The Auron MacIntyre Show - Why Gen Z Wants to Burn It All Down ｜ Guest： Rich Baris ｜ 9⧸9⧸26

00:00:00.000 hey everybody how's it going thanks for joining me this afternoon i've got a great stream with

00:00:12.340 a great guest that i think you're really going to enjoy we all know that there seems to be a

00:00:17.880 war raging between the generations in the united states many establishment figures want to make

00:00:24.100 small tweaks to the system do some reform but ultimately keep what we have many in the younger

00:00:29.860 generation are looking at what's going on they see the rising prices in housing they see the

00:00:34.300 difficulty of getting married they realize how hard it is to find a job as they compete with

00:00:38.860 the entire world and they say you know what these institutions are not working for me i want to see

00:00:43.480 something radically different somebody who has been analyzing this difference between the different

00:00:49.840 the uh generations has been a pollster rich barnes he's written a book called burn it down

00:00:55.220 about what young people think about the united states so rich thank you so much for coming on

00:00:59.400 Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. I'm looking forward to it.

00:01:03.180 Absolutely. So before we get started, many people might be not be aware of your work,

00:01:09.220 people's pundit, everything you're doing. Can you explain how you got started and why you

00:01:13.460 ended up focusing on this particular issue for the book?

00:01:16.420 Yeah, it's been a fun ride. But this dates back to election modeling in its infancy

00:01:24.900 and public polling. And that's where I got started. It's how I got started.

00:01:29.400 basically trying to reform the polling industry and prove that there were some artifacts of

00:01:38.480 ancient methodology practices that needed to be pushed aside in a new era. And that all proved

00:01:45.080 to work real well for me in 2016. And I've been polling the Trump coalition ever since.

00:01:51.140 When others didn't have such great luck, by the way, which is, you know, worth noting.

00:01:55.440 Yeah, before we get into the book itself of the topic here, I think it might be good to stop for a moment on the issue of polling. As you say, obviously, a lot of people beclown themselves when it came to the Trump elections. A lot of polls ran out there saying, you know, 99% chance for Hillary Clinton to win these kind of things.

00:02:14.820 uh i did a lot of reporting on polls uh as a political journalist uh when you get a poll you

00:02:22.060 get a package right and uh they hand you the abstract the top line tells you more or less

00:02:27.860 what you're supposed to say along with the press release very few people look into the methodology

00:02:32.940 what's going on with the poll how uh you know you're actually getting that information and if

00:02:38.100 you just print what comes in the press release if you just print what's in the abstract at the top

00:02:42.320 Then you're basically just delivering a party line. The poll is not there to reflect any kind of actual finding. It's there to push what people believe about the situation. This became so obvious with the Trump presidency or the campaign leading up to the presidency that it almost became comical as all of these different pollsters completely lit their credibility on fire.

00:03:05.180 And so I guess the question is twofold. One, can polling be rescued from this reputation? Is there still a viable market for polling where it actually reflects what people are thinking in the zeitgeist? And number two, was there ever a point at which polling was objective or has it always been entirely motivated by the pollsters?

00:03:27.540 That's a great, both of those are great questions.

00:03:29.660 And the answer to one, I may be wish casting a little bit.

00:03:33.200 And the answer is, I hope so.

00:03:35.320 I always believe that we could get there.

00:03:38.880 And that's what I spent more than 10 years trying to do.

00:03:42.080 You know, there's a lot of other people out there now, but for a long time, it was just

00:03:46.360 me and some others who were doing okay, but they were quiet.

00:03:49.620 And that's what made me different than everybody else because I was not.

00:03:53.720 And the industry did not like it.

00:03:55.580 you know they didn't want to be forced into greater transparency they didn't want to have

00:03:59.660 discussions over whether their methodologies were ancient like i said before and weren't working

00:04:04.900 anymore it was a boys club i wasn't invited so i had to punch my way into this thing um and then

00:04:11.460 we got to a place where i thought that we were going to get there and i could see it over the

00:04:18.200 years so you know you always see the expression that the best cure for corruption or anything

00:04:24.100 secrecy like that is sunlight transparency so i took that approach in polling and i knew i couldn't

00:04:30.560 beat them pound like you know tit for tat pound for pound if there was a garbage cnn poll i wasn't

00:04:36.260 going to be able to pull a million races to say look no here's an here's another poll that shows 0.91

00:04:41.520 a more accurate reflection of the political environment we were not going to be able to do

00:04:46.160 that with legacy media or even universities so instead i just said look at everything i show you

00:04:52.100 You're not just getting a little press packet with a PDF and my thoughts.

00:04:56.240 I'm going to give you almost everything minus the raw data set, which I would show even on my shows to this day.

00:05:03.020 I do that. But it was the level of transparency that we pushed them to meet.

00:05:08.180 Because if you saw polls that myself and and others who agree with me release, you would look at a CNN poll.

00:05:14.100 So I'm not meaning to pick on CNN, but they were one of the worst offenders.

00:05:17.940 You would look at them and you would say, you know, where's the rest of this information?

00:05:22.100 We have to meet basic standards of disclosure.

00:05:25.340 And it got to a point where the media just felt like

00:05:27.240 they didn't have to do that anymore.

00:05:28.680 Like they were exempt from it.

00:05:30.700 So over the years, especially with their misses,

00:05:33.660 I thought we were making progress.

00:05:36.480 And then unfortunately, and I never accounted for this,

00:05:39.260 there was a bit of a backfire and we're seeing that now.

00:05:41.600 And it's really unfortunate

00:05:42.580 because this will lead to answer too.

00:05:45.100 There's been too many polls and not enough pollsters.

00:05:48.740 And it's like every month there's a new polling firm.

00:05:51.320 This one knows a guy. This one knows somebody. They've never been tested. They have either no

00:05:56.500 or very little track record. And folks, you can come on the scene and poll a relatively easy

00:06:01.160 election and then claim you're an accurate pollster and it's a fluke. And you go on to

00:06:05.380 completely bomb the next cycle because it's totally different. The long enduring track

00:06:10.620 record of a gala, for instance, which is, you know, they don't poll now. They left the horse

00:06:15.380 race business after their slight miss in 2012, but the Obama administration basically threatened

00:06:21.340 them with the civil rights division and the justice department. They got scared and they

00:06:25.040 left the horse race business forever. And that's a real shame because this is answer to, I, I did

00:06:31.100 buy into George Gallup's vision and is his entire idea, which is basically that polling is a public

00:06:36.000 service and polling is critical. As we get bigger as a country, elected representatives are not

00:06:42.320 going to be able to knock on every door and visit every constituent the public pollster has to be

00:06:46.300 their voice and if you understand that if you believe that you take it seriously um you know

00:06:53.120 in this era i think we we we took a step forward and probably two steps back and what i mean by

00:06:58.740 that is the incentives for the public pollster to be accurate and transparent are not there

00:07:05.120 including financial and monetary incentives and that has led to the current environment we're in

00:07:10.640 which is sad and i'm just going to say it even though most people never want to say this in

00:07:14.980 front of a microphone this one's getting paid by this pack under the table this one's circumventing

00:07:19.700 here it's gross out there folks you you have to be really careful and it's sad because i've watched

00:07:25.060 your commentary on on uh on x i've watched others who really have understood what's been going on

00:07:30.920 over the last year year and a half and you're met with a lot of propaganda and the truth is

00:07:38.360 unfortunate and it's hard for some people on the right to take because and it's easier for them to

00:07:44.700 bury their head in that copium which is propaganda it's just probably it's paid for folks instead of

00:07:49.720 realizing there's a problem and you need to course correct so that's the unfortunate impact of what

00:07:54.620 this environment has led to and it's sad it's tragic yeah yeah there's there's a real principal

00:08:01.620 agent problem emerging when it comes to uh pollsters and politicians because as scale increases as you

00:08:07.760 say there's no way for the average congressman to truly understand you know door to door how

00:08:12.960 people are living and how they're feeling but then once you abstract the numbers out all of

00:08:16.940 the people who are in charge of doing that have perverse incentives that uh misalign them with

00:08:22.200 actually delivering accurate information and so everyone's working off this distorted understanding

00:08:26.600 of reality which you know it's funny because that's i think going to be a theme of our discussion is

00:08:32.020 the institutions losing their credibility as they dig in and you know pursue their own well-being

00:08:37.420 as opposed to the well-being of the people they're supposed to serve and uh you know in in some slight

00:08:42.540 irony polling is in no way uh immune from that you also have the problem that at this point

00:08:47.380 you know obviously you have people posting prediction markets you know just basically

00:08:52.560 casinos as if those are reliable information and increasingly polls because they've been treated

00:08:58.500 as such a joke are really only jumping off points for people to spin narratives to you know start

00:09:03.600 restart a new cycle you know create content and so at that point of what a prediction market is

00:09:09.320 just as good right because as long as we see a number we can argue about the number whether the

00:09:13.020 number is attached to anything in real life well that's inconsequential because what we really

00:09:16.720 wanted was to make the the content make the point in the first place yeah that's exactly right

00:09:21.300 prediction market's another thing that i i think we you know we saw this coming even back as early

00:09:27.200 as 2016 they were out there you had to go bet in you know england or something if you want to

00:09:31.300 place a big bet like that back then. But this is another conversation. We can very clearly see

00:09:37.740 pollsters attempting to move prediction markets. I mean, I'm not going to get into that totally

00:09:42.880 right now, but it's unfortunate as well because some of these people are new and the prediction

00:09:49.260 market should not take them at the weight that they do. We've watched it now for 16 months.

