Dan Bongino is a prominent conservative political commentator, author, and entrepreneur. As a former New York City police officer and Secret Service agent, Dan's broadcasts at The Dan Bollino Show are characterized by his profound patriotism and relentless pursuit of truth. His commentary has garnered a record-setting following on various platforms where he s known for his no-frills analysis and unwavering defense of conservative principles. In today s episode, we forecast the 2024 election, discuss Donald Trump s unique political strengths, and potential presidential debate strategies for each candidate. We also weigh the merits of populist economics and the right s recent bifurcation on foreign policy as the temperature climbs in the national political landscape. Tune in for another fantastic conversation on this episode of the Sunday Special with Dan. Subscribe to Dailywire to get immediate access to all the latest breaking news and analysis from the world of politics, economics, and business. Subscribe today using our podcast s RSS feed to stay up to date on all things politics, business, and everything else going on in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Use the promo code: CRITICODE2020 to receive 20% off your first month with discount code CRITICAL2021 at checkout. If you like what you hear on the show, consider pledging to become a supporter! at bit.ly/support-the-electionnow and we'll give you a 20% discount on our next month's ad-free version of the show. Thanks for listening and a chance to win a FREE stock like Apple Podcasts, Priceline, Best Fiends, Hotwire, and Vimeoons, and Poshmarketer, and they'll get 10% off their first month-only deal of $50 or $50 off their next month, too! and $75 off their second month gets you an ad-only edition of the next month gets 25% off the first month, they'll also get $25 off the second month of the course gets $99, and $99 gets $24, they also get VIP access to the second year gets you a VIP discount, they're also get a VIP deal, and the third year gets VIP access, they can upgrade their best deal, they get $24/month gets full service starts starts starts after they get your first promo only they receive $29/place gets you VIP access starts starts, and a second place gets $4/throttles and they get a special offer starts starts only they can choose a full-throats and they also receive $25,000 gets $5,000, they will also get full access to VIP gets $29,000 and they can get a discount on the second place deal?
00:00:41.000That's about one, two percent of the vote that doesn't show up because of some environmental anomaly.
00:00:47.000The Democrats don't have that problem.
00:00:49.000If that early voting starts tomorrow, vote tomorrow.
00:00:51.000Dan Bongino is a prominent conservative political commentator, author, and entrepreneur.
00:00:56.000As a former New York City police officer and Secret Service agent, Bongino's broadcasts at The Dan Bongino Show are characterized by his profound patriotism and relentless pursuit of truth.
00:01:04.000His commentary has garnered a record-setting following on various platforms where he's known for his no-frills analysis and unwavering defense of conservative principles.
00:01:12.000Bongino is also a successful entrepreneur, departing from Fox News in 2023 and taking his live podcast over to Rumble, an online streaming platform where Bongino himself is a significant shareholder.
00:01:21.000During the pandemic, Bongino was banned from YouTube altogether for questioning the efficacy of masks.
00:01:25.000Google banned him from using their ad service.
00:01:27.000The New York Times labeled him one of its top five election misinformation super spreaders in 2020.
00:01:31.000All the while, Bongino's commentary continued to garner hundreds of millions of views.
00:01:35.000In today's episode, we forecast the 2024 election, discuss Donald Trump's unique political strengths, and potential presidential debate strategies for each candidate.
00:01:42.000We also weigh the merits of populist economics and the right's recent bifurcation on foreign policy.
00:01:46.000As the temperature climbs in the national political landscape, Bongino's insights on the latest headlines help Americans make sense of it all.
00:01:52.000Tune in for another fantastic conversation on this episode of the Sunday Special.
00:02:27.000OK, so let's jump right into the election, because obviously that's what everybody wants to hear from you about, is what you think is going to happen in the election.
00:02:33.000Why don't we start with sort of that broad view?
00:02:35.000If you had to put money on it today, who do you think wins, Trump or Biden?
00:02:39.000You know, listen, predictions kill me because it's one of those things, you know, like, everybody's got one.
00:02:45.000But unless you can back it up with some data, it's kind of meaningless.
00:02:48.000I love that your facts don't care about your feelings, right?
00:02:51.000I think what everybody's kind of miscalculating about this election, I think Donald Trump's going to win, so let me answer your question first, plainly.
00:02:59.000The coalition is completely different.
00:03:01.000And this is where I think everybody miscalculated.
00:03:03.000I think we can both agree you kind of saw it after 2020, and there was that whole 2020 one year where there was You know, a lot going on, the news cycle was crazy, there was a left January 6th hysteria and all this stuff.
00:03:15.000Everybody's like, this guy's gonna get smoked, forget it.
