The Ben Shapiro Show - Can America Be Saved? | Dan Bongino

00:00:00.000 Unfortunately, we've had to edit out some important information because Big Tech won't let us say that sort of thing.

00:00:05.000 To listen to the full uncut show, go to dailywire.com slash subscribe.

00:00:09.000 The point is, mail-in balloting can be done relatively securely.

00:00:13.000 Let's just put this out.

00:00:13.000 I'd rather not have it.

00:00:15.000 Unless you're in the military, or you're in a nursing home, or you're in a medical emergency, it should not be a thing.

00:00:22.000 But it is.

00:00:22.000 Right.

00:00:22.000 We're stuck with it.

00:00:24.000 We can change it if we win.

00:00:25.000 Maybe we get H.R.

00:00:27.000 2 passed.

00:00:28.000 But we're stuck with it now.

00:00:29.000 So I like the pivot.

00:00:30.000 Thankfully, he's made this pivot where now he's like, listen, let's just swamp this thing.

00:00:34.000 The Democrats banked their early vote.

00:00:36.000 You know what happens on election day?

00:00:37.000 It rains.

00:00:38.000 People's kids are late for school.

00:00:40.000 Someone gets a fever.

00:00:41.000 That's about one, two percent of the vote that doesn't show up because of some environmental anomaly.

00:00:47.000 The Democrats don't have that problem.

00:00:49.000 If that early voting starts tomorrow, vote tomorrow.

00:00:51.000 Dan Bongino is a prominent conservative political commentator, author, and entrepreneur.

00:00:56.000 As 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.

00:01:04.000 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.

00:01:12.000 Bongino 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.

00:01:21.000 During the pandemic, Bongino was banned from YouTube altogether for questioning the efficacy of masks.

00:01:25.000 Google banned him from using their ad service.

00:01:27.000 The New York Times labeled him one of its top five election misinformation super spreaders in 2020.

00:01:31.000 All the while, Bongino's commentary continued to garner hundreds of millions of views.

00:01:35.000 In today's episode, we forecast the 2024 election, discuss Donald Trump's unique political strengths, and potential presidential debate strategies for each candidate.

00:01:42.000 We also weigh the merits of populist economics and the right's recent bifurcation on foreign policy.

00:01:46.000 As the temperature climbs in the national political landscape, Bongino's insights on the latest headlines help Americans make sense of it all.

00:01:52.000 Tune in for another fantastic conversation on this episode of the Sunday Special.

00:01:55.000 Hey Dan, thanks for stopping by.

00:02:05.000 I really appreciate it.

00:02:06.000 Good to see you again.

00:02:07.000 Yeah, you too.

00:02:08.000 It's been a while.

00:02:08.000 Last time was in LA, now we're in Florida.

00:02:10.000 I know, I know.

00:02:10.000 Major upgrade.

00:02:12.000 Oh, yeah.

00:02:13.000 I mean, it's like a free place and everybody's nice.

00:02:16.000 I know.

00:02:16.000 And the sun's always out in December.

00:02:18.000 It's, you know, it's 75 degrees.

00:02:20.000 You're swimming in the pool.

00:02:22.000 My kids' birthdays are in January.

00:02:24.000 You do pool parties.

00:02:25.000 Exactly.

00:02:25.000 It's amazing down here.

00:02:26.000 No, it's awesome.

00:02:27.000 OK, 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.

00:02:33.000 Why don't we start with sort of that broad view?

00:02:35.000 If you had to put money on it today, who do you think wins, Trump or Biden?

00:02:39.000 You know, listen, predictions kill me because it's one of those things, you know, like, everybody's got one.

00:02:45.000 But unless you can back it up with some data, it's kind of meaningless.

00:02:48.000 I love that your facts don't care about your feelings, right?

00:02:51.000 I 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.

00:02:58.000 But there's a reason.

00:02:59.000 The coalition is completely different.

00:03:01.000 And this is where I think everybody miscalculated.

00:03:03.000 I 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.

00:03:15.000 Everybody's like, this guy's gonna get smoked, forget it.

00:03:18.000 And 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.

00:03:26.000 And then this moment happens, right?

00:03:27.000 A 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.

00:03:38.000 And he says, Dan, because you're never going to believe this, man.

00:03:40.000 I'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.

00:03:46.000 I mean, not a majority, obviously, but in big numbers.

00:03:48.000 I said, what makes you say that?

00:03:50.000 And I've been kind of hearing that too, but anecdotes, you know, anecdotes, single subject designs, not that reliable, whatever.

00:03:55.000 He 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.

00:04:04.000 I was kind of blown away by it.

00:04:06.000 It wound up turning into this online kind of spat with me and this other conservative nice guy who was friendly and all.

00:04:13.000 But he didn't buy it.

00:04:14.000 And now you see the raw data, polling numbers.

00:04:17.000 The Trump coalition is just different.

00:04:19.000 Hispanic voters, black voters, you're seeing working class males in droves, and most importantly, union workers.

00:04:27.000 My brother's a Local 3 electrician.

00:04:28.000 He doesn't know a single person voting for Biden.

00:04:31.000 When did the Republicans ever win the union vote?

00:04:34.000 And 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.

00:04:49.000 We'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?

00:04:56.000 I can tell you, like, never.

00:04:58.000 And I think, really, that's going to be his lasting gift, gift, excuse me, if we can keep it.

00:05:03.000 You know, Republicans have a knack for screwing stuff up.

00:05:05.000 So, I mean, what do you think that's based on?

00:05:06.000 Obviously, Trump is one of one.

00:05:08.000 He's a unique figure in American politics.

00:05:10.000 You know, the question of whether we can keep it is partially dependent on the fact that is there anyone else like Trump?

00:05:15.000 And the answer is no.

00:05:16.000 But I think there's something else that's going on.

00:05:17.000 And the argument that I've been making about Trumpism since the beginning is that Trumpism is less a philosophy than a correct impulse.

00:05:26.000 And that impulse is F the left.

00:05:28.000 That 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.

00:05:34.000 He's going to give you exactly what he thinks in his most instinctive way.

00:05:37.000 And 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.

00:05:47.000 And because the Democratic Party has become the distillation of Barack Obama's philosophy without Barack Obama's personality.

00:05:54.000 I think that there was almost an inevitable backlash that was going to occur.

00:05:57.000 They've disconnected themselves not just economically, but also in terms of social values from the middle of the country in a radical way.

00:06:05.000 Yeah.

00:06:06.000 Yes to all of that.

00:06:07.000 But I think the first part you hit on is critical.

00:06:10.000 The big, you know, middle finger to the establishment class, whatever that means, because it means different things to different people.

00:06:17.000 You 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?

00:06:23.000 I 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.

00:06:28.000 People would say, Republican or Democrat, if they wanted to talk to you.

00:06:31.000 Most people just slammed the door.

00:06:32.000 I'd say, how about this, how about I don't tell you?

00:06:34.000 How about we just talk about a few things, give me two minutes, and then you tell me what I am.

00:06:38.000 I'm running in Maryland.

00:06:39.000 It's not hard to find Democrats.

00:06:41.000 I would go knock on doors in Prince George's County.

00:06:43.000 Largely black, very wealthy county.

00:06:46.000 I'd be done if there was a two minute spiel and I swear to you, seven out of ten people go, you're a Democrat.

00:06:51.000 No, no, I'm a Republican and a conservative.

00:06:53.000 They were stunned.

00:06:54.000 So they've just beat us at the messaging game.

00:06:56.000 I mean, they can tell you how they won, right?

00:06:58.000 Bill Clinton goes on Arsenio Hall, starts playing the saxophone.

00:07:01.000 Everybody's like, man, I want to be like that guy.

00:07:03.000 They had no idea what he stood for.

00:07:05.000 Most people out there were just like, this is the kind of the cool guy, Obama.

00:07:09.000 Hopey changey.

00:07:10.000 What did that even mean?

00:07:11.000 No one knew what that meant.

00:07:12.000 If they knew hopey changey meant your insurance was going to be canceled, nobody would have done hopey changey.

00:07:17.000 But they did it because they're just really good at messaging.

00:07:20.000 So Trump comes along.

00:07:21.000 And 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.

00:07:32.000 And the guys in there are like, bro, I'm like dying of a heroin addiction.

00:07:35.000 Like, I appreciate that that's a thing, the Laffer Curve, that's great, but what are you going to do for me?

00:07:41.000 And no one could talk plainly because we just came from a different stock.

00:07:45.000 It was like this Brahmin class that had never related to middle class workers.

00:07:50.000 And then the most ironic thing, you get this, you know, Queens billionaire, billionaire, who should be correct.

00:07:56.000 He's richer than you and me, man.

00:07:57.000 He should be so detached from the middle guy.

00:08:00.000 But because he was a builder.

00:08:02.000 A builder.

00:08:03.000 My father's been in this business his whole life.

00:08:04.000 He'll explain it to you perfectly.

00:08:06.000 You're dealing with union guys, cement workers, electricians, HVAC guys, steam fitters, tin knockers every day.

00:08:12.000 This guy was one of them.

00:08:15.000 It wasn't a money thing.

00:08:16.000 It was a talk thing and people, like you said, were just like...

00:08:20.000 You know, he kind of talks like me. 0.99

00:08:22.000 Same losers I hate, he hates. 0.98

00:08:24.000 Is it a thing? 0.99

00:08:25.000 Is it about the Abraham Accords?