00:09:55.800 We have had special elections. We've had off cycle elections. And we can see the prediction markets are baked in. Maybe they think candidate A is a 66% favorite. A poll comes out, it swings and he falls or she falls to 40%. 12 hours go by and then it resets.

00:10:14.080 And so it's and you can see the trades that are placed before they're dropped.

00:10:19.320 So this is something that I mean, this is a truly legitimate role eventually for the government to deal with.

00:10:25.600 But they're they're not going to. I mean, that's at least not now, not anytime soon.

00:10:29.560 But this is yet another incentive that's been added to public pollsters or they're supposed to be public pollsters.

00:10:36.820 The problem is they're really not. You know, the traditional definition of what a public poll is, has been distorted and perverted.

00:10:43.500 And that adds a whole other level. And that's a shame because now we're adding some big money incentive to obfuscate what the original problem was, which is, am I doing a good enough job truly representing the voter?

00:10:58.980 You know, guys, everyone has every interest in the world in Washington, D.C., has a lobbyist.

00:11:05.500 K Street's filled with their interests.

00:11:07.180 Their interests are being heard on Capitol Hill.

00:11:09.640 The public pollster is basically the only lobby for the American voter who doesn't have any of that.

00:11:14.520 They don't have any of that influence.

00:11:16.320 And if they come and get that part of the industry and they take that away from you, then you'll have nothing.

00:11:22.640 so it's been a very interesting couple weeks for the conservative movement um heading into what

00:11:31.640 people have already assumed would be a somewhat disastrous midterm between the basic fact that

00:11:36.660 the incumbent party usually loses the midterm and we decided to make that choice a little easier by

00:11:41.640 going to war in iran and jacking up gas prices all over the place in addition to that the conservatives 1.00

00:11:47.200 decided the best thing they could do was to tell young men that they're stupid and lazy and they 1.00

00:11:53.860 shouldn't expect to get jobs to tell young mothers who want to stay home with their children that 1.00

00:11:58.980 they're entitled welfare queens who want to live some kind of glamorous life and they really belong

00:12:03.960 in cubicles looking at spreadsheets and that young people ultimately should not expect to be able to 0.67

00:12:10.000 afford a home or eat food or fill their gas tank all the same time like that's just socialism and

00:12:17.100 if you believe that then you are of course a socialist now aside from the absolutely incredibly

00:12:23.320 disastrous messaging uh just across the board there it i think engenders a level of bitterness

00:12:29.720 in young people that is not really recognized uh by the older set like they don't really

00:12:35.060 understand what's happening they look at someone like me and they say wow or and you're you're

00:12:39.400 really radical you're a really radical guy out there as a political voice and i keep warning

00:12:43.500 them no no no no no i i am the voice of moderate wait i i i am the guy who is standing between you

00:12:51.660 and what is coming yeah i am desperately pleading for you to make changes because if you don't the

00:12:57.600 solutions young people are talking about make me look like a milk toast nothing okay they make me

00:13:03.300 look like john throon in a tutu okay you have no idea what is coming behind me so i guess my

00:13:10.420 question to you is what is coming behind me? What are young people saying about our political

00:13:14.600 system right now? Yeah. And, and just let me preface that with saying it's almost like

00:13:20.060 Republicans learned absolutely nothing from the era of Donald Trump, you know, and I'm old enough

00:13:24.040 to remember, um, you know, being very relieved that our polling was right and others were wrong

00:13:29.480 because they had me thinking I was crazy in 2016. And then, uh, Paul Ryan going to the microphone

00:13:35.680 flanked by uh kevin mccarthy and others and saying you know what we were wrong he heard a voice

00:13:42.180 there has to be we have to go in a different direction uh because he obviously heard something

00:13:48.220 that we did not hear and yet we're i mean what you're describing is essentially a 10 plus year

00:13:54.440 extension of that admission and that converse and now we're back they obviously they didn't really

00:13:59.520 admitted to themselves. And we're back to having this debate all over again. The use of government

00:14:05.940 power in order to right some wrong sounds like to a traditional conservative, you know, socialism or,

00:14:14.560 you know, some radical form of leftism. And they don't understand what they really are going to be

00:14:21.100 dealing with if they don't respond to the, I don't want to call them grievances. Their complaints

00:14:28.880 and their legitimate complaints,

00:14:30.920 which is a big part of Burn It Down, people will read.

00:14:33.800 It's just, we first have to tackle,

00:14:35.840 what do they want and why do they want it?

00:14:37.680 Is there something credible happening here

00:14:39.700 to deny why these people feel the government is rigged,

00:14:43.760 the system's rigged, the economy's rigged,

00:14:45.500 and they can't get ahead no matter what?

00:14:47.040 Not only that, but they started in a hole

00:14:48.940 like no other generations have before them.

00:14:51.780 Millennials and down, by the way, not just Generation C.

00:14:54.360 to do that is to effectively act like Paul Ryan did in 2016 when he pretended that the grievances

00:15:02.100 Donald Trump was speaking to were not legitimate grievances. It will be much worse because they're

00:15:07.240 not ideologically aligned with either party the way that prior generations have been. So there's

00:15:14.780 a danger in that. They could be right-leaning if you give them the solutions that you promised

00:15:20.000 them. But if you don't, they're not particularly loyal to the right and they'll swing hard to the

00:15:25.740 left. Now, that is the entire warning of the book. It will happen. And if that sounds like

00:15:30.900 or what Vice President Vance brought up or proposed about a week and a half ago, which

00:15:37.140 conservatives had an issue with, if those policy proposals sound radical to you, wait until you

00:15:41.760 see El-Sayed's proposals or the rest of them, who represents the faction of the Democratic Party

00:15:47.780 that's effectively a majority of it now, which is the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America.

00:15:53.080 They're based on grievance politics in its truest form, and their government policies want to punish

00:15:59.320 you for injustices, not raise everybody up, not respond because there's a handicap in the system

00:16:05.600 somewhere. So they're just seeking to rectify that and then give people a helping hand up and

00:16:10.760 let them do it themselves. Very different. They have very different ways of going about this and

00:16:16.140 righting the wrongs of the universe. And that always includes hurting the other, somebody

00:16:21.020 defined as the other. And there, that's the difference. So for those, because I was watching

00:16:26.220 your back and forth with someone on Twitter and it's like, are we in a place where you're just

00:16:30.820 going to get rid of social security? Are we in a place where you're just going to get rid of

00:16:34.320 Medicare, Medicaid? Let's be real about something. Young voters look at Big Con, and I use that

00:16:39.360 phrase affectionately, as a complete and utter joke. You haven't succeeded in conserving anything.

00:16:46.140 And Trumpism was about restoration, not conservation, because it's already gone.

00:16:51.580 I mean, these younger voters, if we just go through the experience of a millennial, an average millennial coming into adulthood and into the workforce, they've seen one institution fail after another, one constitutional principle be trampled after another.

00:17:05.240 It's only given, you know, it's only paid lip service to when it suits someone's needs, but it hasn't protected them.

00:17:12.100 That piece of paper, as much reverence as I have for it, hasn't protected them against this ruling class that eats first and then leaves the scraps for everybody else.

00:17:23.980 So they have very little respect for it.

00:17:26.400 Whose fault is that?

00:17:28.700 I mean, we're at a point now.

00:17:29.800 You were the conservation party.

00:17:32.060 You were supposed to conserve those principles.

00:17:33.680 You failed to do so.

00:17:35.280 So not you, of course, but you know what I mean, the Republican Party in general.

00:17:38.700 And the left continued to make progress.

00:17:40.560 So they look at it and they say, this is that those are principles that they, you know, you pay lip service to them, but they're not suiting our needs.

00:17:48.300 Yeah, it's kind of incredible.

00:17:50.860 You know, I, by the way, I want to say it's OK to have grievances.

00:17:54.000 I know we're avoiding that language for a reason.

00:17:56.120 Yeah, I'm trying.

00:17:56.880 Studies and all that.

00:17:57.500 But I taught, you know, I taught public school.

00:18:00.940 I taught civics.

00:18:01.860 And when you teach that, you teach the, you know, the Bill of Rights, you teach the Constitution, you teach the Declaration of Independence.

00:18:07.660 And I hate to break this to all the conservatives out there who are triggered by this word, but the back half of, it's a list of grievances.

00:18:15.480 Literally, that's what we call it in the textbook.

00:18:17.600 Here are the grievances we have against the king.

00:18:19.500 The problem is not having a grievance.

00:18:21.860 Grievances are real.