00:03:18.000And all you kept hearing about, if you go back and look, you can actually see the coverage was, suburban moms and independents are gonna abandon Trump, he has no shot.
00:03:27.000A friend of mine, you know this guy too, but he's at a UFC, and he calls me, and this is like, I don't know, end of 2021, early 2022, doesn't matter, right around that time period.
00:03:38.000And he says, Dan, because you're never going to believe this, man.
00:03:40.000I'm sitting in a green room and he said, I'm telling you, man, the black vote is going to go for Donald Trump in big numbers.
00:03:46.000I mean, not a majority, obviously, but in big numbers.
00:03:50.000And I've been kind of hearing that too, but anecdotes, you know, anecdotes, single subject designs, not that reliable, whatever.
00:03:55.000He said, I was talking to a bunch of entertainers, sports figures in a green room and business people, all black, he said, and they could not stop raving about Donald Trump.
00:04:28.000He doesn't know a single person voting for Biden.
00:04:31.000When did the Republicans ever win the union vote?
00:04:34.000And in my humble opinion, Ben, I think Trump's lasting gift, outside of the Supreme Court, Abraham Accords, and other things, I really believe this, I think his real gift to the Republican Party is going to be that he completely altered the coalition moving forward.
00:04:49.000We've never, you've been following this as long as I have, when did we ever in the past rely on black, Hispanic voters and union voters?
00:05:28.000That what Donald Trump really is in a nutshell, because he's not somebody who's going to sit there and give you a 200 page tome on the American founding.
00:05:34.000He's going to give you exactly what he thinks in his most instinctive way.
00:05:37.000And mostly what he represents is a giant pulsating orange middle finger to a bunch of people who don't care about union workers, about blue collar workers, about people who go to church.
00:05:47.000And because the Democratic Party has become the distillation of Barack Obama's philosophy without Barack Obama's personality.
00:05:54.000I think that there was almost an inevitable backlash that was going to occur.
00:05:57.000They've disconnected themselves not just economically, but also in terms of social values from the middle of the country in a radical way.
00:06:07.000But I think the first part you hit on is critical.
00:06:10.000The big, you know, middle finger to the establishment class, whatever that means, because it means different things to different people.
00:06:17.000You know, again, we've been at this game a long time, and can we at least both agree that Democrats have always beaten us at the message game, right?
00:06:23.000I can tell you, because I ran for office, I used to knock on doors in Maryland all the time, and they used to do this little trick.
00:06:28.000People would say, Republican or Democrat, if they wanted to talk to you.
00:07:21.000And we've had this stodgy, you know, Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, Republican Party forever, where we would go in like a methadone clinic, right, and we'd be talking about the Laffer Curve.
00:07:32.000And the guys in there are like, bro, I'm like dying of a heroin addiction.
00:07:35.000Like, I appreciate that that's a thing, the Laffer Curve, that's great, but what are you going to do for me?
00:07:41.000And no one could talk plainly because we just came from a different stock.
00:07:45.000It was like this Brahmin class that had never related to middle class workers.
00:07:50.000And then the most ironic thing, you get this, you know, Queens billionaire, billionaire, who should be correct.
00:08:48.000You think the guy out there sitting in this Florida sun pouring concrete is reading through a 51 page white paper on the marginal effect of a corporate tax cut?
00:09:00.000He's the one who listens to Trump and he's like, hey man.
00:09:03.000It's like Dave Chappelle, I'm sorry, but Dave Chappelle said, he goes, I call this guy, you know, what is he saying, that segment about him being an honest liar, how he called Hillary out, like, that's it.
00:09:13.000Like, everyone in politics bull**** you, but this is the first guy who does it honestly.
00:09:43.000And then he basically decided to abandon the middle and run directly to his base and cobble together the coalition of the dispossessed along with some college educated white ladies.
00:09:53.000And so that led to this idea in the Democratic Party that that was the winning coalition, and it led to the idea in the Republican Party that that was an unbeatable coalition, because the media kept saying that over and over, right?
00:10:04.000Now they're all ripping everybody out.
00:10:06.000You're talking about the Great Replacement Theory.
00:10:08.000The people who are talking about the Great Replacement Theory first are people like Roy Tashara, who's on the left, talking about how the demographics of the United States had changed, and now Republicans would never win another election.
00:10:16.000So 2016 happens, Trump comes out of nowhere, he wins the nomination, and then he beats Hillary Clinton, who's trying to replicate the Obama coalition.
00:10:23.000And the conclusion because of 2012 for Democrats was there's no way that Trump possibly could have won.
