you know, the thing is,
00:02:38.220like, look, I lived in the San Fernando Valley when I was a little boy. I went to grad school
00:02:42.540at UCLA. I'm very familiar with the area. And I think that there is just this natural default
00:02:49.500of, you know, being a Democrat. However, Spencer Pratt really appealed to a lot of people. He
00:02:56.360He was, you know, by Angeleno standards, in many ways, he came off as the everyman, which
00:09:56.480And, you know, that's something that I, that's a field that I worked in for a number of years.
00:09:59.740I had a company that did very intensive mental health and addiction treatment for veterans in Southern California.
00:10:05.660And we treated a lot of, you know, chronically homeless, addicted veterans in Los Angeles.
00:10:14.000I mean, you know, one of our biggest sources of patients was the West LA VA hospital, which is right on Wilshire Boulevard, right where the 10 meets the 405 right there.
00:10:24.700and um you know uh what the the big issue was is like a lot of it just came down to tough love like
00:10:31.340when they always try to say oh it's about housing costs it never it isn't it's like 99 percent or
00:10:36.860more of all the homeless people you see on the street are addicted to hard drugs and or mentally
00:10:43.900ill usually they are very mentally ill because they are addicted um there are some cases that
00:10:49.120are probably outliers where people were just naturally mentally ill and then they become
00:10:52.680addicted. Um, you know, I've spent a lot of time on skid row, man. Like it's, it's scary. It's,
00:10:58.640it's a scary place. Um, and you want to like clean that up. Right. Like I, I lived in San
00:11:04.240Fernando Valley, Northridge, California in the Valley when I was, uh, like through kindergarten
00:11:08.820elementary school. And then I lived a little bit North of LA. Um, after, you know, when I was a
00:11:13.120little bit older than that. And it's like, I remember I'm, you know, I'm 45 years old and I'm
00:11:17.100still old enough to remember the eighties and early nineties of where like Los Angeles was like
00:11:21.820not a scary place. It was relatively safe. I mean, yeah, of course there's crime. You know,
00:11:26.480my stepfather spent 22 years in LAPD and he had crazy stories. I mean, wild stuff. I grew up on
00:11:32.400crazy cop stories of the stuff that he saw and did, uh, you know, to people back before, you
00:11:39.120know, uh, the laws changed. We'll put it that way is, um, but it was a relatively safe place. You
00:11:45.560could walk around Los Angeles. It was okay to take your family downtown or take them to Wilshire
00:11:49.620Boulevard to, you know, take him out to dinner, go shopping. And now it's like Los Angeles has
00:11:54.200certain pockets that are nice for the most part, but rest of it is just tents everywhere. So he
00:11:59.500was just there to like, clean up the streets, get, you know, make the fire hydrants work,
00:12:04.760have some police officers, give them, empower them to, you know, to actually follow the law.0.58
00:12:08.400And when it came to all the vagrants in the attics, it's like, Hey, we're clearing out all0.75
00:12:11.660these tent cities and either you're going to go to voluntary treatment or you're going to go to0.56
00:12:15.400jail. And, you know, believe it or not, as much as everyone loves to, you know, dump on Europe0.86
00:12:19.100all the time that's something that the netherlands actually does really well is because you know they
00:12:24.640rethought a lot of their drug policy but they've got a strict policy they're like you're not
00:12:28.240sleeping in public and if you are you're going to jail and if you have a serious problem you go to
00:12:33.280treatment or you go to jail and you know i mean and it's like this carrot and stick they do a
00:12:38.380really good job of that and that's part of the reason why they don't have anywhere near the
00:12:42.720problems in the netherlands you know amsterdam right as they do in um you know in in most big
00:12:50.080cities in america man and so i think that was the big appeal is just like make la livable again so
00:12:57.300it was just very much a rudy giuliani platform right like just yeah it's not about the it's not
00:13:03.060about the edgy social issues it's not about foreign policy it's uh we i want i want to be
00:13:09.000able to walk down the street without a crack addict throwing something at you know my child
00:13:13.180right like that just kind of some of the basic stuff you know water comes out of the fire hydrant
00:13:18.420when my house is on fire just that 100 and it's so doable because i lived in orange county which
00:13:24.000is about 40 minutes south right in orange i lived in mostly in newport beach california which
00:13:28.800you know it is an extremely affluent very nice area it is beautiful it's what people think
00:13:34.060southern california should be except it is obscenely expensive it's more expensive than
