Taylor Swift's new album The Tortured Poets Department is out now, and it's a masterpiece. Also, the House of Representatives passed a long-stalled aid package for Ukraine and Taiwan, and all of the votes against it were from Republicans. And TikTok is now banned in the United States unless they sell off ByteDance, which is a Chinese app that sells off TikTok. And Iran is the greatest state sponsor of terrorism on the planet, and yet the sanctions against Iran are passed with over 300 votes out of the 435 out of Congress. In other words, any bill that's popular on a bipartisan basis is going to get over 300 out of 435 votes, and that would be pretty popular on the floor of the House. And that's a good thing, since Speaker Mike Johnson has been under fire for being willing to bring forward these bills, and even if you brought them up individually and then they passed individually, then you have to do your job and I can't sit around waiting for the Speaker to allow me to do my job and do what I've done my job right here, right here in Washington, D.C. Well folks, there was huge news over the weekend, and I'll get to the actual news in just a second. I'll review it in a second, so you can watch the full review of it here. Enjoy! - Tom Tom's Note: The album is 31 songs and 2 hours long. It's a Wagnerian song cycle, and Dante's Inferno only had 34 cantos. And after listening to it, my big question was, where is this department? I'm not kidding about the length of this album? And how exactly do I apply to it? - The tortured the poets? And how do I know it's going to be better than Dante s Inferno, you're not kidding, right? Tom s not kidding? -- Tom's full review is out soon. -- (1:00:00) 2:30: Taylor Swift's album is a 2-hour masterpiece? (2:30) 3:40:00 - Where is this album only has 34 Cantos? (3:00): Where is the poetry department? (4:30): The tortured poets? 5: What do I have to be? 6:15: Where do I get my job here? 7:00-8:00 8:30
00:01:44.000Because there was an attempt by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's an opponent, of course, of the Ukraine aid, to zero out the Ukraine aid.
00:01:50.000She introduced an amendment that would have gotten rid of all of the Ukraine aid in the combined package of the bill.
00:01:55.000Only 71 Republicans voted in favor of that, so 112 Republicans voted against the Ukraine aid package in total, and that could be for a variety of reasons, ranging from they don't like the size of it to they don't think the safeguards are enough to They kind of knew it was going to pass, but they wanted to get on record with their own districts that they were against it because Ukraine 8 is a very controversial proposition in a lot of red districts, so they figured it's a freebie.
00:02:17.000This happens in Congress all the time.
00:02:18.000You know a bill is going to pass, and you're kind of in favor of the bill passing, but for your constituents, you want to make it look like you voted against the bill.
00:02:25.000That explains that 41 vote differential.
00:02:29.000Between Marjorie Taylor Greene's 71 votes in the Republican caucus to zero out Ukraine aid entirely and the 112 votes against the Ukraine aid package in the Republican caucus.
00:02:39.000In any case, the Ukraine aid package passes 3-11 to 1-12.
00:02:44.000A second package that was aid to Israel, which is about $14 billion in aid to Israel plus a $9 billion Basically stipend for humanitarian relief in Gaza, unclear exactly how that's going to get distributed.
00:02:56.000That passed 366 to 58 with 37 Democrats and 21 Republicans against.
00:03:01.000A Taiwan aid package passed as well, 385 to 34, so that was the most popular package.
00:03:07.000All 34 votes against that package were Republican votes.
00:03:11.000So as we'll talk about in a little while, there is this isolationist caucus of the Republican Party that kind of breaks down into a couple of different categories.
00:03:17.000And finally, there was a bill that banned TikTok in the United States unless they sell off ByteDance.
00:03:22.000The Chinese government sells off ByteDance, which is the company that owns TikTok, because obviously TikTok is in fact a Chinese app.
00:03:29.000It also included new sanctions against Iran, considering that Iran is the greatest state sponsor of terrorism on the planet.
00:03:35.000Those Iran sanctions passed 360 to 58 with 33 Democrats and 25 Republicans voting against.
00:03:42.000In other words, all of these bills are fairly popular on a bipartisan basis.
00:03:46.000Any bill that's going to garner you over 300 votes out of the 435 that are actually in Congress, that would be a pretty popular bill.