00:18:22.780 People can wrong you.

00:18:24.240 The question is, is your grievance justified?

00:18:27.340 That's the question.

00:18:28.700 The reason that the founders were correct is not that they were entitled and they just had all these grievances for all the things they expected.

00:18:34.980 they were right because they had the correct grievances because the grievances were justified

00:18:39.220 they were realizing a real sustained violation of their rights as englishmen by the king by the

00:18:46.180 parliament that's why they had to declare their independence and they thought as they made it

00:18:51.580 very clear in that document it was worth enumerating them so that people could evaluate

00:18:56.080 whether their rebellion was justified whether their leaving was justified by the way also if

00:19:01.260 you're a protestant martin luther may have posted some grievances at some point he might be famous 0.71

00:19:05.540 for that so the idea that grievances in and of themselves are a problem that's ridiculous and

00:19:11.360 people who for that language are ignoring like the founding of the country in the most insulting way

00:19:16.560 possible so when we look at the list of grievances from young people the question is not

00:19:21.320 well they have grievances therefore they are just bad people the question is

00:19:25.200 are those grievances justified and when we look at what young people are most concerned about

00:19:31.260 They are not interested, as you say, in what ideological label is placed on the solution.

00:19:36.940 They're worried about whether a solution is coming.

00:19:39.940 So when I talk to young people, the things I consistently hear are cannot find a job, cannot find a romantic partner.

00:19:46.400 Everything has been poisoned.

00:19:47.720 The gender ideology, the government interference, the media, everything has poisoned young men and women against each other.

00:19:55.420 I cannot afford a home. 1.00

00:19:56.500 i cannot be expected to compete in an economy where my job is being handed out to foreigners 1.00

00:20:01.840 on a regular basis i was not meant to compete with the entirety of india and their labor practices 0.89

00:20:06.920 and when i look at all of those grievances they seem reasonable not only do they seem reasonable

00:20:13.040 most of those grievances are things that conservatives should want to solve because

00:20:18.000 as a pollster you know very well that the main thing that makes people conservative is marriage

00:20:22.940 if you want to guarantee one win consistently get people married men become more conservative and

00:20:29.440 women become wildly more conservative when they get married so this should be motivating for

00:20:35.540 conservatives and yet over and over again they seem to want to throw this insight into the trash 0.54

00:20:41.800 they think that it's beneath them to actually address the issues that young people are bringing

00:20:46.600 forward and if the government does anything to address those issues then it must be socialism

00:20:50.960 must be something crazy, right? And so I guess what I'm trying to encourage conservatives to

00:20:57.280 understand is it's fine for young people to point out actual problems with the system and want to

00:21:02.480 see them solve. And if you tell them that every solution possible is socialism, then they will

00:21:09.160 want socialism because you've told them that socialism is everything that they want.

00:21:13.880 Yeah, I really just couldn't agree with that more on the summary of rights of man.

00:21:17.700 um and you know our founders many of them reluctant patriots they actually thought they

00:21:22.600 were going to deliver those lists of grievances to the king because that was the the relationship

00:21:26.820 with the sovereign and the king would look at the parliament and say look what you're doing to my

00:21:30.680 colonial you know my colonial subjects and that he would protect them from uh the the body of

00:21:37.060 government that we as americans look at and think that they're the ones who represent us so it was

00:21:41.560 very different they delivered what essentially that's exactly what it was a list of grievances

00:21:46.540 it's not the same thing to have grievances is not the same thing as to keep score the way the left

00:21:53.640 keeps score we call it ledger politics where they're constantly writing down their list of

00:21:58.400 grievance in a ledger because when they get in power they're going to punish someone for it

00:22:02.520 there's a very big difference and i want to stress that again and we go into a lot of historical

00:22:07.640 accounts because there's a complacency in this country where people say we hear it all the time

00:22:12.800 As a pollster, I hear it all the time. And we hear it from older generations, not younger

00:22:17.060 generations. Oh, that won't happen here. It's America. That's not that's no one's ever going

00:22:22.620 to let that happen. And maybe they've lived their entire life with these safety or guardrails that

00:22:29.080 have prevented the country from descending into a socialist hellscape before. But they don't

00:22:33.540 understand now in today's political environment, who's going to stop it? You know, we have been

00:22:39.540 living in the last, especially with Trump's, in the period between Trump's first and second term,

00:22:44.840 the Biden administration, we were living in an era where it was one Rubicon being crossed after

00:22:49.480 another. And we were one Supreme, it felt like we were one Supreme Court justice vote away from

00:22:56.040 totalitarianism at every step of the way. The Supreme Court has to save them from incarcerating

00:23:01.900 Donald Trump for the rest of his life. The Supreme Court's going to have to save us from this and

00:23:06.880 Whatever ruling it may have been, we have been teetering on the edge like that for a long time. And younger generations look at it and say to themselves, well, I can't count on these institutions to hold up, to make the system fair again, to right those grievances, to address those grievances and right those wrongs.

00:23:26.660 I can't count on that. So I'm going to have to look for somebody or a party that can give me or

00:23:32.380 deliver radical changes to this system because this system's on the verge of breaking. So let's

00:23:37.160 break it ourselves and rebuild it into what we want instead of just sitting on the sidelines

00:23:42.200 and watching it break and turn into whatever somebody else wants it to be. And they're very

00:23:47.240 action-based, whereas ideological, that element has always been a very predictive indicator on

00:23:54.840 how a voter was going to vote. It was always very important to people's decision-making process or

00:24:00.920 rational policy choices, we call them. Well, not we, we didn't make that up. That's what they're

00:24:05.840 called. When they go to vote, they're making a rational policy choice and ideology always played

00:24:09.900 a key factor in that. That is not the case with these voters. And, you know, even millennials

00:24:15.640 and down, it's just, it's not generation C even less. So, and we'll show that in the book and

00:24:20.680 Trump won in 24 in one of the more moderate electorates we had seen in a very long time.

00:24:26.140 It wasn't that there was a sudden spike in conservatives in the electorate.

00:24:30.120 He spoke a different language.

00:24:31.440 He offered a different platform and he attracted these younger voters that Republicans have

00:24:35.460 no prayer to get if they think they're going to go in reverse and go back to the pre-Trump era,

00:24:41.200 which has been a big part of the problem for not just Republicans in general, but the president

00:24:45.540 himself over the last year and a half.

00:24:47.180 this administration has been a lot more like what we have seen from Republicans in the past

00:24:52.340 than it was for for during Trump 1.0 and that's something that's something that the right's gonna

00:24:58.620 have to come to grips with and deal with now not later you know I know that people will want to get

00:25:04.760 into the 2028 debate at some point down the road they're running out of time the clock is ticking

00:25:09.460 all Democrats have to do is sit on the sidelines and bide their time here folks

00:25:13.300 um it's not just age it's race uh the demographic clock is ticking every day and the right had a

00:25:21.820 great opportunity to take the you know they had the ball they had you know they could have ran

00:25:25.740 with it could have ran it down the field in 24 and instead they it was a bunch of infighting a

00:25:31.000 little bit of back you know backwards uh you know regression and they're they're almost out of time

00:25:37.640 here. So, I mean, if anything else, you know, people call you a critic or a black pillar or

00:25:42.940 a doomer or something. I've just never been one of those guys who thought it was productive to

00:25:48.100 put your head in the sand and pretend like you haven't identified a problem. It's going to stick

00:25:51.280 my head in the sand and hopefully the problem goes away. The right's got to deal with this and deal

00:25:54.920 with it now because the first boomers turned 80 this year, the electorate is going to radically

00:25:59.760 change very quickly on them. And it's going to happen sooner rather than later. And if they're

00:26:04.700 not answering or addressing the grievances of these younger voters, they're going to end up

00:26:08.960 in a world of hurt. You know, I'm lucky in that I'm a older millennial. I sit right on that line

00:26:16.960 between millennials and Gen X. And so I saw all the trends at the edges. You know, I saw the crazy

00:26:26.080 wokeness a little bit. I saw the insane feminism. I saw the anti-white stuff. It was present, 1.00

00:26:31.840 but it was not dominant you know when i went to school everyone was a liberal every professor was

00:26:36.400 a liberal they kind of sneered at you if you had a conservative opinion but they still wanted to

00:26:40.820 hear it they still wanted to talk to you you know you you had a prayer of being employed if you were

00:26:45.760 male i was able to buy a home you know in my mid-30s uh you know it's still later than any

00:26:51.580 other generation but you know not not now the average of 40 plus uh and so i i avoided some

00:26:58.440 of these trends that have that are now plaguing uh the younger generations but i saw everything

00:27:04.380 building up and so for me maybe there was still an illusion of being able to correct things through

00:27:11.460 the system as they are we could get reform you know it would take bigger solutions than normal

00:27:15.940 but we could keep most of the institutions we just had to rearrange them properly and get them

00:27:20.660 in good working order and then 2020 happened and any illusion that any of our institutions work

00:27:26.720 just completely demolished for me you know it's i'm sorry but once you watch the constitution get