00:13:38.200beverly hills right and like look i felt we didn't lock our doors i mean which sounds great people
00:13:44.380think that's crazy we just like hardly ever locked our doors the police were friendly to you i had a
00:13:49.280buddy of mine who was a cop in newport beach who literally said yeah i pulled a cat out of a tree
00:13:53.520before you know what i mean like i mean it's it's what do you think it could be and the thing is is
00:13:58.920i was like you know i i knew the the orange county sheriff and he openly said he's like hey look i got
00:14:04.100room in my jail and they don't do you know uh you know immediately no cash bail none of that they
00:14:09.980don't mess around they and you know orange county the police like to advertise there was signs when
00:14:14.680you drive south from the 405 leaving los angeles heading in orange county it says no la and oc you
00:14:20.940will go to jail right so they like and they had they and actually they would publish body cam
00:14:25.980photos or videos rather of orange county police uh you know arresting shoplifters and thieves
00:14:33.020and they say and they're talking to the cop like okay you're just gonna book us and let's go like
00:14:36.980no you're you're going to jail like what do you mean i thought you just like no that's los angeles
00:14:41.420so i mean it's it's one of those things where it's it's not it it's it's just simply a matter
00:14:45.940of will there's so many things are simply a matter of will and instead you've got
00:14:49.100a democrat machine that is just frankly anti-human unhuman so now to the election itself
00:14:57.840so originally uh spencer pratt is running he's running against this karen bass uh you know and
00:15:04.200then there's also this third candidate i have to look again because i forgot it nitha raman
00:15:08.960yeah yeah there we go that one uh star wars name of some form so uh you know these are your
00:15:16.580candidates now they seem to be in a three-way runoff type election can you explain explain
00:15:22.280the primary process and why he has to battle his way into this, uh, kind of, uh, this competition
00:15:28.260of only two people. Yeah. Mostly in, in California, generally speaking, this also goes to the
00:15:33.740governor's race too, is that they have a, you know, an all around open primary and the two top
00:15:39.900vote getters, then they go to the runoff. Right. And so, which typically it always, you know,
00:15:45.160in most places it's a Democrat versus another Democrat. Quite often that's kind of what would
00:15:50.080happen and then uh you know and then all of a sudden here we are spencer pratt shows up who is
00:15:56.700not really a republican i mean he doesn't care about foreign policy stuff he's not talking about
00:16:01.900abortion or anything like that gun control is like let's just make this place safer and cleaner
00:16:05.640and he comes in there and looks like he won pretty handily on election night looks at least he made
00:16:11.980it second place and then you have a big battle against karen bass who you know frankly i think
00:16:18.240he had a better shot against Karen Bass than Nithya Rama, to be completely honest, just because0.51
00:16:21.900she has a track record of failure. And Spencer did a really good job of pointing out that she was,
00:16:30.700you know, literally a communist, that she was on a vacation or, you know, work trip to Ghana
00:16:36.200during the fires. It was pretty much completely absent, didn't rush home early, anything like
00:16:41.240that. You know, trained in communist camps in Cuba, you know, while, you know, while Spencer
00:16:46.580was uh being a reality tv villain or whatever whatever is uh you know she was quite literally
00:16:52.660a communist but she had a very real track record of failure and i really do think that had it been
00:16:58.660bass versus pratt that he would have stood a very real chance that they really wouldn't turn it on
00:17:03.880so you know and for some reason just out of the blue we got to fortify that election
00:17:08.700and look what happened and i think what did what really did a lot of people in is just like this
00:17:13.800is so blatant in your face um you know i haven't i got somebody needs to check in on nate silver
00:17:20.980you know because he's saying oh this is very odd or something like somebody somebody yeah can we
00:17:25.780get a a welfare check on nate silver or like see what he's saying you know and of course they always
00:17:31.480plead uh you know naivete well i just don't understand oh wow this is really strange and
00:17:36.800it's like okay come on guys i don't really think you're being disingenuous but you know like i
00:17:41.320said earlier, it looks like this is, uh, this is legal. Sadly. I mean, it's legal. They, they,
00:17:47.300to quote, uh, my buddy, will Chamberlain talk about the 2020 election is they cheated fair
00:17:53.840and square. Right. Yeah. This is, yeah, no, I think Molly Hemingway did a great job with her