00:10:35.000And so since then we've been stuck in this sort of weird binary where Republicans think that Trump is a miracle worker and Democrats think that Trump is Satan.
00:10:43.000And we're sort of stuck there based on the falsehood, which is that the one who was actually out of the box in terms of his political approach was Obama.
00:10:50.000And the magic of Donald Trump in 2024, shockingly, is that he is the moderate candidate in this race.
00:10:55.000If you look at him positionally, Donald Trump has grabbed the middle on every single issue.
00:11:01.000It's interesting you say that, because it's funny when people paint this guy as, like, this far-right conservative dictator.
00:11:08.000And then, like you said, you go back and look back, and it was actually — the first term was quite a moderate agenda.
00:11:13.000I mean, I don't think there's any question that there were some positions — I mean, listen, I love Donald Trump, endorsed him early, but we've had disagreements on my show, on the air, about things like abortion.
00:11:24.000You know, he's more of a practical guy, and as I've said about Donald Trump, And I think this is the appeal of Donald Trump, and I think this is what bothers conservatives.
00:11:32.000Because you're right, we are kind of stuck in this fugue state right now.
00:11:43.000Like, guys like you and me and some of these old school guys who've been in the conservative movement, me kind of conservatarian, we're really passionate about this.
00:12:30.000And it's like, I think the old school conservatives sometimes even like me are like, but then you You're like, he's not wrong about the politics.
00:12:38.000We haven't done enough political work to get there yet.
00:12:41.000You know, I think about other things too, like the Supreme Court thing.
00:12:45.000I mean, did he personally look at each of these people and go, oh, here's what they're going to do about voter ID and abortion and the Second Amendment?
00:13:11.000I mean, I'm not sure we have this great bench of people who can blend this new populism.
00:13:17.000I think there's something else that's happening with Trump, which is really unique.
00:13:20.000And what that is, is when you talk about Trump being transactional, it's not just that Trump's transactional.
00:13:26.000It's that the base is willing to accept that he's transactional.
00:13:28.000So when you say, Mitch McConnell's transactional, which he is because he's a politician, the entire base goes, that, that sellout, that.
00:13:36.000And they do the same thing with any politician, John Boehner, or Paul Ryan, or now Mike Johnson.
00:13:42.000Anybody who quote-unquote caves to the left, who's being transactional, because that's what politics requires, is the transactional.
00:13:48.000The difference with Trump is that we have such a visceral connection, the Republican base, with Trump that he'll be transactional, but we trust him.
00:13:54.000We're like, okay, yeah, but we get that, like, he's on our side.
00:13:57.000And I think that because of that, that's the part that I'm not sure is replicable.
00:14:02.000Meaning that when I talk about the people in our industry, it's sort of fascinating.
00:14:05.000I spoke at the House Republican convention.
00:14:08.000They have sort of a big get-together every year.
00:14:11.000And one year they were doing it in Florida, when McCarthy was House Speaker.
00:14:14.000And I got up and I said to the members of the House, listen, my job is not the same as your job.
00:14:17.000My job is to say what I think is true and what you guys should be going for.
00:14:25.000It's not to go on TV and say what 100% would look like and that everybody is failing because of a lack of will and spine.
00:14:31.000Generally speaking, I actually don't think the Republican Party fails because of lack of will and spine.
00:14:35.000I think sometimes that's true, but I think generally the reason they fail is because right now they have like a two-vote margin in the House, they don't run the Senate, and they don't have the presidency.
00:14:43.000And when it came to lack of will and spine, it seems to me like that was more when they actually controlled all three elected branches, right?
00:14:49.000I mean, the very early parts of Trump, they controlled the Senate and the House and the presidency, and they didn't do enough then.
00:14:53.000That's when you, that's when we should be browbeating them.
00:14:56.000But the thing about Trump that's unique is that Trump can say, yeah, listen, I'm getting to get 75%.
00:15:20.000Why are we so sure that McConnell sold this out, but Trump didn't?
00:15:24.000And I think it's because I think they believe McConnell's playing a cynical game where Trump is really doing it because he believes people in the know have told him, like, this is the better path.
00:15:53.000How many Republicans or Democrats, and Democrats, our entire swamp has said, you will never get any of this done without solving the Palestinian issue.
00:16:01.000Don't even try, there's legions of tape, John Kerry, Republicans saying it, don't even, you gotta fix the Palestinian issue, don't even bother.
00:16:09.000Trump comes in, and I say this in a laudatory fashion, a compliment, and he's politically naive about it.
00:16:15.000He's like, ah, that's the way it was done.
00:17:30.000I mean, they're impulsive every single day.