00:08:26.000 Is it about... Maybe to, like, the white paper crowd, you know, you and I read a lot of that stuff.

00:08:31.000 But let's be honest, we're voting Republican anyway.

00:08:33.000 To a lot of independents, this is not a knock on them, Ben.

00:08:35.000 These people work for a living.

00:08:37.000 You know, this is what we do.

00:08:38.000 You and I get paid to analyze politics.

00:08:40.000 People have real jobs.

00:08:41.000 We don't have real jobs.

00:08:42.000 It's a fake job.

00:08:43.000 It is.

00:08:43.000 You know it.

00:08:44.000 Like, you and I get paid to do what we love.

00:08:45.000 Talk about politics.

00:08:47.000 But it's a fake job.

00:08:48.000 You 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?

00:08:57.000 He's not reading.

00:08:58.000 He's actually doing stuff.

00:09:00.000 He's the one who listens to Trump and he's like, hey man.

00:09:03.000 It'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.

00:09:13.000 Like, everyone in politics bull**** you, but this is the first guy who does it honestly.

00:09:17.000 Like, it's the strangest thing.

00:09:19.000 The question, I think, for the Republican Party going forward is, is that replicable?

00:09:23.000 Right?

00:09:23.000 In the same way that the Democrats sort of fell for the Barack Obama model, but they didn't have Barack Obama.

00:09:28.000 A Republican is going to do the same thing.

00:09:29.000 So here's my grand unified field theory of politics is that basically everything changed in 2012.

00:09:34.000 It wasn't 08 when Obama won the first time.

00:09:36.000 It was when he won the second time because by all rights he should have lost.

00:09:39.000 He was wildly unpopular with the American public. 1.00

00:09:41.000 His politics sucked. 0.99

00:09:42.000 Everybody hated Obamacare. 0.98

00:09:43.000 And 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. 0.87

00:09:52.000 And then he won based on that.

00:09:53.000 And 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?

00:10:04.000 Now they're all ripping everybody out.

00:10:06.000 You're talking about the Great Replacement Theory.

00:10:08.000 The 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.

00:10:16.000 So 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.

00:10:23.000 And the conclusion because of 2012 for Democrats was there's no way that Trump possibly could have won.

00:10:29.000 He must have cheated.

00:10:30.000 And the response for Republicans was there's no way Trump should have won.

00:10:33.000 He must work miracles.

00:10:35.000 And 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.

00:10:43.000 And 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.

00:10:50.000 And the magic of Donald Trump in 2024, shockingly, is that he is the moderate candidate in this race.

00:10:55.000 If you look at him positionally, Donald Trump has grabbed the middle on every single issue.

00:11:00.000 A hundred percent.

00:11:01.000 It's interesting you say that, because it's funny when people paint this guy as, like, this far-right conservative dictator.

00:11:08.000 And then, like you said, you go back and look back, and it was actually — the first term was quite a moderate agenda.

00:11:13.000 I 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.

00:11:24.000 You 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.

00:11:32.000 Because you're right, we are kind of stuck in this fugue state right now.

00:11:35.000 Some old school conservatives.

00:11:37.000 I think what bothers them is that he's transactional.

00:11:41.000 And I don't say that as an insult.

00:11:43.000 Like, 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.

00:11:52.000 I mean, you know, don't kill babies.

00:11:55.000 That's like my thing.

00:11:57.000 I always say, like, we can argue tax policy all we want, but if you're dead, you're not really paying taxes.

00:12:01.000 So that's, like, kind of my thing.

00:12:02.000 Like, don't whack babies, you know? 0.94

00:12:04.000 And I believe it.

00:12:05.000 Like, that's in my soul, man.

00:12:07.000 I'm not going in front of Jesus Christ one day going, hey, I didn't fight when I could.

00:12:12.000 But he's transactional.

00:12:14.000 He sees everything as a spreadsheet.

00:12:16.000 It's his business background.

00:12:18.000 I think it's his general unfamiliarity with dirty politics.

00:12:21.000 He looks at something and goes, okay, you want to save X number of babies.

00:12:26.000 You're not going to get that done in this state.

00:12:29.000 So how about we do this?

00:12:30.000 And 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.

00:12:38.000 We haven't done enough political work to get there yet.

00:12:41.000 You know, I think about other things too, like the Supreme Court thing.

00:12:45.000 I 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?

00:12:52.000 No!

00:12:53.000 He's a transactional guy.

00:12:54.000 He's used to delegating.

00:12:56.000 He goes, hey, Leonard Leo, Federalist Society, these guys have had some pretty good ideas.

00:13:00.000 And that's what he does.

00:13:01.000 And maybe the Republican Party needs more of a transactionalist.

00:13:05.000 And you had asked in the beginning.

00:13:08.000 You know, can we keep this going?

00:13:10.000 And the answer is, I'm not sure.

00:13:11.000 I mean, I'm not sure we have this great bench of people who can blend this new populism.

00:13:17.000 I think there's something else that's happening with Trump, which is really unique.

00:13:20.000 And what that is, is when you talk about Trump being transactional, it's not just that Trump's transactional.

00:13:26.000 It's that the base is willing to accept that he's transactional.

00:13:28.000 So when you say, Mitch McConnell's transactional, which he is because he's a politician, the entire base goes, that, that sellout, that.

00:13:36.000 And they do the same thing with any politician, John Boehner, or Paul Ryan, or now Mike Johnson.

00:13:42.000 Anybody who quote-unquote caves to the left, who's being transactional, because that's what politics requires, is the transactional.

00:13:48.000 The 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.

00:13:54.000 We're like, okay, yeah, but we get that, like, he's on our side.

00:13:57.000 And I think that because of that, that's the part that I'm not sure is replicable.

00:14:02.000 Meaning that when I talk about the people in our industry, it's sort of fascinating.

00:14:05.000 I spoke at the House Republican convention.

00:14:08.000 They have sort of a big get-together every year.

00:14:11.000 And one year they were doing it in Florida, when McCarthy was House Speaker.

00:14:14.000 And I got up and I said to the members of the House, listen, my job is not the same as your job.

00:14:17.000 My job is to say what I think is true and what you guys should be going for.

00:14:21.000 And your job is to get 75% of that.

00:14:24.000 And it's not to do my job.

00:14:25.000 It'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.

00:14:31.000 Generally speaking, I actually don't think the Republican Party fails because of lack of will and spine.

00:14:35.000 I 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.

00:14:43.000 And 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?

00:14:49.000 I mean, the very early parts of Trump, they controlled the Senate and the House and the presidency, and they didn't do enough then.

00:14:53.000 That's when you, that's when we should be browbeating them.

00:14:56.000 But the thing about Trump that's unique is that Trump can say, yeah, listen, I'm getting to get 75%.

00:15:00.000 And I'll go, that's amazing.

00:15:01.000 He's getting 75%.

00:15:02.000 That's awesome.

00:15:03.000 And I know that if he could get 100%, he would.

00:15:07.000 Yeah, but I think your analogy there, you got me thinking, which, you know, happens a lot when you make a really good point.

00:15:15.000 The McConnell thing, you're right.

00:15:18.000 Why the disparity in kind of views?

00:15:20.000 Why are we so sure that McConnell sold this out, but Trump didn't?

00:15:24.000 And 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.

00:15:35.000 I'll give you an example.

00:15:36.000 Here's what I mean.

00:15:37.000 I think it's almost like political naïveté is Trump's superpower, which sounds odd, whereas it's McConnell's curse because he's not politically naïve.

00:15:47.000 I mean, there's no one less politically naïve than McConnell.

00:15:50.000 Here's a perfect example.

00:15:51.000 The Abraham Accords. 0.81

00:15:53.000 How many Republicans or Democrats, and Democrats, our entire swamp has said, you will never get any of this done without solving the Palestinian issue.

00:16:01.000 Don'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.

00:16:09.000 Trump comes in, and I say this in a laudatory fashion, a compliment, and he's politically naive about it.

00:16:15.000 He's like, ah, that's the way it was done.

00:16:17.000 I don't really buy that kind of BS.

00:16:19.000 I'm going to do it my way.

00:16:20.000 We're going to put a spreadsheet down.

00:16:22.000 Here's the number of people I'm going to get on board.

00:16:24.000 And then he does it.

00:16:25.000 And everybody's like, oh my God, he did that.

00:16:27.000 We weren't supposed to do that.

00:16:29.000 Well, why weren't you supposed to do it?

00:16:31.000 Because somebody told us we weren't supposed to do it.

00:16:34.000 That's the difference between him and McConnell.

00:16:36.000 McConnell will get transactional and will grow a pair when there's something really on the line, like the appeals court filibuster.

00:16:43.000 Listen, I'm not a McConnell guy, never have been.

00:16:46.000 His most important move as Senate Majority Leader has been in the last 100 years, 100%.

00:16:51.000 I don't care how much you hate McConnell.

00:16:53.000 There is zero disputing that altered the direction of the country, Roe v. Wade and everything.

00:16:58.000 But, again, I think it was a political calculation at the time that likely could have been done earlier.

00:17:02.000 And I think the difference between McConnell and Trump, too, is that Trump's—McConnell's like a counterpuncher.

00:17:09.000 He's got to wait for the politics to come his way.