00:17:59.920book, uh, about the election. And you, even though I think there probably was a lot of
00:18:04.540illegal shenanigans as well with that election. If you just look at the evidence of the actual
00:18:09.000quote-unquote legal actions that were taken during that election you can see how wildly the system
00:18:14.940moved to warp it and and you know throw it for trump even if no you know technically illegal
00:18:22.160things were done even though that was definitely happening as well but even if you just need the
00:18:26.160above the board evidence it's it's plentiful there so that said uh for people who are unfamiliar as
00:18:31.880the election you know we see the initial results it looks pretty good for pratt uh then you have
00:18:37.940uh this elongated counting which we've all of a sudden it turns out you know most of my life
00:18:43.820vast majority of my life uh you had elections on election day and then you counted the votes
00:18:49.480and you had a winner and usually someone had conceded the same night or if not the morning
00:18:55.160the next morning like that was pretty much how every election ran and then magically over the
00:19:00.600last you know 10 years or so the definition of an election has radically shifted and like of course
00:19:06.260it's always taken us seven days two weeks three months to count ballots that's always been you
00:19:12.440know the we don't have the technology to count uh ballots you know any faster than uh you know we
00:19:17.880and obviously like as the counting goes on you know as we saw with biden and the like magical
00:19:22.680drops of ballots that showed up uh as the counting goes on we see that things are moving more and
00:19:28.740more in the uh direction of ramen in fact to the point where uh it starts to get comical when you
00:19:34.640look at some of the turn in numbers where more votes come in and they're you know they're they're
00:19:39.080for the other two candidates but none of them are voting for bass and all of them happen to be
00:19:44.280coming in for ramen for some reason out of nowhere there was just this batch of voters who are
00:19:49.860specifically targeting the second or the third place candidate to try to booster above spencer
00:19:55.480pratt just randomly they're just though the way the ballots broke is we just happen to have not
00:20:00.720counted her ballots which makes it even more ridiculous because you know it's already hard
00:20:05.040enough to believe that all of the ballots that need to be counted were uh you know uh biden
00:20:10.740ballots previously but at least there are only two options so you could at least build this narrative
00:20:14.720as the democrats did that like well there's a there's the red wave that comes in first because
00:20:19.300they vote day of and then the democrats they have the mail-in ballots and everything else and so0.99
00:20:23.980that'll that'll get counted over time again it was a stupid argument but at least there was0.98
00:20:28.500some form of like logical coherence to it this time it's like well yeah these people do kind of0.98
00:20:35.120vote for the same two types of people and they just happen to have all magically voted for the
00:20:40.140one that needed to be boosted over seven days to push her above the guy we really don't want to
00:20:46.480have in office and as you point out you know we're getting now helicopters literally helicopters full
00:20:53.840of ballots tom helicopters full of ballots like i'm in kenya like i'm in the middle of africa and
00:21:01.160some third world dictator is literally just flying in freshly minted ballots in the helicopters that
00:21:08.480he bought with like cocaine money and like that's that's what's what's happening here it's
00:21:14.140just to say it stretches the bounds of credulity would be um an understatement to be sure oh yeah
00:21:22.300I think also what's crazy, somebody, I just saw this, uh, you know, an hour or two ago,
00:21:26.960I think, but I think somebody had also posted like detailed results.
00:21:30.060Nithya Raman didn't even win her own district.0.73
00:21:32.400You know, she's like, like, like wasn't even close in her own district.
00:21:37.120It's like, yeah, I, I, I, no, I, I agree, man.
00:21:40.680It's, um, look, I mean, everyone knows what's going on.
00:21:44.960Um, they're just, they're kind of rubbing our faces in it.
00:21:47.860And also, I'd say the Dems would always point to, and I'm old enough to remember this, maybe you probably are too, but the 2000 election in Florida, right, where it was a remarkably close election.
00:22:03.460And to be honest, even at the time, when I was, I guess I was 20 years old then, I was shocked that Bush won, that Bush got that one.
00:22:13.600I was really surprised that that actually happened.
00:22:15.400I mean, maybe, I guess he did win fair and square, but you know,
00:22:18.340he also had a pretty, uh, pretty robust machine, uh, in his favor.