00:27:31.780 lit on fire in public and nobody does anything the idea that we're just going to go ahead and

00:27:36.540 tweak a few dials on this whole thing starts to go down the tubes pretty quickly now it's obvious

00:27:41.440 that many conservatives are terrified by that because obviously the natural impulse of a

00:27:47.680 conservative is to preserve those institutions right you see them as reflective of your culture

00:27:53.500 of your government of your way of life you can't imagine life without them and so people who are

00:27:58.600 suggesting that they need to be torn down as opposed to simply tweaked in some manner they

00:28:02.920 feel like they are attacking your identity like the the very undergirding of your civilization

00:28:08.380 by going after those but as a young person who's watched these things fail them every single step

00:28:14.180 of the way and has had to hear over and over again how well you just need to stick with the program

00:28:19.060 pull yourself up by your bootstraps clean up your room figure it out you start to think that okay

00:28:24.020 well this system isn't ever going to work it's designed to never work for me from the bottom

00:28:28.960 up or from the top down rather and that's because that's exactly what's happened the system is an

00:28:34.140 extraction mechanism from the young to the old without any real interest in what that's going

00:28:39.640 to cost you generationally uh we know we've coined the term you know boomer luxury communism 0.77

00:28:44.780 because obviously all everything that needs to get cut is something that young people need to

00:28:50.280 build families build communities get jobs always move in the future and the only thing that's

00:28:54.700 untouchable are the things that you know gild the lily for everybody who's 60 year old 60 years old

00:29:01.320 or older and so you really feel this radicalization in young people because they look at this and they

00:29:07.800 say well if my grievances actually to go back to your point about the the list of grievances in

00:29:12.880 the king you know they deliver the list of grievances hoping that the king will listen

00:29:17.340 because if he doesn't the only thing left is an appeal to heaven right like that's that's the

00:29:21.900 conclusion of the of the declaration of independence because the government absolutely

00:29:27.160 refuses to listen to these grievances to redress these grievances we now have the obligation not

00:29:34.180 not the right the obligation to overturn the whole system to break away and start something

00:29:39.620 entirely different and if you try to stop us we're going to fight you to the death because the only

00:29:44.040 appeal we have left you will deny us every other appeal the only appeal we have left is the appeal

00:29:49.060 to heaven the appeal of revolution and so it feels that's where we are going whether it's going to be

00:29:53.580 left or right young people realize the list of grievances is just never getting addressed yeah

00:29:58.700 old people have said we don't care we're never talking about this we're never dealing with it

00:30:02.240 and so the only thing left after you've listed the list of the grievances and had them ignored

00:30:06.840 entirely is the appeal to heaven and i think that's what scares people there's a there is a

00:30:11.580 modern parallel to what you just said here and maybe they're not diving down in a natural law

00:30:17.580 to to articulate it or the protestant ethic or anything that you know using the language of

00:30:23.300 of the founders that we had heard obviously that now is in our founding documents and

00:30:27.280 there they see it a little bit differently and it's look well we're the ones who are saddled

00:30:32.800 with all of this debt we're the ones who have been saddled with all of the problems these huge

00:30:37.860 challenges that are going to have to be met and overcome it's not fake right the money as much as

00:30:43.300 we like to think it is it's fiat money right but it's still not a fake problem eventually they'll

00:30:48.340 have to deal with it so if this system doesn't work for us where we can vote and affect change

00:30:53.920 by electing somebody else which is what they were thought they were doing when they elected

00:30:58.120 Donald Trump, then there's only one place this leads, folks. I mean, obviously, they're going

00:31:04.260 to start to think about looking for alternatives. Before anything descends into chaos, they're just

00:31:09.620 going to swing into another party or another group of people who are promising to meet those

00:31:15.240 needs or to reform the system in a more dramatic way. The issue is, and I think we have to be real

00:31:20.760 about this the issue is they keep running into a system that has been dominated by created 0.73

00:31:28.440 dominated and insulated by boomers for the last 40 years and boomers are used to and this isn't

00:31:35.220 to put anybody down i'm just this is every everyone's got their own lived experience and

00:31:39.740 this is how it is for boomers they've been the center of the universe for 40 years and everything

00:31:45.240 has been created and perpetuated, including huge bureaucracies, to placate them, to meet their 0.65

00:31:54.620 needs, to serve them, to earn their votes. And in the meantime, as they're accumulating wealth at a

00:32:01.300 rate we've never seen before, by the way, in US history, they're also accumulating a debt that

00:32:06.160 these younger people have to see. And we'll spend a big part of the time in the beginning of the

00:32:12.320 book aren't trying to explain to people here's how boomers see the world and by the way boomers 0.94

00:32:18.060 here's how other generations see the world i think it's important to acknowledge that boomers don't

00:32:23.980 want to reform the system at all because it's built for them they're in the twilight of their

00:32:28.940 life and it's their glory years or their glory days they don't want to rock the boat they have

00:32:35.580 no intention of making big reforms like social security and the number one thing we'll hear from

00:32:41.680 people when we're doing these studies is, well, don't you, because we've done countless focus 1.00

00:32:46.660 groups on this really interesting stuff you guys will see in there, but the younger people always

00:32:50.780 respond with something. It's kind of heartbreaking. Like, right, you're good. But what about your

00:32:56.260 kids? What about your kids' kids? I got to tell you, the lack of concern is pretty stunning.

00:33:02.300 It just is because they think I worked my life. This is what I'm entitled to. And this is what I

00:33:08.780 want. I don't want someone like Donald Trump to come in with a wrecking ball and destroy stuff.

00:33:12.800 And guys, that's probably why Donald Trump really didn't improve with boomers or 65 plus for that 0.81

00:33:19.760 matter from 2020 to 2024. And why does this matter? Because it's important when you get

00:33:25.060 elected in a Republican government, a Republican system of government, it's important to actually

00:33:29.740 represent the coalition, the people who elected you. Republicans have always been able to count

00:33:35.340 on at least some share of reliable older voters coming out. But the truth is Trump only won them

00:33:40.340 by a handful of points. He did one point worse in 24 than he did in 2020. This is a president

00:33:46.880 who was elected by younger people swinging rapidly, particularly younger men, millennial

00:33:52.320 mind changers, and first time millennial men and down. That's who elected Donald Trump. I mean,

00:33:57.900 Gen X too, of course, played a key role there. But even Gen X isn't particularly happy because

00:34:04.040 if you're on the lower end, if you're in your high 40s or low 50s, you're certainly concerned

00:34:09.820 if Social Security is going to be there for you. You're concerned if these programs are going to

00:34:14.540 collapse under their own weight. So it's not exactly like they're feeling safe either.

00:34:19.500 But we'll see time and time and again that when they feel like they're not getting those,

00:34:25.540 those, you know, they're not being attended to, they do swing. These are not reliable voting

00:34:31.760 blocks so the only way to keep them together and to keep the coalition together obviously

00:34:36.180 is to govern toward the people who voted for you and where if we've already seen i think it's i

00:34:41.940 don't even know why people still try to debate this i think it's beyond debate at this point

00:34:46.880 that we have seen a huge slippage in the 24 coalition um the question is what are you going

00:34:53.860 to do about it now i mean so if you're intending on just coming out with the same conservative

00:34:59.620 of talking points about why we can't tackle these institutions. And you can forget about it. I mean,

00:35:04.520 this is a group of people, especially under 40, when we're, this is one of the, my favorite polls

00:35:08.980 that we did when Trump was told by the judge to turn the plane around because he couldn't deport

00:35:13.500 people. They wanted Trump to ignore those judges. That's who you're dealing with. Um, it was the

00:35:19.420 older group of voters. So again, don't want to rock the boat. They're in the twilight who said,

00:35:24.140 now let's, let's, let's honor the judge. Let's make sure, you know, that, uh, we, we're not

00:35:28.520 challenging the system too much i mean those are two diametrically opposed views because of the way

00:35:34.680 the differences in how these these groups of people see the world so eventually it's going

00:35:39.400 to come to a head i think why does it matter i mean it's it's not that i'm arguing to forsake

00:35:44.500 the older you know voting coalition it's just that there is such a thing as the future and

00:35:49.360 it makes little sense to uh you know to forsake the the future block the winning parts we call

00:35:56.280 It makes little sense to, you know, forsake the winning parts of the coalition only to

00:36:00.600 placate a handful of people right now.

00:36:04.100 Rich, hopefully you can help me because I am constantly pondering this question and

00:36:09.420 I'm pretty good at political analysis, but I can't figure this out.

00:36:12.800 So maybe, maybe you'll have an insight for me here.

00:36:15.060 Shoot. 0.96

00:36:15.820 As you say, conservatives need young men. 0.99

00:36:20.480 Like that's a growing part of the coalition.

00:36:22.520 That's a part of the coalition that was critical to the last election.

00:36:25.780 I mean, you even saw something I thought was basically impossible. 0.96

00:36:29.220 Young Hispanic men moving into the Republican Party in just, you know, every year I have to hear about how some ethnic minority is a natural conservative and it never ends up being true. 0.90

00:36:39.800 But in this one case, it turns out that actually men of that particular ethnic group, young men would actually move to conservatism when proper when they think they're going to be properly represented.