00:17:11.000 And I understand he's dealing with votes.

00:17:12.000 He's got to whip stuff, right?

00:17:13.000 But Trump will just throw it out there.

00:17:15.000 And really, I think it's just that, can he be a bit impulsive?

00:17:19.000 Yeah, I think that's an understatement.

00:17:20.000 I don't think anybody doubts that.

00:17:22.000 But I think people see, like, wow, that's different.

00:17:25.000 I've never seen that before.

00:17:26.000 Good, like, let's move the Overton window in our direction.

00:17:28.000 Democrats do it all the time.

00:17:30.000 I mean, they're impulsive every single day. 0.52

00:17:32.000 They'll come out and say some crazy stuff.

00:17:33.000 I mean, how do we get to the point where, you know, a boy can be a girl now? 0.97

00:17:37.000 That'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.

00:17:42.000 And he pushes it, Trump.

00:17:43.000 He just keeps moving the ball forward, and I think that's what they like about him.

00:17:47.000 We'll get to more on this in just one moment.

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00:18:01.000 Not that that's ever happened to me or anything.

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00:18:48.000 So let's talk about kind of the difference between Trump 2020 and Trump 2024.

00:18:52.000 So when you look at Trump 2020, I know that you have strong opinions about what happened in the election.

00:18:57.000 My take on that has been they changed the rules, which is a form of cheating.

00:19:01.000 It obviously benefited Joe Biden.

00:19:02.000 They hid the Hunter Biden laptop story for a full month.

00:19:05.000 The entire media were arrayed against him.

00:19:07.000 The institutions of his own government were arrayed against him.

00:19:10.000 All of that is a form of cheating.

00:19:11.000 With that said, I don't think the electoral fraud proof is strong enough to suggest that he lost purely on the basis of electoral fraud.

00:19:18.000 So there's that.

00:19:19.000 Assuming my premise, which is that he actually lost in 2020 on just the pure number of counted votes.

00:19:25.000 What do you think changes between 2020 and 2024?

00:19:27.000 Because clearly something has.

00:19:29.000 He was he was lagging in the polls behind Biden the entirety of the 2020 election cycle by somewhere between five and seven points.

00:19:34.000 And then, of course, he ends up losing by much closer this time around.

00:19:38.000 He's been leading almost wire to wire.

00:19:39.000 Right.

00:19:40.000 And so what that says to me, is that really about Trump and changes with regard to Trump? 0.99

00:19:44.000 Or is that people taking a second look at Trump because Biden is such Unbelievable shit being president of the United States. 0.99

00:19:50.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:19:50.000 Well, and you well know, the polls always underestimate Trump's strength. 0.99

00:19:53.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:19:54.000 So if he's ahead, and I saw it today, he's tied in Virginia.

00:19:57.000 Yeah, it's crazy.

00:19:58.000 We haven't won Virginia since 2004.

00:20:00.000 Real clear politics just moves it into the toss-up category.

00:20:02.000 It's insane.

00:20:02.000 I mean, and I hate polls.

00:20:05.000 I've said it all the time.

00:20:06.000 They're points in time, and they're typically off.

00:20:09.000 But they always underestimate his strength.

00:20:10.000 But let's get to the election.

00:20:11.000 I want to say first, I can't prove it counterfactual, obviously.

00:20:15.000 I mean, I love economics, but I can't tell you what would have happened because it didn't.

00:20:18.000 And then I'll make one last point.

00:20:21.000 The Hunter Biden fiasco.

00:20:22.000 It's obviously, that's a separate matter, I get it.

00:20:25.000 But 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.

00:20:34.000 You 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.

00:20:44.000 I don't buy it at all.

00:20:45.000 I think it was a total scam.

00:20:47.000 I'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.

00:20:55.000 Because it's going to be a train wreck in California.

00:20:57.000 I 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

00:21:03.000 perform? Because when it comes to the turnout efforts in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan,

00:21:08.000 Pennsylvania, there are certain states that Trump is expanding the map in, like Nevada.

00:21:12.000 Right now he's leading well outside the margin of error, which is just- And he has been for a while.

00:21:15.000 For the entire time. It's totally crazy. But if you look at, Michigan is razor thin.

00:21:20.000 Pennsylvania is super razor thin. And there it's going to come down to a question of turnout.

00:21:25.000 So 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?

00:21:37.000 Yeah, it's a good question, and I think we can both agree.

00:21:41.000 Listen, we don't like mail-in balloting.

00:21:43.000 Republicans just don't.

00:21:44.000 And I just told you why.

00:21:46.000 It's prone to fraud.

00:21:47.000 But the hard... I'm a realpolitik guy.

00:21:49.000 Yeah, go do it right now.

00:21:50.000 Go mail-in.

00:21:50.000 Brother, we're stuck with what we have.

00:21:52.000 You know where we did it?

00:21:52.000 We did it in Florida.

00:21:53.000 Yeah, and we won by 20. 0.93

00:21:54.000 We killed everybody.

00:21:56.000 And Trump won twice.

00:21:57.000 So the point is, mail-in balloting can be done relatively securely.

00:22:01.000 Let's just put this out.

00:22:01.000 I'd rather not have it.

00:22:03.000 Unless you're in the military or you're in a nursing home, a medical emergency, it should not be a thing.

00:22:09.000 But it is.

00:22:10.000 Right.

00:22:10.000 We're stuck with it.

00:22:12.000 We can change it if we win.

00:22:13.000 Maybe we get H.R.

00:22:14.000 2 passed.

00:22:16.000 But we're stuck with it now.

00:22:17.000 So I like the pivot.

00:22:18.000 Thankfully, he's made this pivot where now he's like, listen, let's just swamp this thing. 0.97

00:22:22.000 Because if we're stuck with these damn rules, I mean, think about like early voting. 0.93

00:22:25.000 When I ran for office, I can't even tell you how many Republicans they say, I don't like voting early on principle alone. 0.99

00:22:32.000 I said, you realize there's no way to win an election that way, right?

00:22:35.000 The Democrats banked their early vote.

00:22:37.000 You know what happens on election day?

00:22:38.000 It rains.

00:22:39.000 People's kids are late for school.

00:22:41.000 Someone gets a fever.

00:22:42.000 That's about 1-2% of the vote that doesn't show up because of some environmental anomaly.

00:22:48.000 The Democrats don't have that problem.

00:22:50.000 We're stuck with this stuff.

00:22:51.000 Can we change it?

00:22:52.000 We can.

00:22:52.000 Do I want to change it?

00:22:53.000 Yes.

00:22:54.000 But I live in the real world, not the world I want, and I'm glad they pivoted on that.

00:22:58.000 They gotta swamp this thing and bank.

00:23:00.000 If that early voting starts tomorrow, vote tomorrow.

00:23:03.000 A hundred percent.

00:23:04.000 So we talked a lot about Trump.

00:23:05.000 Let'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.

00:23:11.000 But 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.

00:23:29.000 If you look at Joe Biden's poll numbers, they've never recovered.

00:23:32.000 That was the inflection point for his presidency.

00:23:34.000 And 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.

00:23:41.000 I mean, he was absolutely uncaring about what was going on in Afghanistan.

00:23:44.000 He's terrible at his job, that he lies on the regular.

00:23:47.000 All of these things were exposed by Afghanistan, and we've just seen that ever since. 1.00

00:23:51.000 And so, to me, it looks like, if I'm looking at this election, It looks like so much is baked into the cake.

00:23:56.000 Everyone has an opinion on Trump.

00:23:58.000 You know what you think of Trump.

00:23:58.000 Nobody's opinion about Trump is going to change, whether he's convicted, as he was, or whether he's not.

00:24:03.000 If he goes to jail, frankly, I think it probably helps him in a wide variety of ways.

00:24:06.000 We can talk about that in a second.

00:24:08.000 But nobody's changing their mind about Trump.

00:24:10.000 I think what's happened here is an enormous number of people have changed their mind about Trump.

00:24:14.000 I mean, I know them personally, right?

00:24:15.000 I mean, we're going to talk anecdotal. 0.99

00:24:16.000 I 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. 0.99

00:24:22.000 I'm not going to vote for him. 0.95

00:24:23.000 Even the ones who are very left, who are like, I can't bring myself to vote for Trump because whatever.

00:24:27.000 They'll vote for RFK or they won't show up.

00:24:29.000 There's going to be a significant problem for Joe Biden.

00:24:31.000 The enthusiasm for him is unbelievably low.

00:24:34.000 When you look at the Biden presidency, I've said this is the worst presidency of my lifetime, bar none.

00:24:39.000 What do you make of the failures of Joe Biden?

00:24:42.000 Well, two points.

00:24:44.000 The first is the damaging political narratives.

00:24:46.000 The second will be none of this is changeable for him.

00:24:49.000 So first, there are bad political stories that do harm and there are bad political stories that don't.

00:24:56.000 You know, why did this trial up in New York backfire spectacularly on Biden, not Donald Trump?

00:25:02.000 I mean, convicted felon, the Stormy Daniels stuff.

00:25:04.000 And 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?

00:25:15.000 If, 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.

00:25:24.000 Like, that's not the guy.

00:25:25.000 If it was a story about, you know, Donald Trump or maybe Tom Massey or Rand Paul, you'd be like, nah, sounds like fun.