00:22:22.720But I mean, like, look, cheating elections is, I mean, I think, you know,
00:22:25.820you've talked about it like from what the 1860s, 1870s. Yeah.
00:22:30.280I mean, that's kind of like, it was a theme in, uh, that movie, uh,
00:22:33.640gangs in New York, right. Where they had a, you know,
00:22:36.000boss hog and all that. And, uh, they had the same thing.
00:22:39.160I read the book gangs of New York, which is actually a history book,
00:22:42.560which is really interesting. That was adapted.
00:22:44.180phenomenal book written in like the 1920s about what America was like in the mid 19th century.
00:22:50.340And this sort of stuff was very common in New York, at least. And, you know, the thing is,
00:22:55.820I don't know if they need to do it in New York anymore. But, you know, look, there's real
00:22:58.560questions around, you know, who won in 1960, Nixon or JFK. I mean, even today, there are some,
00:23:06.660you know, not right wing historians that kind of point like, yeah, it looks like there might
00:23:12.360have been something happening in Chicago and Illinois that squeaked it out for Kennedy
00:23:15.960back then. So I think that's what we have here. I think the fact that it takes so long just says
00:23:21.640a lot. You know, we're not blackpilling, but it's like, hey, I think once we do have voter
00:23:28.460integrity, then frankly, because look, that would be a total nuke on the Democrats. And I think they
00:23:34.760know that if they had, you know, paper ballots, day of voting, hand counted, you know, the way it
00:23:40.820used to be, it's going to make it a whole hell of a lot harder to cheat. I mean, look, I'm also
00:23:46.180old enough to remember that when we had democracy in Iraq, right, when we brought them freedom and0.85
00:23:51.780democracy, is they all had paper ballots only, right, in clear tubs, and you got to get a finger
00:23:58.920or a thumb, yeah, maybe it was your thumb, get dodged so you couldn't do it twice, and then
00:24:03.180they'd show, love to show their thumb or their finger, whatever it was, to show like, look,
00:24:06.900I voted and you can't get me to, you know, and therefore you can't vote again. Like
00:24:10.080if we could go to something resembling that, I think, look, I think the Dems know that that
00:24:17.340would be kind of the end of a lot of their power. They would not have any sizable majority, uh, in
00:24:23.540almost any, well, not almost anywhere, but like in a lot of places for a long time. And why wouldn't
00:24:30.600they do everything they can? You know, I mean, it's the, it's the old day. I don't know. Maybe
00:24:35.460It's you that said it or I know it's like Michael Malice would say it, but it's like the side that wants to play by the rules and be fair or something like that will always be the side that wants to be left alone.
00:24:47.760Yeah, that same story. Right. I mean, same story.
00:24:50.340And, you know, look, I'm not trying to say that all the Republicans are all cucks or anything, but some of them are.
00:28:35.320Like, I really think that the vast majority
00:28:36.840of the left's power disappears and i think they know that which is why they're fighting tooth and
00:28:40.640nail against this but if you're a republican even if you're a corrupt republican isn't it
00:28:47.520beneficial to have elections that are in your favor like how do we explain this behavior
00:28:53.860where republican senators who would only benefit from this form of election existing
00:29:00.600fighting against it like that's what i think drives people insane the logical self-interest
00:29:05.600Like, I don't even need them to be noble. I don't need them to be honorable. I don't need them to be selfless. I need them to be self-interested. And the self-interest doesn't seem to compel them to do the thing that would win them elections. And that's when people start asking questions like, yeah, do we actually have a democracy or a representative republic or anything like this in any way, shape, or form?
00:29:25.400Yeah, no. Well, one thing that's interesting is, you know, I'm pretty sure that the four Republican senators who are voting against SAVE Act were either retiring or very safe where they are.
00:29:37.260And I mean, like, look at Murkowski. And if memory serves, I think Alaska does rank choice voting, which brings a whole host of other problems, too.
00:29:46.180My wife, who's a mathematician and research assistant for an economist originally by trade, she's doing this whole analysis on this stuff right now.
00:29:56.360Like, no, rank choice voting is very, very bad, but it favors Murkowski in her case.
00:30:01.280The other ones are all retiring soon, so they don't care.