00:36:52.320 So we know they need men. We know they need married people. 0.73

00:36:55.100 We know that that's critical to the future of the coalition. I imagine that, you know, as a humble history teacher just a few years ago, my ability to read the poll should be, you know, at the very least equal to a professional politician.

00:37:08.920 they should be able to look at the polling and realize these groups are critical to their future

00:37:13.840 as a party yet for some reason conservative politicians and especially conservative

00:37:19.640 influencers and commentators seem obsessed with hating young men like despising them seething

00:37:26.280 like a seething hatred something that's it's not a mild indifference to how young men are doing

00:37:32.440 they want to spit on them they want them to know that they are loathed by the conservative movement 0.79

00:37:38.180 also refuse to take any steps in the direction of encouraging marriage, finding a way to build

00:37:44.220 a society that makes marriage more possible for young people. So why, when these two groups are

00:37:49.840 so critical to the future of the right, of the conservative movement, why are people obsessed

00:37:55.780 with destroying the very people who would make them powerful in our political system? I mean,

00:38:02.440 just self-preservation, self-interest speaks against this. So it has to be something pretty

00:38:07.020 radical. I think there's an unfortunate answer to this, almost dark even, but it's a reality that

00:38:13.620 Republicans refuse to tackle. They refuse to really confront. And I think that the Trump era

00:38:20.300 masked it for a while because they could turn their ire on Trump and they could try to fight

00:38:26.460 him. And they didn't have to directly say what they really were saying when they said,

00:38:31.920 I don't support Trump doing this, building a wall, the tariff strategy or whatever might have been something that was popular with these men.

00:38:40.660 They never had to actually address those voters who wanted them.

00:38:45.100 They would always use Trump as a symbol to attack it.

00:38:48.140 The truth is, and the left doesn't have this problem as bad as the right.

00:38:52.740 They have it. It's minimal. The right has got to deal with this.

00:38:55.880 The donor class of the Republican Party, of which, unfortunately, their elected representatives pay far more attention to than the rest of the Republican Party, they don't agree with the base.

00:39:11.300 They don't agree with even the average American.

00:39:13.280 They have radically different views. Take it as somebody who talks to them often because they think being a pollster and being, you know, me being a pollster and them being a donor entitles them to my phone number and free advice all the time.

00:39:27.640 They don't agree with you guys. I don't know how else to tell you. I mean, it's almost every issue.

00:39:33.740 You've moved them when it comes to immigration, but you haven't moved them.

00:39:38.180 The Overton window hasn't shifted to the point where they agree with you wholly on it.

00:39:43.560 They still would slam an amnesty down your throat in a second if they felt like it was the proper time or they could get away with it.

00:39:51.880 I don't want to step in this issue, but it's just true.

00:39:54.240 One of these big ones that shows this divide is the issue of Israel between young men and the donor class.

00:40:01.200 it's just not their crusade. It's not that they have, and I know we've seen this word thrown

00:40:06.760 around like crazy in the last year and a half, this one's an anti-Semite, that one's an anti-Semite.

00:40:11.520 There is now a resentment among these younger men for the state of Israel and people who support 0.74

00:40:15.940 them because of how you treated them. They simply had, again, a grievance. Can you deal with my

00:40:21.680 problems first before you go run off and deal with the problems of a foreign nation? I don't think 1.00

00:40:25.340 I'm being too selfish to make that simple request. I mean, you did tell me we were going to put

00:40:32.340 America first, right? So can we do that? And then for that very seminar, guys, we're not drawing

00:40:38.300 some like, we're not zigzagging from getting to point A to point B with that one. I mean,

00:40:42.860 they were told that's what this administration and this party was going to focus on. And they

00:40:46.640 did not get that. And they got called every name in the book, but you can go down the line,

00:40:51.480 Um, whether it's big government reforms that we were just talking about, the, the big spending,

00:40:56.340 uh, bills in the pro, you know, the big spending parts of the approach appropriation bill

00:41:00.400 defense, you know, they want huge spending on defense because they have friends or themselves

00:41:05.580 who are going to make money on that spending.

00:41:07.280 The average Republican voter could care less.

00:41:10.700 Uh, you know, I mean, and I should even just say right leaning voter, a member of Donald

00:41:14.900 Trump's coalition, because let's face it, he brought a lot of these young men in, um,

00:41:19.220 You know, or at least they came in under his banner as the leader of the party and the standard bearer of the party.

00:41:24.240 They liked his platform. Well, what was it? What did he say?

00:41:27.760 I'm going to completely obliterate the deep state.

00:41:30.720 You think the GOP donor class wants to completely obliterate the deep state?

00:41:34.840 They absolutely do not want to do that. They want FISA to stay exactly where it is.

00:41:39.940 And I think this is a huge problem that is it's got to be I don't want to say even addressed.

00:41:45.340 It has to be dealt with and resolved if Republicans really want to be an effective political force.

00:41:51.280 Otherwise, it's going to be one constant betrayal of the voter after another.

00:41:55.720 I hate using the B word, but it's just the truth.

00:41:57.900 It's we can go all the way back to 1992.

00:42:00.640 Read my lips.

00:42:01.700 No new taxers.

00:42:02.860 Well, the GOP donor class disagreed with that promise.

00:42:06.500 They got their way.

00:42:07.820 And Republicans, they got the shaft where the average Bush Reagan voter got the shaft.

00:42:13.760 What happened in response to that? 20% of them fractured off and voted for Ross Perot four years

00:42:18.980 later and handed the Democrats the presidency who never even won a majority to do so. Bill Clinton

00:42:24.960 never won 50 plus one. He won because so many Republican right-leaning voters didn't want to

00:42:30.060 vote Republican anymore. I think we're in a real, real dangerous spot of repeating history and going

00:42:35.700 down that path again. If we don't recognize the sad, honest truth, look at what they did in Texas.

00:42:41.240 everyone was well aware that ken paxton was the base favorite in texas they spent over a hundred

00:42:46.780 million dollars to try to save john cornyn he gets defeated anyway and now all we hear is i mean

00:42:55.480 just i actually just looked at it talarico has over 50 some 53 million dollars cash on hand

00:43:00.960 he's got a 51 to one advantage over ken paxton and and republicans now are wondering who's going

00:43:06.220 to find ken paxton because the donor class is being bitter and petty this is the i gotta tell

00:43:12.060 you this is the heart of a lot of the republican party's problems like almost everything can stem

00:43:16.040 from this disconnect between the donors and the base and unfortunately the the crude answer the

00:43:21.520 crude but direct answer to your question is the elected representatives take their side all the

00:43:26.740 time hungry now now what about now whenever it hits you wherever you are grab an oh henry bar

00:43:40.960 to satisfy your hunger with its delicious combination of big crunchy salty peanuts

00:43:46.780 covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating swing by a gas station and

00:43:53.120 get an oh henry today oh hungry oh henry yeah and it's incredible because it also you know

00:44:02.060 they're either deluded or malicious in the fact that they don't recognize that they have

00:44:08.060 also transformed the demographics of texas to the point where they don't have the advantages 0.59

00:44:13.140 they used to it turns out if you move all of pakistan and india into texas they aren't

00:44:19.000 actually naturally conservative voters so you can't really play around in the margins there

00:44:22.840 You don't really have the slack to say, oh, well, you know, we can go after the base favorite because ultimately we're going to win state anyway.

00:44:30.000 So we could expend a large amount of our resources to do the infighting and then we'll just naturally win the state with whoever's left at the end.

00:44:36.780 It's like, no, actually, you've made the state competitive demographic transformation.

00:44:41.100 And so you don't have that, you know, kind of slack in the in the system to just go ahead and throw a ton of money against the favorite because ultimately things are just going to work out.

00:44:50.200 But they pretend as if they do, either because they really don't care if they win the election ultimately, or they're so bitter that they're willing to spite somebody, or they're delusional and they don't recognize that they've taken that road and created that process.

00:45:01.340 But, Rich, before we go to the questions of the people real quick, I want to ask you my final question, which is, when I talk to young people, like I said, I'm a moderate, I'm squishy, I am Jimmy Carter compared to these people.