00:25:31.000 It's the same story, bro. 0.99

00:25:32.000 So, 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. 0.98

00:25:44.000 Obama was at least politically smart. 0.92

00:25:46.000 It's because he ran as the stability guy, the transition agent, the non-chaos agent.

00:25:51.000 He did.

00:25:52.000 Look at all these crazy things Trump did.

00:25:54.000 I 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.

00:26:01.000 And 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.

00:26:14.000 You're right, though.

00:26:15.000 Never goes down to that.

00:26:16.000 Then inflation.

00:26:17.000 Like, wait, wait, I thought, again, you were this stability guy.

00:26:19.000 My money's not even stable.

00:26:20.000 I can't even buy bacon anymore.

00:26:21.000 What are you talking about?

00:26:23.000 So the destructive narrative...

00:26:25.000 He runs also as this kind of avuncular grandfatherly figure, right?

00:26:29.000 And then you find out the Hunter Biden story, and you're like, wait, this guy's a good dad?

00:26:34.000 Like, I'm a dad.

00:26:35.000 I got a kid, God forbid, with some drug problem, and I'm sending him overseas to hustle money for the family so I can give...

00:26:43.000 I'm sorry brother, I'm not buying the good dad drill.

00:26:48.000 Get your kid in some, get him out of Ukraine and Burisma and put him in some care. 1.00

00:26:53.000 Are you kidding?

00:26:54.000 So every one of the stories starts dinging at his credibility till he's down now to the 30% approval, 35%.

00:27:01.000 And those people, I'll make a strong case to you, are the hard left.

00:27:04.000 They don't really approve of Joe Biden. 1.00

00:27:06.000 They know he's dumber than Obama. 1.00

00:27:08.000 You gotta remember, Joe Biden. 1.00

00:27:11.000 Is the president Barack Obama always wanted to be, but was too politically smart to become?

00:27:16.000 Don't ever forget that.

00:27:17.000 Obama wants to be Joe Biden, not the other way around.

00:27:20.000 He does. 1.00

00:27:21.000 Biden's just too dumb to say no. 1.00

00:27:23.000 AOC and the squad come in, they're like, Israel sucks, Israel sucks, Gaza sucks, Gaza sucks. 1.00

00:27:29.000 Every day he changes his mind because he's too stupid to have a position. 1.00

00:27:33.000 But the problem he's going to have on the second point here is none of this is changeable. 1.00

00:27:38.000 He's only getting older.

00:27:39.000 He obviously has some cognitive frontal lobe dementia, if you just look at him.

00:27:44.000 None of his policies are changeable.

00:27:45.000 The economy's not going to turn around.

00:27:47.000 The Middle East isn't getting any better. 1.00

00:27:49.000 They still haven't completely sealed the deal.

00:27:51.000 Russia's been making advances in Kharkiv.

00:27:54.000 What is he going to change in three, four months?

00:27:57.000 There's no political trajectory that turns around for him.

00:28:00.000 And that's why I'm optimistic.

00:28:02.000 But, you know, any red wave talk, I ban people from my show immediately. 1.00

00:28:06.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:28:08.000 Sure.

00:28:08.000 So that brings up what Trump's going to do in the debate with Biden.

00:28:11.000 So my advice to Trump has been, just don't do what you did in the first debate with Biden, right?

00:28:15.000 Just let Biden talk.

00:28:17.000 The recipe for success with Joe Biden is make him speak for a particular length of time without a teleprompter.

00:28:23.000 Right.

00:28:23.000 And 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.

00:28:30.000 Go for it.

00:28:31.000 And then he should just be urging more talk from Joe Biden.

00:28:34.000 Because the more you see of Joe Biden, the more he makes you very, very nervous.

00:28:37.000 And when it comes to President Trump, listen, we all find him entertaining.

00:28:40.000 We've already baked into the cake our perception of him as far as who he is personally.

00:28:44.000 But 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?

00:28:51.000 It'll just get a little less nutty.

00:28:52.000 Like, take down kind of the volatility and the colorfulness like 15%, and he's president forever, you know?

00:28:59.000 Yeah, I get it, but I worry that that's the appeal, that so many people out there who are not us See that.

00:29:06.000 Like, my brother's a perfect example.

00:29:07.000 Like I said, local three electrician guy.

00:29:09.000 Never voted for a Republican in his life.

00:29:11.000 And that's the appeal.

00:29:13.000 I get it.

00:29:13.000 I understand.

00:29:14.000 I've had this conversation with a bunch of people about it.

00:29:16.000 I don't, listen, I don't think at this point anything's going to change.

00:29:18.000 Like you said, it's baked into the cake.

00:29:20.000 But on the debate front, I think Donald Trump, yes, has to let Biden talk.

00:29:24.000 You're 100% correct.

00:29:25.000 The more he talks, the more Pandora's box opens up.

00:29:27.000 It's a disaster.

00:29:29.000 I think though Biden has a real Achilles heel if you watch him in debates.

00:29:33.000 This is not the guy who debated Paul Ryan years ago.

00:29:36.000 I gotta tell you, I was kind of stunned. 0.99

00:29:38.000 I was expecting Paul Ryan to kick his ass in that debate. 1.00

00:29:40.000 Yeah, me too. 1.00

00:29:41.000 And Biden lied the whole way through it, but he lied really well.

00:29:43.000 You were like, wow, that's impressive.

00:29:45.000 This guy lies really good.

00:29:46.000 I mean, he was like a Jen Psaki level of lying.

00:29:48.000 I was like, wow.

00:29:49.000 Slap on that joker and just go for it. 1.00

00:29:51.000 Yeah, we were stunned.

00:29:52.000 I remember sitting up in New York watching it.

00:29:54.000 He's a different guy now.

00:29:56.000 He's got this anger issue.

00:29:58.000 It's a serious anger issue.

00:29:59.000 He can't seem to control himself anymore, especially when his son is brought up.

00:30:03.000 So I think what Trump should do, and I've said this repeatedly even to him, is they need to bring props.

00:30:10.000 I'm not talking about like a big rubber ducky right now.

00:30:12.000 He needs to pull out a copy of that check, that $40,000 check.

00:30:16.000 Be like, Joe, it says Joe Biden, right?

00:30:18.000 $40,000.

00:30:18.000 Where'd it come from?

00:30:19.000 Joe, explain.

00:30:20.000 He'll lose his mind.

00:30:21.000 He clearly has no emotional control anymore.

00:30:24.000 I think Biden agreeing to the debate was a really, really awful idea.

00:30:28.000 I think it's the last straw.

00:30:31.000 I don't see him being the nominee.

00:30:32.000 Wow.

00:30:33.000 I don't.

00:30:34.000 I don't see him being the nominee.

00:30:35.000 I see less than a 50% chance.

00:30:37.000 Obviously can't predict the future.

00:30:39.000 However, the Democrats know this election is too important.

00:30:42.000 There's some big money that's sitting there on the sidelines waiting.

00:30:45.000 I think they watch this first debate.

00:30:47.000 If it goes bad, which it can, but who knows?

00:30:50.000 State of the Union, I don't know what the hell happened with him.

00:30:52.000 Who knows?

00:30:52.000 I ain't even getting into it.

00:30:53.000 But he gets up there at the State of the Union.

00:30:56.000 It's a horrible speech, but it's not like by Biden standards, it's okay.

00:31:00.000 Yeah, he didn't fall, he didn't die, there weren't that many stuttering or stammering or anything like that.

00:31:05.000 If 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?

00:31:17.000 Yeah, and I think that's right. 0.99

00:31:17.000 I 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. 0.99

00:31:24.000 Because once you set those expectations, it's actually a real problem. 0.98

00:31:27.000 The 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.

00:31:35.000 Because if that entire debate is about 2020, then Biden does well with that.

00:31:39.000 Not because whether he won or whether he lost.

00:31:42.000 If 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.

00:31:48.000 They want to hear about what happened in the last three and a half years under Joe Biden.

00:31:51.000 And I think that Joe Biden actually gave him a gift with the prosecution in this way.

00:31:55.000 I 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.

00:32:08.000 Reframing.

00:32:09.000 I mean, it's a standard debate tactic you would learn in debate 101, is you take an argument thrown at you.

00:32:16.000 You know what I would do?

00:32:17.000 I would use that old, what is it, the British debating method.

00:32:19.000 Here's what I would say if I was Trump. 0.97

00:32:20.000 I'd say, Joe Biden's going to tell you X, that I am a Nazi and a fascist and a wannabe dictator. 0.97

00:32:26.000 That's what he's going to do. 0.89

00:32:27.000 That's the way when he says it, he looks like a tool.

00:32:29.000 And you say, but let me just...

00:32:31.000 Let's put out this kind of predicate argument.

00:32:33.000 Here's what Joe Biden did.

00:32:35.000 He goes through the list of names.

00:32:37.000 George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Mike Flynn.

00:32:43.000 What do all those names have in common?

00:32:45.000 Those are people who committed no known documented crimes, but found themselves under an extensive deep state Joe Biden team led investigation.

00:32:52.000 Matter of fact, it was Joe Biden who recommended the Logan Act against Mike Flynn.

00:32:55.000 I forgot about that.

00:32:56.000 That's so crazy.

00:32:57.000 So who really is the dictator? 0.99

00:32:59.000 And 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.

00:33:08.000 But it's clearly Biden who has really taken the presidency and really embarrassed us. 0.68

00:33:14.000 I'm not talking about mean tweets.