00:37:41.980And so, um, look, uh, yeah, we might have, we might have, but I still, I don't think it's,
00:37:48.540I don't think it's totally lost on everyone yet. Um, I think there are still opportunities. I
00:37:53.600don't think it is the last stop sign. However, I would say that like, I don't think that anyone
00:37:58.500in this country, and I mean this for better or worse, like has the appetite for any sort of like
00:38:04.320a, like a civil war or anything. Um, I would counter, you know, because nobody really has
00:38:10.440the there are some people out there who think they're really ready to fight like fight like
00:38:14.720you know the the gun you know the the gun geeks like me and the two-way guys get real excited
00:38:20.200but I mean to me I just don't think that's in the cards uh you know we're gonna talk about some
00:38:24.720other you know thinkers who are you know uh think a little bit outside the box I'd say you look at
00:38:29.560your you know what Yarvin would say right what Uncle Yarvin would say Curtis would say well he
00:38:33.220just says we're so we're so feminized and without virtue that we would never have a civil war which
00:38:39.000a lot of people think is like a weird thing they think like a civil war is a evidence of a lack of
00:38:44.000virtue um but i think right narvin is right i think that the i think the americans of the 1775
00:38:50.540were just far better people and that's why they were willing to fight for rights that we just
00:38:54.440can't yeah be bothered to yeah get it up for i i think once you start seeing people who are like
00:38:59.680losing i mean there's people who could live in like working lower middle class and paying high
00:39:04.640taxes i mean look it's happening it's been happening in europe for a very long time right
00:39:08.720Where they've got a very low standard of living and they pay crazy taxes, they work their ass off, but they're still middle class, right?
00:39:14.900And, you know, like, Jarvan would talk about the Brasilification of America, which, you know, is not great.
00:39:21.740You know, it's like, to those who aren't familiar, it's not necessarily an ethnic thing per se, but it's more like if you look at Brazil, it's a real country.
00:39:31.560It has actual industries and it had more than just tourism, right?
00:39:37.100it has a government you know i mean it works for the most part but and it's very big but it's got
00:39:45.260a real economy and all that stuff but what what you see though is that you know i met a lot of
00:39:49.500brazilians uh as well who are lovely people but the ones that i really ever interact with are here
00:39:54.940in the states and these are people who are well off um they were usually educated a lot more
00:40:00.780educated in europe or the united states they've got a lot of money they might come for money
00:40:05.180and they live in gated communities or high-rise apartment buildings with armed guards everywhere
00:40:10.700and and there's nothing against them they're perfectly nice people and then you've got this
00:40:14.940tiny little you know scrappy middle class that's trying to you know to get be a part of that someone
00:40:20.620get it and you got that tiny middle class and then you've got the unwashed masses of people0.97
00:40:25.900living in very third world conditions living in favelas and and all of that and um you know that
00:40:33.340is what unfortunately could be. It could be a very slow process that America could become.0.77
00:40:39.180Frankly, America could end up looking. And what I described to you really was a lot like New York
00:40:43.140or Los Angeles today, right? Where, for example, you fly into LAX, right? And there's one thing
00:40:49.580you notice here. So if you are a, like I fly in United a lot, right? United has their global
00:40:55.460services check-in. They have their own reception of your global services, which means that you are
00:40:59.460a very, very frequent flyer. You spend multiple six figures a year on that airline, right? Where
00:41:06.280it's like, you're at the point where you might be close to flying private, right? Where you come in,
00:41:10.520you get your own, you've got your own special TSA. You don't have to deal with the, you know,
00:41:14.520with the plebs at all. You go through all that. They give nice, would you like a drink? Have1.00
00:41:18.680this. Oh, here we have your own little TSA guy. Oh yeah, everything's fine. Right? They do that.