00:45:18.380 and so i think what we're looking at is the evaporation of the american middle it just

00:45:23.400 is never going to exist in your there are no moderates there is no middle voter uh it seems

00:45:27.960 like the all the younger generations are just becoming as radical as possible in either

00:45:32.380 direction some people will say oh well gen z or gen alpha is like the most conservative

00:45:36.780 uh demographic i don't think that's true at all it's just the ones that are conservative it's not

00:45:41.900 are way more right wing but it's a smaller percentage so first where are the young votes

00:45:47.680 going and do you see this evaporation of any appeal to the middle ground as young people

00:45:52.860 search for any answer no matter who might be handing it out that that is a great question

00:45:57.840 is actually an entire part uh it's not the entire chapter but it's a huge section of one of these

00:46:03.180 chapters where we're discussing what what makes up their world view and what do they really think

00:46:10.120 in order to know what they really want or why they want it you have to understand that um there's a

00:46:15.440 huge shift and it's very deceptive to moderate identification in the polling. And it's a trend

00:46:22.720 over time with younger voters, especially Generation Z. And that is really deceptive

00:46:28.340 because they're not moderate. When you ask them what their actual views are, the only reason why

00:46:33.280 they're saying that they're moderate is because they don't want to identify with either one of

00:46:37.160 the parties. And they understand that if they say liberal, it makes you think that they identify

00:46:42.620 with the Democratic Party. If they say they're conservative, they don't want you to, they

00:46:47.120 certainly don't want to be associated with like a Ted Cruz brand of conservatism. So they hear that

00:46:52.380 and they instantly reject those labels. A big part of that is that they do reject labels altogether,

00:46:57.060 but it doesn't mean they're actually moderate. They're just choosing it as a protest to stay

00:47:02.540 away from identifying with either party. And there is a complete dissolution of what is truly what

00:47:09.240 we would think or traditionally think of as a moderate voter. Do you remember the Tuesday

00:47:14.500 committee or whatever it was called in Congress? It was this moderate group of Republicans. They

00:47:19.360 were always at odds with the Freedom Caucus, but they're always billed by Fox News as the guys who

00:47:23.860 sit down and really talk to both sides. They patch it up. They'll make a deal. That really

00:47:29.780 doesn't exist with Gen Z anymore. They want their way, and they are willing to just use 1.00

00:47:37.020 both vehicles to get their way. So it's very misleading. And it's something that's foreign

00:47:43.820 to the political consultant class that has come to mature in this era. And even those, I mean,

00:47:50.080 it's a class that struggled to deal with Trumpism and the phenomena of why Trump appealed.

00:47:55.700 Well, they're going to have fun figuring out why the next nominee that they think and they see is

00:48:01.460 even more radical than somebody like a Donald Trump or a Barack Obama. They're going to have

00:48:06.220 fun with this, Aaron, because I'm telling you, these people, obviously, we know there's about

00:48:11.880 30 percent who are probably more loyal to the Republican Party in Gen Z. It's probably around

00:48:17.380 27 now. But it's it was 30 at the time, but it keeps shrinking. And then you have a certain

00:48:23.440 percentage that's loyal to the Democratic Party. But there is a big chunk of that that looks like

00:48:29.000 it's a middle, but it's not. And I just want to keep stressing that these people would probably

00:48:35.220 vote for a DSA candidate as fast as they would vote for somebody who's radically America first

00:48:40.300 because they just want action. So that could be problematic in the future. I think that's

00:48:47.080 one of the whole reasons why we wrote this book because DC is used to doing things a certain way

00:48:52.640 and I just don't think it's built or it's even designed to deal with people who want this level

00:48:58.020 of change. There's no way to hatch that out there. You know what I mean? Yes. There was a

00:49:04.500 twitter poster who had said something to the effect of uh we're a latin american country now

00:49:08.960 and we're going to whipsaw between fascism and socialism in every election uh and i i fear that

00:49:14.980 that's probably truer than people are ready for uh you know we have the scenario where donald trump

00:49:20.160 in the you know first couple months of the administration uh was just moving fast and

00:49:26.460 breaking things he was doing every executive order he didn't care what anyone said everyone

00:49:31.460 was very excited about this on the right everyone was devastated by it on the left but the really

00:49:36.160 interesting thing was everybody felt like it was inevitable like it was almost like people

00:49:40.660 the right wanted him to act as a dictator and the left expected him to act as a dictator and so even

00:49:46.240 if he didn't have dictatorial power there's almost this gradient to the way that the politics was

00:49:51.980 going to develop and i think that that speaks to your your point here that even if people won't say

00:49:56.300 it out loud even if that's not ultimately what they're directly lobbying for that's the only

00:50:00.780 what they want to see is that man of action even if the man of action is yeah yeah exactly and then

00:50:05.780 i think uh trump looked like that man of action for a moment and that's what built all of that

00:50:09.920 excitement and i think that what you're seeing is the people looking around saying i i'm sorry

00:50:14.640 i thought i voted for a revolution and it turns out what i voted for was you know a slight

00:50:19.820 improvement on republican politics i think it's more than a slight improvement to be fair i think

00:50:24.040 administration is the best republican administration of my lifetime but i think the enthusiasm gap i

00:50:29.020 think many people the administration look around and say well we've done so much compared to other

00:50:32.680 republican administrations why aren't you happy with us and the answer is well yes you have like

00:50:36.900 compared to other administrations you're doing fantastic but we needed revolution we needed

00:50:41.560 something radical the hours later you know i mean the hour is far later than it was when george

00:50:46.720 bush was president so george bush could get a get away with a certain amount of going along to get

00:50:51.420 along here's your tax cut and now i'm going to go pivot to a war that was okay back then when we had

00:50:57.240 the peace dividend and we weren't 40 trillion in debt and college debt wasn't ridiculous and

00:51:02.620 the home ownership was out of out of reach i mean the great recession hadn't happened yet in fact

00:51:07.300 people were getting homes that had no business getting homes i mean that was a big part of it

00:51:11.820 um the hours later you did tell people this is what i say all the time to them i hope they they

00:51:19.200 they just don't seem to appreciate it how many younger people truly believed that donald trump

00:51:24.600 and jd vance were their last chance was really they were really their last chance to right this

00:51:29.800 ship before what your commenter said is what happens we just start gyrating between some

00:51:36.080 socialist nutcase or some you know uh best impression of a fascist on the right or something

00:51:41.700 you know which is always a bit of an ox maybe because fascism is technically a form of socialism

00:51:46.960 but you know i mean this is what we're what i i think he's probably right we're going to get but

00:51:51.900 more important than any of that is that is what they thought that is what they thought and to let

00:51:58.180 them down is an invitation to have that pendulum swing in a dangerous dangerous way i mean the

00:52:06.100 look a lot of the political class couldn't understand after barack obama out of the

00:52:09.700 country could elect donald trump it was very simple barack obama promised especially a lot

00:52:14.740 of younger people you know hope and change right and it was going to be this radical change in the

00:52:19.520 country and trajectory of the country uh he gets there it becomes real clear real fast that there's

00:52:24.680 no hope for any real change he let them down and they looked for somebody else and a stronger

00:52:30.500 somebody else a strong man to deliver something for them uh especially with the in-between period

00:52:36.400 there with biden which really ticked a lot of people off they had this epiphany moment oh my god 0.62

00:52:41.120 he really was senile they lied to us about all of this stuff i want to punish them go and punish

00:52:48.000 Anthony Fauci, go and punish the Democratic Party. They put people in jail, go and punish

00:52:52.520 the bureaucrats. And he didn't. And oh, by the way, we know that'll make our lives better.

00:52:57.780 We know you'll do that because they saw his administration the first go around,

00:53:00.880 which was laser focused on domestic. They just didn't get that. So I think it's a little,

00:53:05.840 I just want to point that out. It's a little intellectually dishonest for people on the right

00:53:09.000 now to say, even people in the administration, because I hear it all the time, but we did so

00:53:13.440 much, but we did this. I'm not arguing that with you, you know, and I'm sure you should have. And

00:53:19.180 it's probably unfair that you don't get the credit for a lot of things that you've done,

00:53:22.500 but you're not appreciating the moment in history that you stepped onto the stage in.

00:53:26.960 And that's not anyone's fault, but Jerome.

00:53:30.840 No, I agree. That's, uh, that's entirely correct. Well, Rich, we're going to go to

00:53:35.460 the questions of the people here real quick, but before we do, where should they find your work,

00:53:40.120 the book everything else that you're doing yeah i mean the best place to follow me for like

00:53:44.800 community interaction is definitely locals peoplespundent.locals.com the book link is up

00:53:50.520 on there but the biggest following i got is on x that's where people go it's at peoples underscore

00:53:55.460 pundit and the link to the book is on there you can go to simon and schuster that link and it'll

00:54:00.620 you can get it anywhere books are sold amazon barnes noble books a million um either you know

00:54:06.280 whichever one's your preference but uh we're everywhere on tiktok linkedin i mean um tiktok

00:54:11.920 instagram i don't play around on linkedin anymore uh you know you you know you gotta you name it by

00:54:17.400 the way from polling that's why i got on tiktok and instagram and the rest of it because all of

00:54:22.280 these young voters all prefer that over others so i thought man i better get on there or else

00:54:26.600 i'm gonna end up like the republican party that's right yeah but for better or worse we must better

00:54:31.540 avoid our own boomer in them and learn the new platforms well mr barris uh i think you do great

00:54:37.420 work i think people should absolutely check out what you're doing check out your book

00:54:40.540 follow you on all your social media so let's head over to the questions uh chris baker arthur says

00:54:48.900 bring on rolio tomasi oran he is the best i'm not super familiar with him i think he's one of the