00:33:16.000 I'm talking about just a double-barreled middle finger to the Supreme Court. 0.52

00:33:20.000 I mean, the Colangelo leaving the DOJ, this is just unprecedented. 0.98

00:33:25.000 The third world, Kim Jong-un's taking notes, stuff like, wow, that's pretty cool.

00:33:29.000 Maybe I should try that.

00:33:29.000 I mean, really, he's embarrassed Joe Biden beat him to the punch, you know?

00:33:33.000 We'll get to more on this in just a moment.

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00:34:34.000 So when you look at, you know, who would replace Biden?

00:34:38.000 You suggest that he's not going to be the nominee.

00:34:40.000 The problem I see is, who the hell do they get?

00:34:42.000 The only person who everyone on the right is afraid of is Michelle Obama.

00:34:45.000 Everybody else, I feel like, you know, Trump beats.

00:34:48.000 But 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.

00:35:07.000 Do you think that they can pull her out?

00:35:09.000 Or is it Kamala?

00:35:10.000 Are they really going to depose the old man for the least popular vice president in American history for Kamala Harris?

00:35:16.000 Well, listen, she has to leave voluntarily. 0.63

00:35:19.000 The left has boxed themselves in.

00:35:20.000 You know, I call it my cannibalism theory.

00:35:23.000 And it's the idea that guys like you and I ignored cancel culture leftists a long time ago.

00:35:27.000 But there's power in it.

00:35:28.000 They enjoy it.

00:35:29.000 So they had to start feasting on their own because there was nowhere else to go.

00:35:32.000 That's why you see entertainers getting beat up by it now.

00:35:35.000 So, this cannibalism theory applies to that.

00:35:38.000 They boxed themselves in with Kamala Harris.

00:35:40.000 Joe Biden made crystal clear it was valuable to have a black woman as vice president.

00:35:46.000 What's he going to do now?

00:35:48.000 People go, oh, we changed our mind.

00:35:49.000 All of a sudden, the whole black woman, DEI, which they, and I didn't say it, they did, that all of a sudden she's not worthy.

00:35:57.000 She has to step aside voluntarily.

00:35:59.000 On the Michelle Obama front, One thing I know well is the Obamas.

00:36:02.000 I worked with them for a couple years.

00:36:04.000 I'm telling you there's, I'll say 0.001 because nothing's impossible.

00:36:09.000 There is no way she's running.

00:36:11.000 No way.

00:36:12.000 She hates politics.

00:36:13.000 Any one of her agents back in the day will tell you she can't stand politics. 0.99

00:36:17.000 She hated being a public figure.

00:36:19.000 She absolutely hated the White House.

00:36:21.000 I always tell this story about But the guys one day were like, where were you guys?

00:36:25.000 They came back to the White House.

00:36:26.000 They're like, we were out at a Target or a Walmart or something.

00:36:28.000 What the hell were you doing at Walmart?

00:36:29.000 These are the EFLD guys, First Lady's Detail.

00:36:32.000 Because, you know, we all hang out together.

00:36:33.000 What the hell were you doing at Walmart?

00:36:34.000 I forget where it was.

00:36:35.000 I think it was a Target, but it doesn't matter.

00:36:37.000 And they're like, we were with the First Lady.

00:36:41.000 Really?

00:36:42.000 I forget about her name.

00:36:44.000 Renegade?

00:36:44.000 What was she?

00:36:45.000 He was Renegade.

00:36:46.000 And I said, what were you doing?

00:36:47.000 She wanted to go shopping.

00:36:49.000 I'm like, in what?

00:36:49.000 They took her in this low-key car.

00:36:52.000 She 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.

00:37:02.000 She does not want anything to do with this.

00:37:05.000 This is all one—I hate that term, psy-op.

00:37:07.000 I hate it.

00:37:08.000 It's so overused.

00:37:08.000 But this is it.

00:37:09.000 I swear the left is playing games with us.

00:37:12.000 If it's going to be anyone, it's going to be Kamala.

00:37:13.000 If she voluntarily steps aside, or there's an eruption in Chicago at the DNC, which is possible.

00:37:21.000 You could see an outsider.

00:37:23.000 Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania.

00:37:25.000 Really popular guy.

00:37:26.000 I mean, he's a leftist, but really popular guy.

00:37:29.000 I think Newsom's kind of cooked.

00:37:31.000 I think a lot of people are sick of him, but, you know, he's power hungry.

00:37:34.000 You know, obviously, Whitmer wants it.

00:37:36.000 J.B.

00:37:36.000 Pritzker.

00:37:37.000 I mean, you could see Hakeem Jeffries.

00:37:39.000 You could see a bunch of people who jump in.

00:37:42.000 But I don't think he's the nominee.

00:37:43.000 The only thing stepping in the way of him Leaving is him. He is obviously a

00:37:49.000 Sociopathic level narcissist. He believes he's like an FDR type figure. That's why he look at the polls Jack

00:37:56.000 Look at the but we are looking at the polls. Everybody hates you. We look at the actual polls Jack

00:38:01.000 What are you looking at?

00:38:02.000 I mean in that which which brings up Jill who you know is obviously like an Edith Wilson figure who's

00:38:07.000 Really 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.

00:38:17.000 So I'm going to turn back to the Republican Party for a second.

00:38:19.000 So 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.

00:38:31.000 That 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.

00:38:42.000 When I look at that, that's the upside.

00:38:44.000 One of the downsides is, as we discussed before, he's not a philosophical conservative.

00:38:49.000 He'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.

00:38:58.000 He has a fully formed theory of how foreign policy ought to work.

00:39:01.000 He 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.

00:39:09.000 Very good stuff.

00:39:10.000 But subject to interpretation.

00:39:12.000 It's that that I kind of want to ask you about.

00:39:14.000 So 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.

00:39:23.000 The conservative movement remains sort of amorphous.

00:39:25.000 And what that means, there's a lot of internal battling, obviously, over pretty much everything at this point.

00:39:29.000 And Trump himself, as a singular figure, is sort of keeping a cap on it.

00:39:32.000 And that's everything from economics to social policy to foreign policy.

00:39:36.000 You're seeing sort of these internal battles inside the Republican Party on a lot of these issues.

00:39:40.000 So we can start with economics, where, you know, there's this bizarre battle that's been going on.

00:39:44.000 And as long as I've been alive, the Republican Party has been the generally free market party

00:39:50.000 that believes in free trade and private property.

00:39:53.000 And there's been a real push inside some wings of the Republican Party to push for a significantly

00:39:56.000 more interventionist federal government that works on redistributionism and uses regulation

00:40:02.000 to benefit certain populations at the expense of other populations.

00:40:06.000 And it's been called economic populism.

00:40:08.000 But Trump has been on kind of both sides of that debate.

00:40:11.000 He likes the free market, but he's also been the same guy who says we should never discuss 0.96

00:40:15.000 Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid because that's a political loser.

00:40:18.000 So 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?

00:40:25.000 Well, first I'll say that's definitely not unique to the Republican Party.

00:40:30.000 I mean, you've seen these internal fights on significant issues.

00:40:33.000 I 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.

00:40:40.000 I mean, so the party's evolving.

00:40:43.000 Certainly is nothing new.

00:40:44.000 But 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.

00:40:54.000 So I have kind of different views on that.

00:40:56.000 That's nothing new, but you're correct.

00:40:59.000 I was a diehard doctrinaire free trader from the libertarian front.

00:41:03.000 Free trade is good.

00:41:05.000 The Japanese want to be the kings of rubber dog toys? 1.00

00:41:08.000 Send them over, brother.

00:41:09.000 We'll produce AI.

00:41:10.000 Why would we want people working building rubber dog toys? 0.83

00:41:13.000 It's a waste of time.

00:41:16.000 But then you realize, I hate the term evolved because it's associated with them, but I listened to a podcast once.

00:41:22.000 I love Econ Talk.

00:41:25.000 He's just fantastic.

00:41:26.000 I think he had JD Vance on one time, too.

00:41:28.000 And 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. 0.85

00:41:37.000 So would you do that if there were two islands of people and you just divorced all the politics?

00:41:43.000 Island A, people A, people B. Oh, let's trade, let's trade. 0.51

00:41:47.000 People B is like, let's nuke people A. All of a sudden, you're not trading.

00:41:50.000 You can talk all the free trade crap you want.

00:41:53.000 And that's where I started with Evolve My Views. 0.91

00:41:55.000 I'm not a tariffs guy.

00:41:56.000 They're paid for by us.

00:41:59.000 It can be used as a strategic weapon if you're dealing with the threat of a hypersonic missile attack.

00:42:04.000 And I've evolved.

00:42:04.000 And believe me, that's not because of Trump.

00:42:06.000 This happened through a J.D.

00:42:07.000 Vance podcast way before Trump.

00:42:09.000 So I think he kind of sees that in a transactional way, like, OK, these guys want to kill us?

00:42:13.000 Yeah, yeah, make them pay more.

00:42:15.000 You know, I get it.

00:42:15.000 We pay more.

00:42:16.000 What does bother me, though, with this populist streak of economics is you are correct.

00:42:20.000 Entitlements will bankrupt us.

00:42:22.000 It's a matter of simple math.

00:42:23.000 It's not my opinion.

00:42:24.000 The math doesn't lie.