00:17:32.000They'll come out and say some crazy stuff.
00:17:33.000I mean, how do we get to the point where, you know, a boy can be a girl now?
00:17:37.000That's the kind of thing 20 years ago, if you brought it up in a Democrat debate, in a Democrat debate, they would have laughed in your face.
00:17:54.000All it takes is that one time your kid pulls your phone out of your pocket and proceeds to drop it onto the solid concrete to make you wish that you'd protected yourself.
00:18:01.000Not that that's ever happened to me or anything.
00:18:02.000Every time you connect to an unencrypted network in cafes, hotels, or airports, Your online data is not secured.
00:18:08.000Any hacker on that same network can gain access to and steal your personal data.
00:18:11.000It doesn't take much technical knowledge to hack somebody.
00:18:14.000Hackers can make up to $1,000 per person selling personal information on the dark web.
00:18:18.000I love ExpressVPN because they create a secure encrypted tunnel between my device and the internet so hackers can't steal my sensitive data.
00:18:25.000I really love how ExpressVPN is so easy to use.
00:18:27.000All you need to do, fire up the app, click one button, now you're protected.
00:20:22.000It's obviously, that's a separate matter, I get it.
00:20:25.000But there was obviously a cabal, deep state, silly state, the blob, I don't care what you call them, of people who are very well connected, who hid from the public vital voting information.
00:20:34.000You combine those three factors, There's no sane person that can say with a straight face, with a barrel of gun at their face, going, hey man, this thing was totally legit on the up and up.
00:20:47.000I'm just hoping now, some states have made some pretty substantial changes, Georgia, Florida, Arizona somewhat, that in the swing states we've got to hold this.
00:20:55.000Because it's going to be a train wreck in California.
00:20:57.000I mean, the biggest question for me for Trump, just in terms of the mechanisms, I really the state parties. How are the state parties going to
00:21:03.000perform? Because when it comes to the turnout efforts in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan,
00:21:08.000Pennsylvania, there are certain states that Trump is expanding the map in, like Nevada.
00:21:12.000Right now he's leading well outside the margin of error, which is just- And he has been for a while.
00:21:15.000For the entire time. It's totally crazy. But if you look at, Michigan is razor thin.
00:21:20.000Pennsylvania is super razor thin. And there it's going to come down to a question of turnout.
00:21:25.000So there the question is going to be, really, how does the Pennsylvania Republican Party perform, or the Michigan Republican Party, which has been pretty dicey in the last few election cycles in terms of its efficacy, how are they going to perform, or Wisconsin?
00:21:37.000Yeah, it's a good question, and I think we can both agree.
00:21:41.000Listen, we don't like mail-in balloting.
00:23:05.000Let's switch to the other side of the aisle, because the reality is that if Joe Biden were doing a wonderful job, the numbers might look different.
00:23:11.000But the reality is that when you said that you got a call from somebody in UFC, who I'm sure we both know, talking about all of this, that my guess is that that probably was not far after we decided to randomly surrender in Afghanistan and leave billions of dollars in military equipment In Afghanistan and get 13 American soldiers killed at Abbey Gate and all the rest of it.
00:23:29.000If you look at Joe Biden's poll numbers, they've never recovered.
00:23:32.000That was the inflection point for his presidency.
00:23:34.000And he has never come back from that, mainly because it exposed the reality about Joe Biden, which is that he is venal, that he does not care about other human beings.
00:23:41.000I mean, he was absolutely uncaring about what was going on in Afghanistan.
00:23:44.000He's terrible at his job, that he lies on the regular.
00:23:47.000All of these things were exposed by Afghanistan, and we've just seen that ever since.
00:23:51.000And so, to me, it looks like, if I'm looking at this election, It looks like so much is baked into the cake.
00:24:08.000But nobody's changing their mind about Trump.
00:24:10.000I think what's happened here is an enormous number of people have changed their mind about Trump.
00:24:14.000I mean, I know them personally, right?
00:24:15.000I mean, we're going to talk anecdotal.
00:24:16.000I can tell you, in the Jewish community, there are a lot of Jews who look at how Joe Biden has approached Israel, and they're like, I am not voting for that jackass.
00:24:44.000The first is the damaging political narratives.
00:24:46.000The second will be none of this is changeable for him.
00:24:49.000So first, there are bad political stories that do harm and there are bad political stories that don't.
00:24:56.000You know, why did this trial up in New York backfire spectacularly on Biden, not Donald Trump?
00:25:02.000I mean, convicted felon, the Stormy Daniels stuff.
00:25:04.000And the reason is because the only damaging political narratives, I learned this running for office, the only ones that do any harm at all, Are stories that change your pre-existing notion of who a candidate is?