00:54:55.300 the influence the manosphere guys the red pill guys um i'm just not super familiar with this

00:55:01.280 stuff but thank you for the recommendation i'll give it a look uh author in california says

00:55:06.900 meanwhile those who missed the fine print in the 2024 campaign literature were voting for higher

00:55:12.060 prices another minimally eastern picnic data centers in every backyard and are called panicans

00:55:17.520 for noticing the agenda shift yeah that has been the most annoying thing look i i understand the

00:55:23.800 desire to defend the administration but everybody explicitly in writing told me we weren't going to

00:55:29.180 war to iran like literally the point where steven miller was on twitter saying anyone who suggested 0.78

00:55:33.860 we were going to go to war in iran was some agent of kamala harris that was a smear a lie we would

00:55:38.420 never do it so it does it is directly insulting to me and my intelligence when i have to hear that

00:55:43.480 we've really been at war with iran for 47 years and actually donald trump was always promising 0.88

00:55:48.320 a war with iran and you panicking are just too stupid to recognize it like i'm sorry but if the 0.99

00:55:53.120 minute you tell that to me i would just want you to let know me to you you've lost all credibility 0.99

00:55:58.020 with me i can no longer look at you as a serious human being and so i think i'm i'm far from alone

00:56:02.780 in that field yeah i would just i i completely agree with that commenter and i just point out

00:56:07.940 that the you know the proof is in the data not the pudding i mean i mean the that side doesn't

00:56:13.200 have a single data point to cite as far as how public opinion has changed now uh since this

00:56:20.220 administration did pivot to this entire new agenda there's not a single data point that supports any

00:56:25.560 of the arguments that that they make the entire country is not wrong and they are right you know

00:56:30.520 i mean it's what if you find yourself in uh a shrinking pool of people you know and we call it

00:56:36.720 some we call it purification through subtraction if you find yourself in a shrinking pool of people

00:56:42.220 who think that everybody else heard something different you're right you should re-examine

00:56:46.880 whether or not you're just trying to reaffirm your own biases and that's what they've done

00:56:51.500 yeah when you were out there two years ago mocking you know john uh what are kareen john

00:56:57.160 pierre for uh saying that americans were entitled to believe that they should be able to afford milk

00:57:01.800 and eggs and now you're mocking people over the price of their food you know the motivation gets

00:57:06.740 a little too obvious cherry coke nixon says we continue to be distracted by islam and israel 1.00

00:57:12.040 while the west burns asunder and both sides seem to fixate on those stupid foreign interests i'm 0.99

00:57:17.980 mad yeah this is why george washington told us not to have favored nations or hated nations 0.99

00:57:22.120 because we would literally do exactly this uh we literally had a founding father tell us

00:57:26.080 don't do this and the entire conservative movement says screw george washington i don't care about

00:57:30.820 the founding fathers actually we'll just fight over israel and iran and i am as tired of it as

00:57:37.580 anyone or make an ai of george washington and pretend you're having an interview with him

00:57:42.200 and he somehow uh would have supported the iran war if he was alive i mean the amid the gas

00:57:47.560 lighting is over the top um the clock is running and i think this commenter gets it i don't just

00:57:54.100 from my point of view i think the what the the ideals we were talking about in the founding

00:57:58.000 documents before are very unique and western and i really think both sides both of that you know

00:58:04.520 whether it's um you know people are so mad at israel that they're they're almost embracing

00:58:09.360 islam now i think they're making a mistake too the demographic clock is running the right can't

00:58:14.720 afford to just sit around and be consumed by another part of the world's problems uh the 0.87

00:58:22.180 trump administration's done a lot of good but at this at this rate we'll still be replaced and

00:58:26.260 we'll still lose this fight ultimately so i mean it's i'm the math guy guys i'm looking at the

00:58:30.300 numbers i'm looking at the time um time is running out we can't afford to have these distractions i

00:58:35.080 couldn't i could not agree more he also says uh don't see the wisdom of let let's go for a high

00:58:41.640 draft pick logic and the GOP to lose this election this isn't sports uh losing it does not equal

00:58:46.980 franchise rebuilding well it does if your franchise is a neocons and not the GOP you have to understand

00:58:52.600 that there's a party inside the party and that's what most of this is actually fighting over they

00:58:56.660 don't care if the GOP as such burns down they care if there's a safe home for neoconservative

00:59:01.480 and so if the GOP is not a home for conservatism it just needs to be burned down and rebuilt so

00:59:06.740 that neoconservatives can rule it again that's literally what you're saying yeah I don't have

00:59:11.560 anything to add to that other than just remember neocons guys they were not always considered even

00:59:16.260 republicans they they moved from one coalition to another there's nothing conservative about them

00:59:21.240 i and i don't mean this in any derogatory way other than just to be a it's applicable they're 0.89

00:59:26.560 basically coalition parasites they use your political capital to get what they want then 0.94

00:59:30.820 they leave you to die and they'll move on and that's what they unfortunately did to donald trump 0.88

00:59:35.900 here that's exactly right sergeant valentine says as a young gen z man myself and a student of

00:59:42.040 history i know the spirit can get you whatever you want a big house a pretty bride and lots of

00:59:47.100 money and yeah that's kind of what is left for people right like if they're like if i'm going

00:59:51.420 to be trapped in this system that's going to dime me everything then the only thing left to do is

00:59:55.660 overturn that system in whatever way is possible so i can't actually earn things we always have to

00:59:59.680 hear about how the you know young people want socialism no i think actually for most young men

01:00:04.920 especially young white men they just want the opportunity to actually do what they are capable

01:00:09.500 of to be admitted to a school because they are qualified to get a job because they are qualified

01:00:13.900 to go out and earn money and get promotions and get married and have a wife because they can do

01:00:18.520 it they are tired of having weights tied to their legs that's the issue it's not one of they need a

01:00:23.920 handout they just need you to stop holding them down yeah we get it and by the way i mean we'll

01:00:30.000 explain that in in detail we call it latter politics giving people uh a way to address

01:00:36.400 their own grievances is not the same thing as uh you know kowtowing to every grievance in the

01:00:42.720 country in fact it's helpful and it leads to political maturation uh the other thing i'd say

01:00:47.660 about this is you know he would not be the first person in history to come to that conclusion the

01:00:51.420 book is filled with examples america is exceptional but we're not exempt from the laws of nature and

01:00:57.040 the law human nature this will happen to us too it is we're not the first group who ignored you

01:01:03.220 know young uh the grievances of young people and the government just became paralyzed to address

01:01:08.560 them and they took radical action to to to make sure they were and and it led unfortunately to

01:01:15.740 that system and many times that country literally burning to the ground

01:01:20.100 nick said again says born in 83 america hasn't been normal since 9 11 we all feel that brother

01:01:27.040 we all feel that yeah bobby the nabob says uh talking about a list of grievances maybe think

01:01:32.800 of warhammer dwarves with the book of grudges young white men need to be dwarf matching well

01:01:37.320 you can't get through an episode without a warhammer 40k reference so thank you very much

01:01:41.980 sean wyland says the root cause is the china shock all of the productive jobs for people under

01:01:48.760 the age of 55 were reshored to china or replaced here at home with h1b's young americans need 0.83

01:01:54.760 income to build an adult life this is of course very true and you know rich i gotta say i i worry

01:02:00.840 because the the tariff strategy obviously was unpopular with the chamber of commerce crowd but

01:02:07.860 was very popular with the people donald trump was actually talking to one of the things that you know

01:02:12.820 is dangerous to say out loud, but is 100% correct, is Donald Trump really was not so

01:02:18.480 subtly dog whistling to white middle class Americans and working class Americans in the

01:02:23.940 Rust Belt when he talked to them. He's making very clear that he was pursuing a strategy that

01:02:28.880 would allow them to maintain their way of life. And even though those people could not say that

01:02:32.540 out loud for fear of, you know, being attacked, they heard that. They knew what was being said

01:02:37.940 to them. And so if this round of tariffs fails, if this attempt to reshore fails, I worry that

01:02:43.220 the lesson learned by politicians is that engaging any of this conduct is the failure and not

01:02:48.360 recognizing that not completing that project is actually what brought you to this place.

01:02:54.000 Yeah. And we've pulled this issue a lot in the Rust Belt, particularly we used to do the Rust

01:02:58.740 Belt poll. If people have followed me in the past, they might remember that it was near the big six

01:03:03.380 primarily, but we would expand it. I mean, we just disagreed with a lot of other pollsters,

01:03:09.020 probably because of how they worded the question. Obviously, Donald Trump was winning these states

01:03:13.580 because people did support those policies. It was definitely a dog whistle, but it also was

01:03:19.900 something that people said, you know what? No, our president is supposed to do that to protect us.