00:42:25.000 I don't really care what anyone's opinion is.

00:42:27.000 They will bankrupt us.

00:42:28.000 And if someone doesn't tell America the truth, and we haven't been, we've been lying about it forever.

00:42:33.000 And it's not just, you know, people who are maybe MAGA or Donald Trump or anyone else who's like, hey, we got to leave this stuff alone.

00:42:39.000 There are a lot of Republicans who will just, it's the third rail.

00:42:43.000 They won't touch it.

00:42:44.000 We have to look America in the face and go, hey, listen.

00:42:46.000 You're a senior.

00:42:47.000 I get it.

00:42:48.000 The government made promises.

00:42:49.000 Your whole life's been ironed.

00:42:50.000 You're done working.

00:42:51.000 We got to make it right for you.

00:42:52.000 We have to.

00:42:52.000 It's our obligation, okay?

00:42:54.000 I've got an easy life.

00:42:55.000 The biggest problem in America right now is obesity and the size of your flat-screen TV.

00:42:59.000 You guys fought in World War II.

00:43:00.000 You guys actually did something.

00:43:02.000 I don't even have a real job.

00:43:03.000 I talk for a living.

00:43:04.000 We'll take care of you.

00:43:05.000 But to this 50 and younger generation, we've got to be straight with them.

00:43:08.000 That's a part of the Republican Party we can't fold on, because you will be bankrupt.

00:43:12.000 At some point, you are going to have some monetary fiscal crisis that is going to make the Great Depression look like romper room.

00:43:20.000 You can't keep issuing voluminous amounts of debt and say this is worth something.

00:43:25.000 I mean, this mug has a purpose.

00:43:26.000 You can drink from it.

00:43:27.000 The paper doesn't.

00:43:28.000 Unless you're using it for fire.

00:43:30.000 The minute someone believes it doesn't have value, it doesn't.

00:43:34.000 And that's the streak of the party, you know, that really bothers me, is that we gotta get back to telling people the truth.

00:43:39.000 You know, like, I was just watching a video of Pierre Polivier up in I'm talking about the housing subsidies.

00:43:46.000 He's like, it doesn't matter if I agree with you or don't.

00:43:48.000 The math doesn't agree with you.

00:43:49.000 It doesn't matter what I think.

00:43:51.000 The math doesn't agree with allowing entitlements to go forward like this.

00:43:55.000 They don't.

00:43:55.000 And so obviously in total agreement with you on that.

00:43:58.000 And I think that in the end, because the math is what the math is,

00:44:02.000 that perspective is likely to prevail.

00:44:05.000 The foreign policy front has been very fascinating because you've seen obviously some breakdowns on the right

00:44:09.000 with regard to foreign policy.

00:44:11.000 And I think some of that is, you know, some of it is a little bit dishonest in the sense that.

00:44:16.000 Yeah, 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.

00:44:22.000 The 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.

00:44:30.000 And then it became sort of Paul Wolfowitz, we will transform the entire Middle East into thriving multiracial democracies.

00:44:37.000 Using Woodrow Wilson ideology, right?

00:44:39.000 And the truth is, I don't know very many Republicans who are on that side of the aisle anymore.

00:44:44.000 Like, 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.

00:44:52.000 I 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?

00:45:01.000 And what I see sometimes is a willingness to Ignore that question almost entirely in favor of sloganeering.

00:45:09.000 And that I find problematic.

00:45:11.000 So we'll take the case of say Russia-Ukraine.

00:45:14.000 So 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.

00:45:23.000 I'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.

00:45:37.000 And 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. 0.61

00:45:51.000 One 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.

00:45:57.000 And it's of zero relevance to us whether Russia takes Ukraine at all.

00:46:02.000 Or if the United States continues to fund Ukraine, that's like an active bad that's bankrupting the country.

00:46:07.000 And there I have some problems in even understanding the argument, I suppose.

00:46:11.000 I'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.

00:46:22.000 Also, obviously granting enormous more resources, access to the Black Sea in new ways to the Russians.

00:46:28.000 I feel like it's in the United States' interest to degrade the Russian military capacity.

00:46:32.000 Beyond that, the sort of idea that foreign aid is equivalent to putting boots on the ground in Ukraine is obviously not true.

00:46:40.000 It seems like a fairly, if we're going to speak about the cost of war actually pretty plainly, it seems like the

00:46:45.000 amount of money we're spending in Ukraine is a lot of money also by comparison to the

00:46:48.000 federal budget. It's a very small percentage of the federal budget. And the reality is that it's a lot

00:46:53.000 more expensive if you have to actually start forward deploying in a lot of these areas. This is a

00:46:57.000 great question because I think these are the best questions on these types of shows because I

00:47:02.000 think this is where there's some daylight between you and I. Let's address the big one first,

00:47:05.000 this evolution of Republican, the old three-stool Republican, but where national security

00:47:10.000 and an aggressive foreign posture was kind of like a shibboleth to get into the party,

00:47:15.000 right?

00:47:16.000 That has completely changed.

00:47:17.000 You see it.

00:47:18.000 I'm not a huge fan of being on X all day because sometimes you get depressed.

00:47:22.000 But you do get a real flavor for what people are thinking because you're microblogging live time.

00:47:26.000 You see this shift happen. 1.00

00:47:28.000 But 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. 0.99

00:47:35.000 It's become kind of a way to just discredit someone before they even open their—so just, like, stop. 0.98

00:47:39.000 Let's have a dispassionate conversation about why so many people distrust the federal government's decision-making and foreign interventions.

00:47:49.000 Where have we won?

00:47:51.000 Where have we won?

00:47:52.000 No, I'm not—this is where I don't want people to get upset here, but we could have won in Vietnam.

00:47:58.000 The politics weren't there.

00:48:00.000 We could have won in Iraq long term.

00:48:02.000 The politics weren't there.

00:48:03.000 Remember that old line, you got the watches, we've got the time?

00:48:05.000 No, we didn't.

00:48:06.000 No, no, it's the other way.

00:48:08.000 They knew.

00:48:08.000 Everyone 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.

00:48:19.000 It was very easy to explain World War II.

00:48:23.000 Nazis, you want to be speaking German?

00:48:24.000 No. 1.00

00:48:25.000 Okay, these heroes are like, let's kill bad guys and save the world. 0.69

00:48:29.000 People say to themselves now, they go, yeah, Afghanistan fell. 1.00

00:48:33.000 Joe Biden sucks. 0.99

00:48:33.000 We probably should have done that different. 0.99

00:48:35.000 I'm not defending Joe Biden's decision at all.

00:48:38.000 But what happened?

00:48:39.000 Did your life change?

00:48:40.000 No one else's did.

00:48:42.000 And, you know, I'm going to tell you just a personal story.

00:48:45.000 But, yeah, I never met my uncle, Greg Ambrose.

00:48:48.000 He was killed in battle March 15th, 1968.

00:48:51.000 He was shot in Thu Duc, Vietnam, in the back.

00:48:54.000 He died.

00:48:54.000 He was defending his friends.

00:48:55.000 He got the Bronze Star with a V device for valor.

00:48:58.000 He was a hero of mine.

00:49:00.000 I never met him.

00:49:00.000 I was born in 1974.

00:49:03.000 Ben, my family was never the same, man.

00:49:05.000 I mean, my grandmother died depressed.

00:49:08.000 You could never mention Greg around her.

00:49:10.000 He died in 1968.

00:49:12.000 My grandmother died in about 2002.

00:49:16.000 You could not bring his name up.

00:49:18.000 Her mood would shift instantly.

00:49:20.000 You know, we owned a bar, and the day he was supposed to come home, they had all the signs up.

00:49:25.000 This is how horrible the story is.

00:49:27.000 Welcome home.

00:49:29.000 You know, two soldiers show up.

00:49:30.000 I'm just talking about it.

00:49:33.000 And my grandfather, my grandmother remarried.

00:49:36.000 She lost her first husband, Greg's dad.

00:49:37.000 So my grandfather was a big guy.

00:49:39.000 He owned a bar.

00:49:40.000 He was 6'5", like 400 pounds or so.

00:49:42.000 He used to do beer commercials and stuff.

00:49:44.000 He sees these guys first.

00:49:46.000 And they said, we're looking for Eileen Kramer.

00:49:49.000 And he knew.

00:49:51.000 He's like, no, no.

00:49:53.000 They said, no, we have to tell her.

00:49:54.000 They said, yeah, you're not.

00:49:56.000 I'll tell her.

00:49:58.000 And that was it.

00:49:59.000 She died with a broken heart.

00:50:01.000 And I get it.

00:50:02.000 You 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.

00:50:12.000 But if I can't explain to someone a tangible goal with Ukraine, let's bring it back to Ukraine.

00:50:20.000 You know, think of Fox Connor's rules of war, right?

00:50:22.000 Don't go to war alone, don't go to war for long, and don't go to war unless you absolutely have to.

00:50:26.000 Eisenhower loved Fox Connor.

00:50:29.000 Do we have to?

00:50:29.000 Because I know on one end, you make a good point.

00:50:33.000 It is, one, saying Ukraine's not in our interest is clearly, that's just silly.

00:50:37.000 Like, we have interests in every country.

00:50:39.000 They may be small, they may be big.

00:50:41.000 Zero interest in Ukraine is not a real position, okay?