00:25:15.000If, let's say Mike Pence, there was a story about him hanging out partying the weekend and drinking it up at a, you know, University of Michigan rager, you know, people would be like, that's kind of weird.
00:25:32.000So, the thing about Joe Biden, getting back to your question here, is why is Joe Biden so grotesquely unpopular, and I concur, the most destructive president in our lifetime, even worse than Obama, because he's dumb.
00:25:52.000Look at all these crazy things Trump did.
00:25:54.000I mean, he never actually pointed anything, but, you know, he's like, look at the tweets, and this guy's gonna be Hitler, Idi Amin, look at it, Pol Pot.
00:26:01.000And then you get Joe Biden, and like you said, the first thing he does is you got people falling off planes in Afghanistan trying to fly their way out, and you're like, wait, I thought Trump was the... So that started it, but he was still maintaining like a 45% approval rating.
00:28:23.000And when he's in debate, if Joe Biden does the, anyway, and then just kind of fades away, then Trump should say, Mr. President, you still have 30 seconds on the clock.
00:28:31.000And then he should just be urging more talk from Joe Biden.
00:28:34.000Because the more you see of Joe Biden, the more he makes you very, very nervous.
00:28:37.000And when it comes to President Trump, listen, we all find him entertaining.
00:28:40.000We've already baked into the cake our perception of him as far as who he is personally.
00:28:44.000But the perception that can change about Trump, and that people keep wanting to change about Trump, is that at some point, maybe it'll just get a little less nutty, right?
00:30:53.000But he gets up there at the State of the Union.
00:30:56.000It's a horrible speech, but it's not like by Biden standards, it's okay.
00:31:00.000Yeah, he didn't fall, he didn't die, there weren't that many stuttering or stammering or anything like that.
00:31:05.000If he shows up and we set the bar so low like we're doing, you always run the risk of like, oh my gosh, look, he did so well because you expected a one and you got like a 1.2 or something, you know?
00:31:17.000I think that's why I would urge President Trump to stop talking about, you know, quite how senile Joe Biden is and how he's going to kick his ass in the debate.
00:31:24.000Because once you set those expectations, it's actually a real problem.
00:31:27.000The other thing is that what Biden wants to do, Biden's game plan going into that debate is going to be make Donald Trump suck him into talking about 2020.
00:31:35.000Because if that entire debate is about 2020, then Biden does well with that.
00:31:39.000Not because whether he won or whether he lost.
00:31:42.000If people think that all Trump is fixated on is 2020 and January 6th and all of this, that's not stuff that most Americans want to hear about.
00:31:48.000They want to hear about what happened in the last three and a half years under Joe Biden.
00:31:51.000And I think that Joe Biden actually gave him a gift with the prosecution in this way.
00:31:55.000I think that if, if he says, you know, you wouldn't leave, you wouldn't leave office and you tried to overturn the country and the constitution and we haven't had anything, he should say, you know, Joe, I may have done a lot of things, but one thing I didn't try to do was jail my political opponent.
00:32:37.000George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Mike Flynn.
00:32:43.000What do all those names have in common?
00:32:45.000Those are people who committed no known documented crimes, but found themselves under an extensive deep state Joe Biden team led investigation.
00:32:52.000Matter of fact, it was Joe Biden who recommended the Logan Act against Mike Flynn.
00:32:59.000And Joe Biden's so not mentally there, he'll forget that just happened and five minutes later he'll be like, let me tell you who the dictator is and it'll look like a complete buffoon.
00:33:08.000But it's clearly Biden who has really taken the presidency and really embarrassed us.
00:33:29.000I mean, really, he's embarrassed Joe Biden beat him to the punch, you know?
00:33:33.000We'll get to more on this in just a moment.
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00:34:34.000So when you look at, you know, who would replace Biden?
00:34:38.000You suggest that he's not going to be the nominee.
00:34:40.000The problem I see is, who the hell do they get?
00:34:42.000The only person who everyone on the right is afraid of is Michelle Obama.
00:34:45.000Everybody else, I feel like, you know, Trump beats.
00:34:48.000But if it's Michelle Obama and they pull her somehow out of the wings and she's playing Oprah Nouveau, like, listen, I think that she's vulnerable as a politician because she is a deeply radical human being, much more radical than Barack was, in writing theses at Princeton about how she was a victim of racial discrimination at Princeton.
00:35:07.000Do you think that they can pull her out?
00:36:52.000She put on, like, a scarf and glasses and a hat, and she was in Target shopping, and they just, like, everybody backed off, and she just wanted to go out and be normal.