01:03:23.940 Look at our communities. We were talking about Springfield, Ohio, not long ago with what's going

01:03:30.300 on with the Haitian population. They were promised a revitalized economy. Um, what they

01:03:35.380 got was nothing, nothing, uh, like what they expected. And I'm worried about the same thing

01:03:41.240 too. And it will go, if they do wind up losing or, or, you know, um, uh, learning the wrong

01:03:47.520 lessons, we'll never have reckonings for people like, again, John Cornyn, who opposed Donald

01:03:52.300 Trump on that every step of the way. And it's like, you know, if you're going to have your

01:03:55.200 own side constantly try to sabotage you, it makes it a lot harder to advance that policy of

01:04:02.120 reshoring. And the Republican right in the Senate is, without a doubt, going to play a huge role

01:04:08.420 in that if it does fail. That's tragic. Sean also says, thank you for continuing to stick

01:04:14.160 with the important issue of economic opportunity for heritage American men. It's not low agency

01:04:19.720 to admit that young men need gainful employment and opportunities. It is, in fact, exactly the

01:04:24.240 opposite and that's why i think neither rich and i are going to shut about up about that anytime

01:04:28.840 soon definitely not that's what people say that's what i'll convey that's right uh postman says

01:04:37.140 oran legit well done fighting the globalists on welfare to stay at home uh married moms uh for my

01:04:42.780 people patronage for my enemies bootstraps yeah uh obviously this has been a huge uh back and

01:04:48.720 forth i'm actually going to have a couple episodes focusing uh on this for the next two days so

01:04:53.920 if you want to hear more on that uh dial in but truly yet another disastrous set of messages

01:04:59.080 coming out of the republican party right before uh midterms just an amazing thing to behold

01:05:03.820 unbelievable nixon again says boomers seem to think that india's h1bs are high iq and better

01:05:10.520 than lazy americans uh kids job offshoring and white collar replacement is existential to us

01:05:17.280 yeah it seems in many cases the hatred of their children who came to dislike them is far more

01:05:23.040 important than thinking about the future of the country uh that that and obviously the uh chamber

01:05:28.220 of commerce incentives wrapped around uh cheap labor seem to be the driving forces there yeah

01:05:33.860 which is incredible because boomer 2 which is the jones boomers the younger end of the boomers

01:05:38.100 they birthed the managerial class in this country and they're the ones who worshipped and you know

01:05:43.540 we're a comment to brought it up before they're the ones who worship the gdp chart and that's

01:05:48.040 what everything became about instead of you know remembering that there we have a country before

01:05:51.820 an economy or we're supposed to anyway um it's remarkable that they embrace that policy for

01:05:58.580 other generations when they fully expected those jobs to be there for them it's telling

01:06:04.840 john clement davis says any predictions on the ohio governor's race yeah i think the gop blew it

01:06:11.860 uh i think that everybody could see that from a mile away i think it's really funny because i

01:06:16.700 someone sent me something uh joel barry like saying that i was somehow rooting for the democrat

01:06:21.720 because i noticed that people hate vivek uh because if you point out the gop's uh mistakes

01:06:27.380 you must be rooting for the left like that's been i think both of us have experienced this rich

01:06:32.320 100 yeah so so this is the mentality out there uh the the answer is the gop chose a terrible

01:06:39.600 candidate who hates america and hates american values uh and so uh no surprise that when you

01:06:45.180 drop them in the middle of iowa uh that did not play well telling people that you should

01:06:50.160 never you know want to be on a football team or date the prom queen and you should spend all of

01:06:54.320 your time uh learning spelling words uh well yeah it turns out that doesn't play well in the

01:06:59.140 midwest so surprise surprise uh next time maybe i don't know find someone from ohio to run for

01:07:06.480 governor of ohio it's a novel it's a novel thought to to defend the president on this one because i

01:07:12.060 know this to be the case he actually didn't want him to run for governor so i could at least give

01:07:16.460 the president of bone here um he's gonna take it on the chin over it but he didn't really privately

01:07:22.420 want vivek he did not think it was a good idea and here we are uh you know he was a bit of a

01:07:28.100 chameleon guys in the 24 nomination i mean in case he was very good at it but he was nonetheless

01:07:33.540 so to put him up on prime time like this for a governor's race in the midwest you kind of get

01:07:38.680 you know the government you get what you you you know you put into things here we are it is what

01:07:44.520 this yeah i have also received um comments from people relatively happy with the admin about how

01:07:50.340 they did not want vivek there either so i think that's uh that's a opinion shared by many in the

01:07:55.540 trump administration as much as people would like to you know people will get angry because jd van

01:07:59.380 said hey you should go vote for vivek but i mean come on what else is he gonna do right like this

01:08:03.100 republican candidate i mean yeah you know have some semblance of political reality guys uh nixon

01:08:09.400 says why isn't the left activated by h1b visa taking jobs why were they more rabid about the

01:08:15.300 iraq war in 2003 than iran today it seems lefty uh the left is focused demographics that is a

01:08:21.540 great question yeah i gotta tell you when we pulled the mou and we've pulled the the piece

01:08:26.480 generally uh since then trump voters were more support supportive of the mou than harris voters

01:08:33.640 which was remarkable because you would have thought democrats were more opposed and there

01:08:37.720 was a rally around the flag or really a rally around the trump effect on the right and what

01:08:43.000 it came down to and they were very honest about it it was a stunning amount of harris voters who

01:08:47.380 said no we want you to continue with the iran war because we know it's hurting you and we're

01:08:51.440 going to clobber you in november so please do us a favor and keep bombing iran maybe start another

01:08:55.740 war somewhere else that'd be great that's how cynical i don't even know if that's a strong 0.98

01:09:00.120 enough word democrats are they're about raw power and they really don't think about how much they

01:09:05.720 could hurt you or someone else in order to get it absolutely and post move says suzy wiles is gone

01:09:13.320 in january if we get a good chief of staff much more is possible we need to be thinking about it

01:09:19.140 now no zyle shills no women do you think that there is a chance for a significant shift in 0.52

01:09:25.840 white house behavior if we see suzy wiles depart um you know i i do think that that's a huge problem

01:09:33.280 and has been there's been gatekeeping and access uh you know there's there's been things that have

01:09:38.860 been going on the president didn't even know about uh now i will say this there was a period

01:09:43.440 where she attempted aren't to bring a bunch of people in and say look tell us what you think

01:09:48.960 we're doing wrong the problem is she just didn't listen and the problem is i think that there's a

01:09:55.440 difference between someone wanting to listen and someone truly having the ability to hear what

01:10:00.340 they're, they're being told. And I think she's just from a different class and from a different

01:10:05.020 generation. And it was in one ear and out the other. I don't know about that, to be honest. 0.59

01:10:09.820 I, because the, if the Congress goes guys, they're going to be under constant assault

01:10:15.440 and that chief of staff is going to come in under a disaster. And I do have a couple of

01:10:20.500 names of mine that I think would have made great, great chief of staff set with Susie

01:10:24.500 wiles but it's going to be on it's going to be an unfair expectation to them because they're going

01:10:30.160 to walk in if they even choose to take the role at that point which they may not want to uh depending

01:10:35.720 on how the midterms end up it's going to be an unfair expectation that they're going to somehow

01:10:39.460 just turn the ship around while they're they're going to be under terrible assault we're going to

01:10:43.680 hear about dhs and christy noem and i mean we could go down the list of what democrats plan to

01:10:49.380 do it's it's going to be hard it's going to be a tough it's going to be a tough road yeah one of

01:10:53.800 the huge problems along with obviously the investigations and everything else

01:10:57.540 that are going to occur once the left takes, uh, power in, uh, you know, uh,

01:11:02.520 Congress, or at least, uh, you know, gets one of the houses. Uh,

01:11:05.640 ultimately, uh,

01:11:06.840 the Democrats have been very clear that they're going to prosecute everybody

01:11:10.160 attached to the Trump administration. Uh, and so if, yep. So if you,

01:11:14.000 if you decide to take that position,

01:11:16.080 not only are you stepping in to a absolute disaster in the white house itself,

01:11:20.540 but you're basically declaring i am prepared to spend the rest of my life you know running legal

01:11:25.800 defense uh against the democrats so uh yeah it's a it's a very difficult uh position and the traffic

01:11:31.800 the trump administration is going to find this problem across staffing you know it's going to

01:11:35.480 be very hard to replace a lot of staff you know there's a lot of churn in bureaucracies and uh

01:11:40.100 and everything else even the cabinet and if uh you know everyone who attaches themselves to trump

01:11:44.260 administration knows that they're going to be fair game for the left uh that that really

01:11:48.080 disincentivizes the best people from stepping into those roles. Well, Rich, it's been an absolute

01:11:53.080 pleasure speaking with you. Once again, I encourage everyone to go check out your book and everything

01:11:58.360 that you're doing on Twitter. If it's your first time on this channel, of course, you need to

01:12:02.340 subscribe, click the bell notification so you know when we go live. And if you want to get these

01:12:05.960 broadcast as podcasts, you need to subscribe to The Oren McIntyre Show on your favorite podcast

01:12:09.500 platform. Thank you, everybody, for watching. And as always, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - September 09, 2026

Why Gen Z Wants to Burn It All Down ｜ Guest： Rich Baris ｜ 9⧸9⧸26

Episode Stats

Transcript