00:50:44.000 The question is, is it enough of an interest?

00:50:46.000 To risk war.

00:50:48.000 But then you get to the next question, like, well, what do we make in our decisions?

00:50:51.000 Because every time we do something, Putin says, so what, we don't do anything?

00:50:54.000 I understand that position, too.

00:50:56.000 My question to people is, there's trauma, there's disaster, there's bloodshed all over the world.

00:51:02.000 In Sudan, South Africa's having a mess right now. 1.00

00:51:04.000 The ANC just lost for the first time since Mandela.

00:51:07.000 I mean, everybody's a mess.

00:51:09.000 We can't fix this.

00:51:10.000 And what if they totally forfeit?

00:51:14.000 Kharkiv, portions of Ukraine in the east, Crimea is obviously gone at this point, and their ports in the Black Sea.

00:51:23.000 If I can't explain to you how that materially changes your life, I'm the Commander-in-Chief.

00:51:27.000 I'm sorry, but I can't make a good case for a prolonged interest.

00:51:31.000 I have no problem with intelligence sharing, but attack them, send them into Russian soil, which could escalate.

00:51:40.000 And, okay, they escalate.

00:51:41.000 What's next?

00:51:42.000 Everybody talks about, oh, well, what if Russia wins? 0.79

00:51:44.000 It's gonna be so bad. 1.00

00:51:45.000 Yeah, Putin's a terrorist. 0.99

00:51:47.000 That sounds like real s**t. But what if he doesn't win? 1.00

00:51:51.000 And some psycho takes out Putin because Russia starts losing, and now we're, now we're, I'd rather the enemy I know. 0.97

00:51:59.000 Nobody, nobody who articulates this view of what this Ukraine war looks like tells you what an actual win looks like.

00:52:07.000 I don't mean Russia.

00:52:08.000 So I totally agree with that.

00:52:09.000 And in fact, one of the critiques that I've made of Joe Biden is that he has never defined

00:52:12.000 what victory looks like.

00:52:13.000 In fact, what he has said is basically Ukraine will define what victory looks like.

00:52:17.000 And then Ukraine says, well, you know, a victory looks like is 2013 borders, not 2015 borders.

00:52:22.000 But I think that the kind of nor the kind of, I would say, middle of the road Republican

00:52:30.000 position, to be fair, would probably be no troops on the ground, which everyone agrees

00:52:34.000 with, no actual American military men or women in harm's way.

00:52:39.000 Funding Ukraine necessary to prevent the continued takeover of Ukraine by Russia with an eye

00:52:45.000 toward the off-ramp for a negotiated settlement that, again, allows Russia to probably take

00:52:50.000 some level of win that Putin can go back to his people with.

00:52:53.000 You see, but that's a strategy, though.

00:52:55.000 No, I totally agree.

00:52:55.000 If Joe Biden would say that...

00:52:57.000 And I get it, like, he's got to be careful, you know, what they say, making love and diplomacy is best behind closed doors.

00:53:03.000 And is that the informal strategy?

00:53:05.000 Let's just cause enough of a quagmire that it really screws up Russia but doesn't cause thermonuclear war? 0.87

00:53:12.000 That's okay, but Biden doesn't seem to want to do that either.

00:53:15.000 Well, the lack of clarity for Biden is one thing.

00:53:18.000 On the GOP side of the aisle, the conversation you and I are having is like a normal conversation.

00:53:22.000 I 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.

00:53:30.000 And I think there's a far cry from that to, I want to know exactly what our commitment is,

00:53:36.000 how long our commitment lasts, and what that's supposed to look like.

00:53:39.000 And the truth is that foreign policy also is not measured in terms of six months.

00:53:42.000 I couldn't tell you, for example, probably in 1952, what was the specific interest that the United States had

00:53:48.000 in, say, South Korea.

00:53:49.000 I can tell you right now what the specific interest the United States has in South Korea,

00:53:52.000 but it's only because South Korea exists.

00:53:54.000 And so one of the things that's very difficult about foreign policy is that an ounce of prevention,

00:53:59.000 sometimes prevents the pound of cure that's necessary.

00:54:04.000 Also, sometimes there's no, as you said about the election, sometimes there's no counterfactual.

00:54:09.000 So we don't actually know what happens if you don't do the things that didn't happen.

00:54:13.000 And so when it comes to particularly foreign aid to foreign countries,

00:54:17.000 as opposed to putting American troops on the ground or military material in places,

00:54:21.000 which seems to me like a complete ratcheting up, and that's where you have to be incredibly,

00:54:25.000 incredibly meticulous about, Should we even be doing this, like, at all?

00:54:30.000 When 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.

00:54:43.000 It's a strange one to consolidate about, given, again, that there are a thousand reasons to hate Joe Biden's policies.

00:54:48.000 And again, I think that he's screwed up in Ukraine. 0.98

00:54:51.000 He can't articulate his policy.

00:54:52.000 He's slow-walking aid, but we have to give more aid.

00:54:54.000 It's a fight for democracy, but else we're not going to give them the aid necessary to actually allow them to win.

00:54:58.000 It's all a mess, for sure.

00:55:00.000 But 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.

00:55:22.000 Well, a couple things.

00:55:23.000 First, 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.

00:55:41.000 If you believe you are being grotesquely misled.

00:55:43.000 The Russians are the best in the world at running operations, especially online now.

00:55:49.000 They abuse Twitter to make you believe.

00:55:51.000 Putin will say whatever he needs to say to get you on his side.

00:55:56.000 Oh, you're a Christian? 0.99

00:55:57.000 Oh, look, I'm a Christian.

00:55:58.000 If tomorrow he thought Israel would fight for Russia, he'd be like, I'm Jewish tomorrow.

00:56:03.000 He will say he's an intelligence guy. 0.99

00:56:06.000 He suckers people for a living. 0.98

00:56:07.000 That's how he stayed in power forever. 1.00

00:56:09.000 He's a scumbag. 1.00

00:56:10.000 He's a terrorist. 1.00

00:56:11.000 And 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.

00:56:22.000 First, imagine waking up with that sore throat, runny nose, cough.

00:56:23.000 They can't. These guys are revengeous. They just want to change everything.

00:56:27.000 We'll get to more on this in just one moment. First, imagine waking up with that sore throat,

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00:57:30.000 On the Ukraine front, it's just one last time.

00:57:33.000 There is a template here.

00:57:35.000 It's the Reagan policy.

00:57:38.000 The Reagan policy, it sounds, I hate cliches, man, but they're cliches for a reason, because they probably

00:57:43.000 were.

00:57:44.000 This peace through strength thing is real. 0.98

00:57:47.000 We didn't go to war with the Soviet Union because they were scared Because they were like, this guy's freaking crazy.

00:57:54.000 Look, he's building up nuclear weapons.

00:57:56.000 We've got a 500-ship navy.

00:57:58.000 What the hell is this guy doing?

00:57:59.000 We don't have to fight anyone. 0.95

00:58:01.000 There'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.

00:58:08.000 You can be Vinny.

00:58:09.000 Who the hell's Vinny?

00:58:10.000 Vinny's a kid I grew up with.

00:58:11.000 He's a real kid.

00:58:12.000 The kid was about 5'4", a buck twenty. 0.98

00:58:15.000 But he was legit crazy. 0.95

00:58:16.000 He would fight anyone, total New York kid, anytime. 0.76

00:58:20.000 I left the bar, Sally O's and Sonny Simonson.

00:58:22.000 Walked outside, he picked up a stop sign and fell off the ground and was fighting three guys with a stop sign.

00:58:26.000 The thing weighed like 200 pounds.

00:58:27.000 I don't know how he was doing it.

00:58:29.000 And you know what happened?

00:58:30.000 Nobody messed with this kid.

00:58:31.000 Not that they couldn't beat him up.

00:58:33.000 They just didn't want to because he'd bite you.

00:58:35.000 He'd rip your... This kid was crazy. 0.99

00:58:38.000 He's a real kid. 0.98

00:58:39.000 Vinny did.

00:58:40.000 Nobody toyed with this kid ever.

00:58:42.000 And when someone tried to toy with him and didn't know him, someone would go, don't do it.

00:58:47.000 Trust me, don't do it.

00:58:48.000 That's like the Kim Jong Un type. 0.99

00:58:50.000 He'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? 0.99

00:58:59.000 I don't want that, right? 0.99

00:59:01.000 I want the old Reagan approach.

00:59:02.000 That's the Brock Lesnar approach.

00:59:03.000 Brock Lesnar walks in a bar, nobody's fighting Brock Lesnar.

00:59:06.000 Why?

00:59:07.000 Because you're just not going to win. 0.99

00:59:08.000 He's so freaking big and just nasty looking. 0.97

00:59:12.000 He's the guy's like six, five, 300 pounds of steel. 0.99

00:59:15.000 Like unless you want to die, you just don't fight him.

00:59:18.000 So Brock Lesnar, the irony is, he never has to fight unless he wants to make money.

00:59:22.000 That's what we do.

00:59:23.000 We go back to the Reagan era, we go, I wish Democrats would cut the BS.

00:59:27.000 They should be like, tell you what, we're not doing five, we're doing 600 ships.

00:59:30.000 We're going to triple our nuclear payload.

00:59:32.000 The nuclear triad, we're going to have the best triad in the world.