00:37:02.000She does not want anything to do with this.
00:37:05.000This is all one—I hate that term, psy-op.
00:38:02.000I mean in that which which brings up Jill who you know is obviously like an Edith Wilson figure who's
00:38:07.000Really propping him up at this point The fact that they're deploying her out to every TV show when he can't appear on any of them to pretend that he is totally with it is really, it's an amazing statement.
00:38:17.000So I'm going to turn back to the Republican Party for a second.
00:38:19.000So the fact that Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party has had all these benefits that we've talked about, including the broadening of the coalition, including the fact that he's been able to break through the media in a way that no other Republican candidate of my lifetime has because he was so big.
00:38:31.000That they tried to box him into being X, Y, or Z, and everybody knew who he was already, so it was very difficult for the media to attach whatever label they wanted on him because Donald Trump is Donald Trump.
00:38:42.000When I look at that, that's the upside.
00:38:44.000One of the downsides is, as we discussed before, he's not a philosophical conservative.
00:38:49.000He's sort of an instinctive conservative, but pragmatic, meaning he has conservative instincts, but that doesn't mean that he's going to be Thoroughly pro-life.
00:38:58.000He has a fully formed theory of how foreign policy ought to work.
00:39:01.000He has sort of a baseline root patriotism, believe in America, America's military ought to be strong, we shouldn't get involved in wars we have no place in.
00:39:12.000It's that that I kind of want to ask you about.
00:39:14.000So the fact that Trump is so heterodox in sort of his approach, and that he's so pragmatic and non-ideological, means that the party remains somewhat amorphous.
00:39:23.000The conservative movement remains sort of amorphous.
00:39:25.000And what that means, there's a lot of internal battling, obviously, over pretty much everything at this point.
00:39:29.000And Trump himself, as a singular figure, is sort of keeping a cap on it.
00:39:32.000And that's everything from economics to social policy to foreign policy.
00:39:36.000You're seeing sort of these internal battles inside the Republican Party on a lot of these issues.
00:39:40.000So we can start with economics, where, you know, there's this bizarre battle that's been going on.
00:39:44.000And as long as I've been alive, the Republican Party has been the generally free market party
00:39:50.000that believes in free trade and private property.
00:39:53.000And there's been a real push inside some wings of the Republican Party to push for a significantly
00:39:56.000more interventionist federal government that works on redistributionism and uses regulation
00:40:02.000to benefit certain populations at the expense of other populations.
00:40:06.000And it's been called economic populism.
00:40:08.000But Trump has been on kind of both sides of that debate.
00:40:11.000He likes the free market, but he's also been the same guy who says we should never discuss
00:40:15.000Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid because that's a political loser.
00:40:18.000So how do you see that shaping up in the post-Trump era, whether that's, you know, a year and a half from now or whether that's five years from now?
00:40:25.000Well, first I'll say that's definitely not unique to the Republican Party.
00:40:30.000I mean, you've seen these internal fights on significant issues.
00:40:33.000I mean, it was Barack Obama who said, you know, marriage between a man and a woman, and then all of a sudden now we can't even figure out what a man or a woman is.
00:40:44.000But to your point, as kind of an old school conservatarian, I say conservatarian because I'm definitely conservative on the fiscal front, but on the foreign policy front, I'm kind of a limited intervention guy.
00:40:54.000So I have kind of different views on that.
00:40:56.000That's nothing new, but you're correct.
00:40:59.000I was a diehard doctrinaire free trader from the libertarian front.
00:41:26.000I think he had JD Vance on one time, too.
00:41:28.000And they were talking about how, yeah, ever since China got admitted to the WTO, they used the rubber dog toys to build nuclear weapons to kill us.
00:41:37.000So would you do that if there were two islands of people and you just divorced all the politics?
00:41:43.000Island A, people A, people B. Oh, let's trade, let's trade.
00:41:47.000People B is like, let's nuke people A. All of a sudden, you're not trading.
00:41:50.000You can talk all the free trade crap you want.
00:41:53.000And that's where I started with Evolve My Views.
00:44:11.000And I think some of that is, you know, some of it is a little bit dishonest in the sense that.
00:44:16.000Yeah, I think that there's an attempt to label people quote-unquote neocon who are not neocon by either a classical definition or by the new definition.
00:44:22.000The classical definition was, you know, people who used to be Democrats and then became conservative largely because of crime in the 1960s and 70s and were fairly hawkish on foreign policy.
00:44:30.000And then it became sort of Paul Wolfowitz, we will transform the entire Middle East into thriving multiracial democracies.