00:03:55.000Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, has been under a lot of fire for being willing to bring forward these bills, even if you brought them up individually and then they passed individually.
00:04:02.000He said, listen, I have to do my job and I can't sit around waiting for Marjorie Taylor
00:04:06.000Green and Paul Gosar and Matt Gaetz to basically approve me doing my job.
00:04:54.000What if you suddenly get into a horrible accident and there is nothing in the first aid kit?
00:04:58.000Every time you connect to an unencrypted network in cafes, hotels, or airports, you're essentially leaving your personal data wide open for any hacker on the same network to access.
00:05:06.000Don't wait for a security breach to happen.
00:05:50.000Now again, as I pointed out last week, foreign aid represents well under 1% of the American budget.
00:05:55.000The EU actually is spending more money on Ukraine than the United States currently is.
00:06:00.000When you have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who are perfectly willing to vote for $7 trillion budgets so long as President Trump is in office, who are now complaining when 1% of our budget is spent on foreign aid in the middle of two hot wars.
00:06:14.000I've got questions as to what exactly is the ideology undergirding that because I really don't think fiscal responsibility is the number one issue.
00:06:20.000And when people suggest, for example, that why aren't we spending this money on our border?
00:08:01.000And by the way, Donald Trump, there's this assumption out there that Donald Trump wanted to zero out Ukraine aid.
00:08:06.000Donald Trump has never even implied he wanted to zero out Ukraine aid.
00:08:09.000In fact, what he has said publicly, the former president of the United States and possible future president of the United States, what he has actually said, By the way, you know what Donald Trump actually does not want to run on?
00:08:17.000He does not want to run on Ukraine losing because Republicans held up aid to Ukraine.
00:08:20.000the funding to Ukraine. That is what President Trump has said publicly
00:08:23.000despite all the protestations of complete isolationism by people like
00:08:26.000Marjorie Taylor Greene. By the way you know what Donald Trump actually does not
00:08:28.000want to run on? He does not want to run on Ukraine losing because Republicans
00:08:31.000held up aid to Ukraine. It turns out that's not an amazingly strong electoral
00:08:36.000strategy for Republicans. By the way not even an amazingly strong electoral
00:08:40.000It was Democrats in Congress, for example, who completely defunded the Vietnam War.
00:08:44.000And a few years later, Ronald Reagan was the president of the United States.
00:08:47.000Vladimir Zelensky, for his part, the president of Ukraine, he says that they need the shells and they need the equipment.
00:08:53.000And by the way, that is what's going on.
00:08:54.000This is not only for offensive actions by Ukraine against Russia.
00:08:58.000Right now, on the lines, they literally don't have ammo.
00:09:02.000To be frank, in Ukraine, You really have a lot of people who are ready to protect their motherland.
00:09:13.000But, of course, the motivation, the morale can go down, especially when they go to the front line and they see that, well, there are no shells, there are no equipment.
00:09:26.000That's why the aid from the States is so important.
00:09:31.000And people who were trained They need to be trained by professional people and they need to have the equipment to be used so that they have this equipment not only on the training field but also on the actual battlefield.
00:09:48.000Okay, so here is the bizarre part of our politics right now.
00:09:52.000So there is a bipartisan coalition that supports continued aid to Ukraine.
00:09:56.000As I say, only 71 Republicans totally wanted to zero out the aid to Ukraine, and there are currently 218 Republicans in the caucus, which means the vast majority, about two-thirds of the Republican caucus, does not want to zero out aid to Ukraine.
00:10:08.000But because we live in such a reactionary moment, the left has decided that the war in Ukraine is specifically the most moral war.
00:10:17.000Because Russia backed Trump is their going theory since 2016.
00:10:20.000That is the only reason you can explain why Democrats were literally waving the Ukraine flag on the floor of the House of Representatives, which is totally inappropriate.
00:10:29.000They're waving Ukraine flags on the floor of the House of Representatives.
00:10:33.000The reason Democrats are doing that is specifically because, since 2016, They perceived Russia as the font of all evil.
00:10:41.000That, of course, is a big difference from 2012 when Barack Obama was running on the idea that Russia was not, in fact, a geopolitical threat.
00:10:47.000And the 1980s had called and they wanted their foreign policy back from Mitt Romney.