00:59:35.000 We're going to get bombers, hypersonics, and we're going to build a trillion dollar military budget.

00:59:40.000 You know why?

00:59:41.000 Because we're never going to use it.

00:59:42.000 And that's the glory of it.

00:59:43.000 And we don't want to do it.

00:59:44.000 By the way, the magic of Donald Trump is that he was both of those things. 0.90

00:59:47.000 He was like the crazy man theory.

00:59:49.000 He said that directly to me.

00:59:52.000 He literally said to me about Ukraine.

00:59:55.000 He says, you want to know why Vladimir Putin never invaded Ukraine? 0.99

00:59:58.000 The reason he never invaded Ukraine is because I told him I'd bomb the shit out of him. 0.99

01:00:02.000 And he said, Vladimir, look at me. 0.99

01:00:03.000 And he said, no you won't, Mr. President.

01:00:04.000 I said, I might.

01:00:06.000 Both are great, but you know it never happened.

01:00:09.000 He's a unique combination of both.

01:00:12.000 100%.

01:00:12.000 So, final topic, because I know you have to run.

01:00:14.000 What 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.

01:00:44.000 But that does have some deeper consequences.

01:00:46.000 I 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.

01:00:56.000 Forget about for Israel. 0.99

01:00:56.000 That'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. 0.99

01:01:05.000 You know, it was Golda Meir who really summed it up.

01:01:08.000 She said, you know, we can forgive you for killing our children, but we can never forgive you for making us kill yours.

01:01:15.000 This is obviously a really sensitive topic for me. 0.51

01:01:18.000 You follow me on Twitter or something, you know that.

01:01:21.000 I spent a lot of time in the Middle East.

01:01:22.000 A lot.

01:01:23.000 Jordan, Abu Dhabi, Saudi, Kuwait, Israel.

01:01:31.000 You know, when you're over there with the Secret Service, like, there's no one protecting you.

01:01:34.000 Like, you're it.

01:01:35.000 Like, you're out there in advance.

01:01:36.000 You're protecting yourself.

01:01:37.000 So, 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.

01:01:46.000 It's really infuriating to me.

01:01:48.000 Go over there.

01:01:49.000 Just, I'm all mad.

01:01:50.000 You know what? 1.00

01:01:51.000 You want to kill Jews? 1.00

01:01:52.000 You hate Jews? 1.00

01:01:55.000 I'm never going to talk the crazy out of you, but just go. 0.99

01:01:57.000 Go visit Jordan or something like that.

01:01:59.000 I was doing this advance once for the First Lady, and I'm driving from Amman to Petra.

01:02:04.000 It's like a three-hour ride on a desert highway every day.

01:02:07.000 And they would give me a series of these drivers.

01:02:09.000 These are people vetted by the embassy, but they're locals.

01:02:11.000 They're three-hour drives, so after like an hour, they get pretty much every day for two weeks, some driver. 0.98

01:02:17.000 After like two hours, they'd be like, you know Jews are dogs, right? 1.00

01:02:19.000 You'd be like, This is every day, and I'm like, really? 0.98

01:02:24.000 Like, actual?

01:02:25.000 Like, how does that work?

01:02:26.000 And then they realize you're not, oh, I didn't mean it, because they don't want to get fired.

01:02:30.000 And 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.

01:02:38.000 They have, there's no real explanation for the banks or something.

01:02:43.000 Which one?

01:02:44.000 Like Bank of America?

01:02:44.000 I don't understand.

01:02:46.000 No one has an explanation.

01:02:47.000 And then you see this thing.

01:02:49.000 Clear as, moral clarity cannot be clearer. 0.98

01:02:52.000 Savages, women, people, their breasts off. 1.00

01:02:56.000 And then there's like women dancing at a festival. 1.00

01:03:02.000 What kind of dumb a** do you have to be to be like, I don't know, this guy's got a point. 1.00

01:03:08.000 Like, what point do they, this is not an argument, this is not real. 1.00

01:03:12.000 Okay, I get it.

01:03:13.000 There are even disagreements with Israel about their internal politics.

01:03:16.000 Some people like Bibi, Benny Gantz, I get it, whatever, you do you.

01:03:20.000 The Supreme Court thing was a really, it was a huge deal.

01:03:22.000 You know, the lefties.

01:03:23.000 I'm not talking about it.

01:03:24.000 I'm talking about basic humanity.

01:03:28.000 1947 to 68, who had the West Bank?

01:03:31.000 Oh, the Jordanians! 1.00

01:03:33.000 How come there's no Palestinian state? 0.97

01:03:34.000 The answer is because the Arabs hate the Palestinians, too. 0.98

01:03:38.000 They can't stand them. 0.94

01:03:39.000 Egypt tomorrow could evacuate all of Rafah.

01:03:42.000 Hey, come on in!

01:03:43.000 Come on in!

01:03:45.000 Everybody's going to be safe here.

01:03:46.000 They don't let them in.

01:03:47.000 Why?

01:03:47.000 Because nobody hates Palestinians.

01:03:50.000 That's not even a real group, by the way.

01:03:52.000 Nobody hates Palestinians more than the Arabs who made this group up because there's money in it. 1.00

01:03:58.000 UNRWA and all this other stuff, okay? 0.97

01:03:59.000 This is the biggest scam argument I have ever seen. 0.99

01:04:03.000 I cannot believe how many suckers fall for this. 0.99

01:04:05.000 And one more thing, too. 0.94

01:04:06.000 You get an intelligence briefing in every country you go to, right?

01:04:09.000 So you go over to the Middle East.

01:04:12.000 There's like a thousand terrorist groups in every country.

01:04:14.000 You're like, oh my gosh, you're writing them down.

01:04:16.000 You're like, Joey Bagadona is a terrorist group.

01:04:18.000 You're like, all right, there's more?

01:04:19.000 And you go, then you go to Israel and they're like, there's like one or two domestic terrorist groups.

01:04:24.000 Like, that's it, right?

01:04:25.000 And there's some hardcore.

01:04:27.000 And you're like, oh, we're done?

01:04:28.000 Okay.

01:04:28.000 And then you think to yourself, like, if you're an Arab in Israel, you're really safe.

01:04:33.000 Like, unless some street crime happens to you, you're almost guaranteed, especially down in Jerusalem, it's gonna happen.

01:04:39.000 How many Jews live in the West Bank with the Palestinians?

01:04:43.000 Oh, he has, like, none.

01:04:44.000 Zero.

01:04:45.000 And you're like, wait, there are Arab politicians in Israel?

01:04:48.000 How many Jewish politicians?

01:04:49.000 Oh, okay, the number's zero in the Arab world.

01:04:52.000 There's... You got me.

01:04:54.000 Don't even get me going on it.

01:04:55.000 Because this thing's, like, so... This so pisses me off.

01:04:58.000 Because here's one more thing.

01:04:59.000 Even for the people out there.

01:05:01.000 America first.

01:05:02.000 I'm with you.

01:05:03.000 I'm America first, too.

01:05:04.000 I understand.

01:05:05.000 I get it.

01:05:06.000 I'm with you 100%.

01:05:08.000 These people don't see you as any different than the Jews.

01:05:13.000 They don't.

01:05:14.000 Their actual line is, first we get the Saturday people, then we get the Sunday people. 0.57

01:05:19.000 So even if you, for some bizarre reason, I don't like Jews. 0.98

01:05:23.000 I can't, I can't, whatever brother, I don't know why you would say that. 0.94

01:05:26.000 Any other group of people, people look at you like, I don't like blacks.

01:05:29.000 Really?

01:05:30.000 Why?

01:05:31.000 No one has a real explanation for any of this?

01:05:33.000 But it pisses me off because they don't understand.

01:05:35.000 They're coming for you next.

01:05:37.000 Nothing's going to save you.

01:05:39.000 You're not going to be like, no, on Twitter I called someone a Zionist shill. 0.97

01:05:42.000 They hate you.

01:05:44.000 You have zero worries over in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

01:05:48.000 You will not be killed unless it's by street crime.

01:05:50.000 I dare you to go over there. 0.99

01:05:52.000 Hey, I did a podcast on how much I hate the Jews. 1.00

01:05:54.000 Really? 0.99

01:05:55.000 Right off the roof.

01:05:56.000 They hate you.

01:05:59.000 I'm sorry.

01:05:59.000 I know.

01:05:59.000 I obviously agree.

01:06:02.000 But that tends to happen when you're sitting with Dan Bongino.

01:06:04.000 Dan, thanks so much for stopping by.

01:06:05.000 I really appreciate it.

01:06:06.000 It's great.

01:06:07.000 Appreciate it.

01:06:14.000 The Ben Shapiro Sunday Special is produced by Savannah Morris and Matt Kemp.

01:06:18.000 Associate Producers are Jake Pollak and John Crick.

01:06:21.000 Editing is by Jim Nickel.

01:06:23.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Corimina.

01:06:25.000 Camera and lighting is by Zach Ginta.

01:06:27.000 Hair, makeup, and wardrobe by Fabiola Cristina.

01:06:30.000 Title graphics are by Cynthia Angulo.

01:06:32.000 Executive assistant, Kelly Carvalho.

01:06:34.000 Executive in charge of production is David Wormus.

01:06:37.000 Executive producer, Justin Siegel.

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01:06:40.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - June 16, 2024

Can America Be Saved? | Dan Bongino

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