00:41:22.480When you land at LAX, if you need to take an Uber home, you have to walk a half a mile
00:41:28.080to the uber pickup and sit in line and fight and elbow with people for it unless you want to spend
00:41:34.060two and a half three times as much for an uber black which costs like to get me back home to
00:41:39.420orange county is like 250 bucks if you pay for that they'll come pick you up at the curb and
00:41:44.600it's like you've got some very well-off people in some very nice communities that are very safe and
00:41:48.940they're you know there's nothing against them they're not necessarily bad people and then you've
00:41:52.600got that middle class struggling to get by or but most of them move out of town or they move out of
00:41:57.400the state and then you've got the unwashed masses same thing with like manhattan new york city the
00:42:03.040only way you can live there is if you are very wealthy or very poor it's very hard to live there
00:42:08.260on 150k a year let's just say right like to raise a family on yeah this is a phenomenon that i was
00:42:16.080unfamiliar with on a like i understood it theoretically but i was unfamiliar with it
00:42:21.160personally having been mostly a ruralite or a suburbanite yeah and then when i started doing
00:42:26.200this job and you know moving in some of the circles i've moved in it's like oh no you can0.71
00:42:30.320see how like people live a nice life in deteriorated countries because you've stratified society so
00:42:37.400radically that there are pockets it's like a green zone you like there are pockets uh you know where
00:42:42.100you have a burger king a nice restaurant you know and then like outside of the wire it's insane and
00:42:47.600it's kind of the same thing where you have the scenario where there's good schools and there's
00:42:51.820good uh you know restaurants and there's safe neighborhoods uh and there's armed guards
00:42:56.540everywhere and very few people can get in and maintain that lifestyle but if you're one of
00:43:00.480those people then you're not bothered by kind of the third world conditions outside of you and so
00:43:05.540i unfortunately i do think that is a very realistic understanding of where we're going
00:43:10.300there's just a lot of ruin in a nation and so you could very much see the quality of living decline
00:43:16.500for most americans and by the way the best way to alleviate the pressure of declining uh quality1.00
00:43:22.440of life is to import a bunch of third world immigrants who don't mind the declining wallet1.00
00:43:26.260quality of life because it's still better than wherever they came from a bad neighborhood in1.00
00:43:31.060the united states is still a better neighborhood than most of the neighborhoods in wherever
00:43:35.260country they came from and so they don't complain when they get here because whatever they don't
00:43:39.800know the difference it doesn't matter to them uh so i do think that your prediction there is
00:43:44.040entirely possible it's just you know obviously something i'm desperately trying to avoid i do
00:43:49.000think i do think yarvin underestimates the likelihood of possible conflict though i do
00:43:54.480think that it is far more likely that we will see uh more of a strongman balkanization uh than we
00:44:00.160will see a um a a general decline though i've made that case in the very book that you were waving
00:44:05.620around so i'll leave people with that rather than restating it and that comes to whatever i mean
00:44:09.960that's what mike anton and curtis would debate all the time are we gonna have a red caesar or
00:44:13.800a blue caesar right like what kind of you know what kind of caesar are we gonna get um and like
00:44:20.240hey it you know it could just easily be a blue caesar too so we don't know you know as far as
00:44:25.060the strongman goes and look and i'm speaking as one of those guys who you know i live fairly
00:44:30.100comfortably right now right where like i lived in newport beach and you know i remember one time i
00:44:34.580was like driving down pacific coast highway and i was friends with the lady who's our city council
00:44:38.800woman for our little ward a little district and she's calling me talking about something else and
00:44:42.700i was in the car driving on pch i go hey i just uh i just saw a homeless guy on pch and she goes
00:44:50.360i'm like don't worry i'm sure he'll be gone by lunch and and she's like oh don't worry we'll
00:44:55.760make sure he's gone they we always do and i don't know i guess i don't know what they send him up
00:44:59.420to westminster garden grove or somewhere else further north like the rough parts of orange
00:45:03.940county i said hey it's all right i'm just kind of playing uh you know it's way better than la
00:45:08.260and she's like not good enough it's not good enough so like they think like that and even
00:45:12.160today i live in outside of dc i live 20 minutes from the city i live in mclean virginia home of
00:45:18.000the cia and you know i like everyone in my community lives in nice little houses and
00:45:22.960everyone's really quiet because they're all spooks or spook adjacent right and uh you know it's it's
00:45:28.400everyone keeps up but it's it's a safe place here and like i'm not really i don't really have to
00:45:33.360deal with many of those issues but i do care because i've got friends who do and it's just