00:10:51.000And Barack Obama was actually pledging some form of flexibility to Vladimir Putin in 2012.
00:10:56.000By 2016, they'd flipped because they decided that Russia was pro-Trump.
00:10:59.000And so that means the Ukraine is therefore the ultimate good, which is why they were flying the flag of Ukraine on the floor.
00:11:06.000You can't even say that they were doing this in honor of the various allies that the United States was funding because they didn't wave the Taiwanese flag on the floor of the House.
00:11:13.000They didn't wave the Israeli flag on the floor of the House.
00:11:17.000And it is democratic extremism in their rhetoric with regard to Ukraine that has then caused a reaction among Republicans who say, okay, well, even if I agree with the general American interest in the preservation of Ukraine in the face of Russian invasion and atrocity, even if I agree with that, Your bizarre enthusiasm for Ukraine itself in the face of Russia as opposed to other allies is weird from you guys.
00:11:45.000It's not as though like five years ago you cared about Ukraine.
00:12:30.000The United States certainly has a stake in the outcome in Ukraine, but the Ukrainian border is not, in fact, the United States border, which is why you can talk about something like a negotiated settlement where the pre-2014 borders are actually not restored, as opposed to if the Mexican government, for example, invaded the southern United States.
00:12:45.000We would not be talking about giving away El Paso in some sort of land for peace swap.
00:12:50.000In any case, Ukraine required the aid.
00:12:53.000Russia should not be able to defeat Ukraine and simply walk into Kiev, which seemed to be the slow rolling disaster that we were watching.
00:13:00.000Because again, this is one of the habits of the West is get involved in wars quickly and then gradually withdraw slowly.
00:13:15.000Well, from the cell phone company I use, PureTalk, you can get unlimited talk, text, and plenty of 5G data for just $20 a month.
00:13:21.000PureTalk gives you the same quality of service as your current cell phone provider, but for about half the cost.
00:13:25.000The average family saves almost $1,000 a year, all with no contracts and no activation fees.
00:13:29.000You can switch to PeerTalk and keep the phone and phone number you currently use, or you can take advantage of their great deals on the latest iPhones and Androids.
00:13:38.000customer service team can help you join PeerTalk in as little as 10 minutes.
00:13:42.000Choose to spend your hard-earned money with a wireless company that shares your values, supports our military and veterans, creates American jobs, and refuses to advertise on, you know, the fake news networks.
00:13:50.000Stop spending an insane amount of money on your phone plan.
00:14:03.000They've got an incredible tower network, the coverage is excellent, and you're spending money on a company that actually likes you.
00:14:07.000Go to PeerTalk.com slash Shapiro to get started.
00:14:10.000Meanwhile, the Israel aid also passed by a wide margin.
00:14:13.000In fact, even a wider margin than the Ukraine aid.
00:14:17.000The Israel aid passed with 37 Democrats opposing and 21 Republicans opposing as well.
00:14:23.000Now again, that does symbolize that the Democratic Party has not been completely owned by the radical left with regard to Israel.
00:14:29.000That a lot of the radicals on the left wing are driving the rhetoric with regard to Israel.
00:14:34.000But it turns out that the vast majority of Democratic representatives are still pro-Israel and understand the math here.
00:14:41.000That large-scale bipartisan support for the Israel aid undoubtedly was helped along by the fact that Iran had launched a massive cruise missile drone attack, ballistic missile attack on the state of Israel just a week ago, which I think cleared everybody's mind.
00:14:55.000And there are a lot of people who are very worried about Hamas and about the Gaza Strip.
00:15:00.000And Israel had been saying for a while, the real war in the Middle East is between Iran and everybody else.
00:15:03.000And I think everybody's mind cleared long enough for this aid to get passed.
00:15:06.000Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to try to split the baby in the Middle East.
00:15:10.000Which is the worst possible policy, by the way.
00:15:12.000The United States should be, throughout, showing strong, stalwart support for our allies.
00:15:17.000That should be true in Ukraine, it should be true in Taiwan, it should be true in Israel as well.