00:44:39.000And the truth is, I don't know very many Republicans who are on that side of the aisle anymore.
00:44:44.000Like, anybody who realistically believes that it's the job of the United States to go transform a tribal land like Afghanistan into a thriving democracy.
00:44:52.000I think that the real sort of battle that's happening inside the Republican Party right now is more about, you know, what are the actual interests of America?
00:45:01.000And what I see sometimes is a willingness to Ignore that question almost entirely in favor of sloganeering.
00:45:11.000So we'll take the case of say Russia-Ukraine.
00:45:14.000So I can see an argument to be made about what level of support is necessary to provide Ukraine with the weaponry necessary to repel further Russian advances.
00:45:23.000I've also been making the case since probably April of 2022, a couple months after the invasion first began, that the best possible outcome was going to be a hardening of lines in Donbass and Crimea because the chances that Ukraine was ever going to take back that territory were incredibly low.
00:45:37.000And so the United States might have to actually just voice that solution on the region by giving certain security guarantees to Ukraine, telling the Russians they better stop their And now let's just harden the lines where they are, and that's presumably where eventually all of this will end.
00:45:51.000One of the cases that I've seen made about Ukraine, however, from some people on the right, is that we have no interest in Ukraine.
00:45:57.000And it's of zero relevance to us whether Russia takes Ukraine at all.
00:46:02.000Or if the United States continues to fund Ukraine, that's like an active bad that's bankrupting the country.
00:46:07.000And there I have some problems in even understanding the argument, I suppose.
00:46:11.000I'm not sure I understand why it's in America's interest for Russia to take Ukraine or why it's of no relevance to us, given that Ukraine not only is a massive grain producer, but also borders a bevy of NATO countries with whom we have mutual security guarantees.
00:46:22.000Also, obviously granting enormous more resources, access to the Black Sea in new ways to the Russians.
00:46:28.000I feel like it's in the United States' interest to degrade the Russian military capacity.
00:46:32.000Beyond that, the sort of idea that foreign aid is equivalent to putting boots on the ground in Ukraine is obviously not true.
00:46:40.000It seems like a fairly, if we're going to speak about the cost of war actually pretty plainly, it seems like the
00:46:45.000amount of money we're spending in Ukraine is a lot of money also by comparison to the
00:46:48.000federal budget. It's a very small percentage of the federal budget. And the reality is that it's a lot
00:46:53.000more expensive if you have to actually start forward deploying in a lot of these areas. This is a
00:46:57.000great question because I think these are the best questions on these types of shows because I
00:47:02.000think this is where there's some daylight between you and I. Let's address the big one first,
00:47:05.000this evolution of Republican, the old three-stool Republican, but where national security
00:47:10.000and an aggressive foreign posture was kind of like a shibboleth to get into the party,
00:47:28.000But I think there's a reason, and I think we as conservatives One, you're right, we have to stop the neocon—it's just stupid.
00:47:35.000It's become kind of a way to just discredit someone before they even open their—so just, like, stop.
00:47:39.000Let's have a dispassionate conversation about why so many people distrust the federal government's decision-making and foreign interventions.
00:48:08.000Everyone knows, eventually, our American public, which is very wealthy, we're the wealthiest country on earth, they don't want their kids dying in these wars where there's not some immediate strategic outcome.
00:48:19.000It was very easy to explain World War II.
00:48:23.000Nazis, you want to be speaking German?
00:50:02.000You know, I'm an evidence guy and for as emotional that story is, one story doesn't make, you know, a single subject design doesn't make an experimental result.
00:50:12.000But if I can't explain to someone a tangible goal with Ukraine, let's bring it back to Ukraine.
00:50:20.000You know, think of Fox Connor's rules of war, right?
00:50:22.000Don't go to war alone, don't go to war for long, and don't go to war unless you absolutely have to.
00:53:05.000Let's just cause enough of a quagmire that it really screws up Russia but doesn't cause thermonuclear war?
00:53:12.000That's okay, but Biden doesn't seem to want to do that either.
00:53:15.000Well, the lack of clarity for Biden is one thing.
00:53:18.000On the GOP side of the aisle, the conversation you and I are having is like a normal conversation.
00:53:22.000I think one of the conversations that I've been hearing that's weird on the right is this idea that Putin is somehow good, or that Putin is somehow in the interest of the United States.
00:53:30.000And I think there's a far cry from that to, I want to know exactly what our commitment is,
00:53:36.000how long our commitment lasts, and what that's supposed to look like.
00:53:39.000And the truth is that foreign policy also is not measured in terms of six months.