00:45:38.160what's right for the country i mean you know i'm not trying to say look at me i'm so you know
00:45:42.840altruistic or anything but i mean it's it's it's not gonna hold just because you know i like
00:45:47.820stability in my country and you can't keep we can't keep going down this road sadly i think
00:45:52.300we could go for several more decades this way yeah i think you're right about that well before
00:45:57.660we uh leave i want to make sure we hit a little bit of what's going on with iran i don't like
00:46:02.880doing this day-to-day because honestly it's a we're gonna have a peace deal it's a new strike
00:46:07.540every 24 hours like the cycle is just continuous that said i think you know
00:46:12.420people like to draw as if there are only two camps in this thing
00:46:17.560the like anti-trump people and then the the pro-trump people and i have been trying to carve
00:46:24.660out a very serious third camp which is i am pro-trump i support what the trump administration
00:46:29.680has been doing i voted for this guy like i have been a supporter the entire time but the war in
00:46:34.760iran is bad it's been bad from the beginning it was a mistake from the beginning and it is not
00:46:38.780playing well and it's going to ruin the midterms and we have more important domestic priorities0.95
00:46:43.360it's not that iran with a bomb isn't a problem it's just that my greatest enemies right now
00:46:48.200are inside america's borders and not outside of it and once we fix that problem i'm fine to address
00:46:53.280the things outside of it so that said every every time trump gets closer to peace deal i've noticed
00:46:59.240the other two sides, the anti-Trump and the pro-Trump guys, both say, no, he's not. He's
00:47:04.800not near a peace deal because the really, really hardline Israel first guys don't want a peace
00:47:09.780deal. And the anti-Trump guys need Trump to be entirely controlled by Israel. They can't have
00:47:14.920him having any kind of actual different opinion than Bibi Netanyahu because then their narrative
00:47:19.320falls apart. My point has been, no, I don't think Trump is entirely owned by Israel, but I do think
00:47:24.380he got bad information or influence here. And this has put him in a bad political position.
00:47:28.400And for the last few weeks, it's been very clear to me that Trump realizes that the man has been desperately like if he wanted to blow up the peace deal, he could have at any moment. Right. He's had thorough justification. Iran has broken the ceasefire a thousand times at this point.
00:47:41.600So to me, the only reason to maintain the current situation is if you are genuinely trying to end the conflict as we see it now. So I tend to believe that when there's actual conflict between Trump and Netanyahu, that's real and not some stage thing so that Israel can sneak in a few more whatever.
00:47:58.400And so very interestingly, Trump has been bumping more and more up against Netanyahu in this process. He apparently cursed him out on the phone. Axios reported this. Everyone said, oh, it's a lie. This is a bunch of junk. Trump would never talk to Netanyahu that way. Again, the pro-Israel guy said that because they don't want him to have. And the anti-Trump guy said that because that would blow up their narrative about Trump being his own man.
00:48:20.220And so, but I was like, no, I'm pretty sure this happened. Then Trump came out and confirmed. Yes, I did. I did curse out Netanyahu on the phone. And in the last 24 hours, Trump has said, this deal is getting done. It's going to happen. I'm going to make it happen. I've gotten both sides to agree to stop fighting. Israel is going to stop attacking Lebanon. Iran is going to stop attacking Israel. The end.
00:48:42.680and then netanyahu immediately turns around it's like no we're bombing as much of lebanon as we
00:48:48.180can which is like the 19th time that bb netanyahu has directly defied trump when it comes to
00:48:54.840military strikes and so tom my question to you here is not should we be in iran or not like
00:49:00.940right i think that i think even trump kind of has figured that one out my question is
00:49:05.320is there a way for trump to extract himself from the scenario with netanyahu's current stance
00:49:12.700Is there a way forward for Trump to do what he says he wants to do?
00:49:15.960And I believe he wants to do it is get home and focus back on domestic issues.
00:49:19.860Can he do that with Israel behaving in the manner that it is currently?0.81
00:49:25.360I think you could very well see President Trump looking for other levers he can pull with Israel, as in, you know, there are things that we can do.0.90
00:49:39.060They want to if we wanted to and we can make their life more difficult.0.62
00:49:42.520So I suspect that if Israel keeps up this this stuff with like, you know, souring the deal, you know, even though I guess, you know, look, Israel is acting in this their best national interest.0.53
00:49:53.720And they're saying like, hey, we got to hit. Sure, sure. I get it. But look, we need to get this deal done. And we are playing, you know, we're playing big boy regional geopolitics. Right.
00:50:04.340And so I think that we're going to have to get Israel to back off.
00:50:08.820And I think there are certain levers that President Trump can pull, you know, or I'm0.55
00:50:12.400sure they're being discussed options at the table that can get them to do it.