00:15:21.000So while Joe Biden is greenlighting a billion dollars in arms shipments to Israel so that they can continue to fight the war against Hamas and fight against Hezbollah in their north, While he is pushing forward and he will sign this combined aid package that includes a bunch of aid to Israel, the Biden administration is simultaneously attempting to sanction particular battalions of the Israeli Defense Force.
00:15:43.000There's one battalion called the Netzach Yehuda Battalion, which is active in the West Bank.
00:15:49.000And the Biden administration is now considering the possibility of sanctions against a full military unit, which is weird because that's not the way military units work.
00:15:58.000A military unit is typically not a group of people who stay in the same unit, and that unit is not always stationed in the same place.
00:16:05.000Right now, the Netzach Yehuda unit, for example, is stationed up north on the border with Hezbollah.
00:16:10.000And it turns out membership in various army units changes over time.
00:16:13.000So some people who commit atrocities, for example, might shift out of the unit, And some new people might shift in.
00:16:21.000So sanctioning a quote-unquote battalion is a very weird thing to do.
00:16:24.000And it serves as the predicate for future Democrats to claim that Israel is violating human rights and therefore all aid has to end.
00:16:31.000And by the way, that's not just Bibi Netanyahu worried about that.
00:16:33.000That's the entire spectrum of the entire Israeli political establishment.
00:16:36.000That includes Yair Lapid all the way on the left and includes Bibi Netanyahu all the way on the right.
00:16:41.000It includes Yoav Galant, who's the defense minister.
00:16:43.000It includes Gadi Eisenkot and Benny Gantz, who are the chief opposition to the current government.
00:16:48.000Again, the Biden administration continues to try to win over those voters in Dearborn, Michigan by splitting the baby, even though they completely understand at this point that Iran is the real threat and all of its proxies are the real threat as well.
00:17:01.000The Walla News site, which broke the story on the impending U.S.
00:17:03.000sanctions, according to the Times of Israel, noticed that this was not an issue of Israel being singled out by the Biden administration.
00:17:09.000began probing Netanyahu, it also started investigating a special forces unit in the Australian army over allegations it carried out human rights abuses in Afghanistan.
00:17:17.000But unlike the IDF, supposedly the Australian army took significant steps against the unit.
00:17:22.000However, the reality is that Israel does prosecute soldiers who violate human rights law.
00:17:29.000If there are members of the police in the West Bank who commit atrocities, they will be tried in military court or they will be tried by Israeli courts.
00:17:38.000In any case, it's a very weird thing to do to an ally in the middle of a war, and that's why the entire Israeli establishment is upset.
00:17:43.000But again, this goes to the fact that the Biden administration has a lot of dyspepsia and heartburn over their left flank, despite the fact that, again, it represents a fairly small minority of the congressional coalition.
00:17:54.000We'll get to more on that in just one moment.
00:17:57.000First, as you can tell, I'm on the road right now.
00:18:00.000This ad was supposed to include me holding up that Leftist Tears Tumblr that I always use, but, Producer Zach, Producer Zach, you forgot that Leftist Tears Tumblr, and so now, you must be scolded publicly.
00:18:10.000Instead, all I have is a photo of this, our glorious Leftist Tears Tumblr.
00:18:21.000You have to become a DailyWirePlus annual member.
00:18:23.000Not only does your annual membership bestow upon you unparalleled access to ad-free, uncensored shows from your beloved Daily Wire hosts, like yours truly, you also have unlimited access to our entire library of on-demand hit movies, documentaries, groundbreaking series, like the new series, Divided States of Biden.
00:18:37.000Let soccer moms boast about their Stanley's.
00:18:38.000Techies gloat over their Bluetooth-enabled smart mugs.
00:18:41.000You will be taking a stand as you sip from your iconic Leftist Tears tumbler.
00:18:43.000Again, you, like me, have only this image of the Leftist Tears tumbler right now.
00:18:49.000You and I have the same thing, but the difference is when I get back to my studio, I'll have a Leftist Tears tumbler and you won't, unless you get an All Access membership.
00:18:56.000If you do that, by the way, you get two Leftist Tears tumblers absolutely free.
00:19:00.000Join now as we fight the left and build the future over at dailywireplus.com.
00:19:03.000Okay, meanwhile, There's a weird horseshoe theory thing that's happening here.