00:53:42.000I couldn't tell you, for example, probably in 1952, what was the specific interest that the United States had
00:53:49.000I can tell you right now what the specific interest the United States has in South Korea,
00:53:52.000but it's only because South Korea exists.
00:53:54.000And so one of the things that's very difficult about foreign policy is that an ounce of prevention,
00:53:59.000sometimes prevents the pound of cure that's necessary.
00:54:04.000Also, sometimes there's no, as you said about the election, sometimes there's no counterfactual.
00:54:09.000So we don't actually know what happens if you don't do the things that didn't happen.
00:54:13.000And so when it comes to particularly foreign aid to foreign countries,
00:54:17.000as opposed to putting American troops on the ground or military material in places,
00:54:21.000which seems to me like a complete ratcheting up, and that's where you have to be incredibly,
00:54:25.000incredibly meticulous about, Should we even be doing this, like, at all?
00:54:30.000When it comes to us signing some checks, or emptying stockpiles of Old Whipper and then refilling them, to me, the kind of escalation of that into cause celeb on the right is a weird one.
00:54:43.000It's a strange one to consolidate about, given, again, that there are a thousand reasons to hate Joe Biden's policies.
00:54:48.000And again, I think that he's screwed up in Ukraine.
00:55:00.000But on the right side of the aisle, I think that there is a difference between sort of the conversation between realists of different perspectives, which is, I think, most of the conversation, and then the People who are very rare now, the full-scale neocons and the full-scale isolationists who are like, America's a nefarious force in the world, we shouldn't be involved anywhere on Earth, and we should get the hell out of the way when anybody is fighting because American intervention only makes things worse.
00:55:23.000First, when I've, yeah, I've absolutely been categorical about Putin from the start, and I say to anyone who believes this guy is even remotely some ally to any movement, belief, the United States or country, I've been in Russia a lot.
00:55:41.000If you believe you are being grotesquely misled.
00:55:43.000The Russians are the best in the world at running operations, especially online now.
00:55:49.000They abuse Twitter to make you believe.
00:55:51.000Putin will say whatever he needs to say to get you on his side.
00:56:11.000And most of the stuff that's happening in the world right now that's causing this geopolitical fracas would stop tomorrow if him and Xi would just be like, We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
00:56:22.000First, imagine waking up with that sore throat, runny nose, cough.
00:56:23.000They can't. These guys are revengeous. They just want to change everything.
00:56:27.000We'll get to more on this in just one moment. First, imagine waking up with that sore throat,
00:56:31.000runny nose, cough. Well, you could tough it out, take some time off, wait hours at the
00:56:36.000urgent care, or you could do something different like I do.
00:56:38.000Have a medical emergency kit from the wellness company at your disposal. It's a convenient
00:56:42.000solution that's just a reach away. It's like having a 24-7 pharmacy. The kit can treat
00:58:01.000There's only two ways to do this, okay, where people will generally leave you alone and not invade and kill you, if you look throughout human history.
00:58:50.000He's so freaking crazy that, yeah, we could wipe this guy off the face of the earth, but does anyone really want to risk that because he's just nuts enough to do something?
01:00:12.000So, final topic, because I know you have to run.
01:00:14.000What we've seen that has been eating up the media coverage since October, obviously, has been the situation between Israel and And it is insane to me that there is such a in a lack of understanding of the basic moral calculus between Israel and that the Biden administration has basically now been doing the PR work on behalf of Iran and in the weird belief that somehow if they sort of just calm things down temporarily that his left won't eat him alive at the convention.
01:00:44.000But that does have some deeper consequences.
01:00:46.000I don't think that that particular conflict, because it's so morally clear, the fact that you have hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of the West who are protesting on behalf of... That's a problem for the West.
01:00:56.000That's a problem for the West, having a bunch of people out there who seem to believe that it is acceptable to protest on behalf of a group of terrorists who hate the West.
01:01:05.000You know, it was Golda Meir who really summed it up.
01:01:08.000She said, you know, we can forgive you for killing our children, but we can never forgive you for making us kill yours.
01:01:15.000This is obviously a really sensitive topic for me.
01:01:18.000You follow me on Twitter or something, you know that.
01:01:21.000I spent a lot of time in the Middle East.
01:01:37.000So, it was a really transformative experience because, I'm not sure, there's so many people with opinions online that are, you know, about this who know absolutely nothing about it.
01:02:26.000And then they realize you're not, oh, I didn't mean it, because they don't want to get fired.
01:02:30.000And I'm thinking it really, I've never seen anything like, I've never seen a group of people so many people want to kill for reasons they can't, everybody wants to kill them.
01:02:38.000They have, there's no real explanation for the banks or something.