00:19:07.000We've talked about it before on the program, that you have this constellation of far leftists who are rather friendly toward Hamas, who generally are isolationist on foreign policy, but they're isolationist on foreign policy mainly because they believe that the United States is a nefarious force in the world.
00:19:22.000They're sort of Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky with regard to American foreign policy.
00:19:27.000That horseshoe theory has now swung all the way around and includes some people on the right.
00:19:33.000Now, as we'll talk about in a moment, when it comes to isolationism, as we've discussed, there are a bunch of different perspectives within the isolationist perspective.
00:19:39.000There is the, we should not get involved in foreign conflicts, no matter what perspective, because we need the money here at home.
00:19:45.000Which means that you're also in favor of cutting spending by the government on a wide variety of other subjects.
00:19:49.000There's also an isolationism that suggests that whenever America gets involved in foreign conflicts, that tends to taint the United States, not it's about the United States tainting the rest of the world.
00:19:59.000But there is a theory that has now risen on the right, that there is something deeply malign about the United States, something deeply wrong with the United States.
00:20:06.000This was made apparent over the weekend.
00:20:08.000Tucker Carlson was on Joe Rogan's show.
00:20:11.000Obviously, I'm very friendly with Joe.
00:20:12.000I think Joe does a great job during his interviews.
00:20:14.000And there was a clip from this interview that went particularly viral.
00:20:18.000This is a clip in which Tucker Carlson calls the United States evil for having dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, ending World War II, and then suggests that anyone who would justify that is also evil.
00:20:32.000Which is a very traditionally left-wing perspective.
00:20:36.000It is not traditionally a particularly right-wing perspective, because most people on the conservative side of the aisle tend to believe that America is a force for good in the world, and as we'll discuss, it turns out that dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was necessary for ending World War II, and likely saved millions of lives, both American and Japanese.
00:21:08.000I love, by the way, that people on my side, I'll just say, I'll just admit it, on the right, have spent the last 80 years defending dropping nuclear weapons on civilians.
00:21:52.000How about spending all of your effort to prevent this from happening?
00:21:57.000Okay, actually, what would be childish is to assume that there are no other players in the world, for example, trying to develop nuclear weapons.
00:22:03.000The fact is, the Nazis were trying to develop nuclear weapons.
00:22:06.000There was, in fact, a nuclear arms race that was happening at the time.
00:22:17.000Getting life insurance will give you peace of mind knowing that if something were to happen to you, your family could cover their expenses while getting back on their feet.
00:22:23.000Policy Genius has licensed award-winning agents and technology that make it easy to compare life insurance quotes from America's top insurers in just a few clicks to find that lowest price.
00:22:30.000Their team of licensed experts is on hand to help you through the process.
00:22:33.000Even if you already have a life insurance policy through work, it might not offer enough protection for your family's needs.
00:22:38.000It might not follow you if you leave your job.
00:22:39.000With PolicyGenius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just $292 per year for a million dollars in coverage.
00:22:45.000Some options offer same-day approval and avoid those unnecessary medical exams.
00:22:49.000PolicyGenius works for you, not the insurance companies, which means they don't have the incentive to recommend one insurer over another.
00:23:07.000Not only that, as it turns out, the Soviet Union then developed nuclear weapons.
00:23:11.000And it is mutually assured destruction and nuclear deterrence that has kept the world largely from sinking into another World War III-like mass casualty morass because of the horror of dropping the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the first place.
00:23:24.000By the way, when he says things like, How exactly would you justify?
00:23:29.000Why are we talking about how many lives it would save?
00:23:33.000If you end up saving more lives than are cost by the dropping of the atomic bomb, then it is morally justified to drop the atomic bomb.
00:23:40.000And that happens to be the reality of the situation.
00:23:43.000Evan Thomas wrote in the Washington Post fairly recently that commanders of the Japanese Armed Forces were fanatics.
00:23:48.000On August 9th, after Washington dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki, Japan's War Minister, General Korichika Anami, asked his fellow members of the Supreme War Council, quote, would not it be wondrous for the whole nation to be destroyed like a beautiful flower?
00:24:01.000The rulers were fatalistic about taking the rest of the nation with them.
00:24:04.000The 1 million will die for the Emperor was a common headline in the state-controlled press.
00:24:07.000Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed, and after the Russians had even invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria, six members of the Supreme War Council deadlocked 3-to-3 on whether to surrender.
00:24:18.000After the dropping of the second bomb, When Emperor Hirohito decided that he wanted to end the debate and surrender, he had to run away from members of his own military who were threatening to kidnap him and were trying to find the recording of him surrendering before it could be broadcast on radio to destroy the recording.
00:24:36.000So yes, it turns out that it was necessary.
00:24:38.000By the way, if we had not dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The alternative was either an amphibious assault that would have cost probably a million American lives, or, more likely, a giant blockade of the island of Japan, including the mass starvation of the civilian population, which would have resulted in millions of dead Japanese.
00:24:58.000So why is Tucker just abandoning the moral equation here at all?
00:25:07.000Now, I think to understand what Tucker's doing here, you have to understand that this particular interview included a lot of conspiratorial thinking.
00:25:15.000He says that he was actually radicalized by 2017.
00:25:18.000That basically, until 2017, he believed a lot of narratives that were told by the government and by the mainstream media.
00:25:23.000And then, after 2016-2017, when it appeared that the intelligence community was militarized against Donald Trump, this is what radicalized him into basically becoming uber-critical of everything.
00:26:57.000In fact, I believe the counter of the set of facts with which I am presented.
00:27:01.000Now, first of all, let me just say about 2016-2017.
00:27:04.000Yes, it is incredibly disturbing that the intelligence community was militarized against Donald Trump on the basis of a bunch of trumped-up nonsense from the Hillary Clinton campaign.
00:27:11.000Also, if this exploded your worldview as a conservative, That I find, honestly, I find that surprising.
00:27:17.000Because as a conservative, you're supposed to be generally skeptical of government power.
00:27:22.000And not only that, if you know anything about presidential history, you know that a wide variety of presidential campaigns have been spied on by the administration in power.
00:27:30.000In 1940, for example, the Wendell Willkie campaign was pretty clearly spied on by the FBI at the behest of FDR.
00:27:37.000In 1964, LBJ literally bugged Barry Goldwater's headquarters in 1964.
00:27:42.000Famously, in 1972, the Richard Nixon campaign spied on the campaign of George McGovern, right?
00:27:50.000So, actually, there's a fairly well-predicated history of the instruments of law enforcement being misused, which is why there's been a hot debate about the utility of various law enforcement agencies.
00:28:02.000On the right, this has been going on literally my entire lifetime and well before.
00:28:06.000Okay, but according to Tucker, that radicalized him, and now he went from supposedly believing everything to believing the reverse of everything.
00:28:12.000Now, that is actually not critical thinking.
00:28:15.000That's actually not critical thinking.
00:28:17.000If what you said is, I took in everything too much, too easily without examining the evidence, and so now I'm gonna take a stronger look at the evidence before I come to a conclusion, that would be critical thinking.
00:28:26.000But saying that the evidence that is presented to you Is now of no consequence whatsoever.
00:28:34.000That no evidence provided is sufficient.
00:28:58.000Because they hid it and they are lying to you.
00:28:59.000We'll get to more on this in a moment.
00:29:01.000First, the people of Israel are under attack once again.
00:29:03.000The Islamic Republic of Iran recently launched a wave of suicide drones followed by ballistic and cruise missiles at Israel.
00:29:09.000The situation in northern Israel has been tense and deadly for months.
00:29:12.000The region has been subjected to repeated rocket attacks from Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists operating out of Lebanon.
00:29:18.000Now the situation is coming to a head.
00:29:19.000Israel needs your prayers and your support now more than ever.
00:29:22.000The entry of Iran into the war is a very serious development.
00:29:24.000It means Israel could be fighting Hamas terrorists in the south, Iran-backed Hezbollah in the north, and Iran itself, which has a military capability beyond either Hamas or Hezbollah.
00:29:32.000The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has been responding to Israel's emergency needs during the war by supplying protective gear for first responders, emergency supply kits, bomb shelters, reinforced ambulances, and other critical needs in northern Israel.
00:30:24.000As always, when Tucker talks, there's a grain of truth to much of what Tucker says.
00:30:30.000There's truth, a lot of truth to the idea that a lot of our powerful institutions have been corrupted and that people inside those institutions have used that power in order to lie and change the narrative.
00:30:40.000But there is a difference, again, between healthy skepticism, a demand for evidence.
00:30:46.000Being critical, being a critical thinker is a demand for evidence.
00:30:50.000That is not the same thing as just asking questions.
00:30:52.000Just asking questions means the search for answers is totally worthless, and all the answers are deemed insufficient anyway.
00:30:59.000When you start thinking that being a critical thinker is just the asking of the questions rather than critically evaluating evidence and claims and counterclaims, that's wrong.
00:31:08.000If you're the kind of person who just asks questions, that's actually childish.
00:31:13.000Because the goal in life is to seek the answers, not just to ask the questions.
00:31:18.000A critical thinker might look at the evidence being presented and might evaluate it one way or another and sift through the data.
00:31:25.000A quote-unquote, just asking questions is not the end of the story.
00:31:29.000Because if it's the end of the story, then the kinds of questions you're asking is in fact the narrative that you're seeking to promulgate.
00:31:34.000So what exactly is Tucker's narrative?
00:31:36.000Well, his narrative is that there's something deeply wrong in the soul of America.
00:31:40.000And what's more, there's been something wrong with the soul of America for generations.
00:31:43.000Now, again, a lot of conservatives do believe there's something wrong with the soul of the country.
00:31:48.000I believe, for example, there's been something wrong with the soul of the country since, for example, the sexual revolution of the 1960s, which undermined marriage, since the decline of religion in the United States, particularly in mainline Protestant churches, but across the spectrum.
00:32:02.000And that's been going on for generations.
00:32:03.000And more people need to go back to church.
00:32:05.000That we do have a soul sickness in this country.
00:32:08.000And that's largely mirrored the declining religiosity of the American population.
00:32:29.000America lost its moral credibility during World War II.
00:32:31.000Now again, this is the same argument that he makes with Joe that everybody is now latching onto, but he made this argument months ago when he was on with Russell Brand.
00:32:39.000And I do think there are war crimes that the United States committed during the Second World War, the firebombing of Tokyo, famously Dresden, that were collective punishment.
00:32:48.000And I would also say, by the way, the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that's collective punishment.
00:32:54.000And I think that rotted the soul of the West.
00:33:07.000And two, that level of power in the hands of human beings convinced them that they were gods.
00:33:12.000Yes, it's curious because you would hear a comparable argument offered for slavery, for example, that this burden is borne by American culture.
00:33:22.000And yet I've never heard anyone advance it around the acts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
00:33:28.000I wanted to... We dropped atomic weapons on civilian populations.
00:33:53.000Well, I mean, at this point, I kind of want to know which circumstances, because I feel like the defense of America Especially on the foreign policy sphere, just for Tucker, does not exist, particularly a lot.
00:34:06.000Again, I have the same views as Tucker does when it comes to closing the southern border.
00:34:09.000I have many of the same views that Tucker does about the decreasing religiosity of the West.
00:34:14.000In fact, I think I've been saying it longer than Tucker has probably.
00:34:17.000But what's weird here is that when Tucker is criticizing the United States as embodying some sort of original sin that sprang from World War II, is that Tucker actually doesn't believe this about foreign leaders killing people.
00:34:28.000We'll get to more on this in just a moment.
00:34:29.000First, I gotta tell you guys about the greatest invention of all time.
00:35:26.000Today once more, 8sleep.com slash Shapiro to get started.
00:35:29.000So when it comes to the moral calculus of leaders killing people, that's the realm of normal politics.
00:35:34.000So for example, he will downplay Vladimir Putin's evil In killing his political opponents and invading sovereign countries and killing civilian populations in those sovereign countries by basically saying all leaders kill people.
00:35:47.000When it comes to ending World War II by dropping the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which did bring an end to the war, that is a moral stain, a moral blight that America simply has been corrupted by.
00:35:57.000So here he was talking about Vladimir Putin killing people.
00:35:59.000Again, this is just a couple of months ago.
00:36:27.000Because those are covered and because I have spent my life talking to people who run countries in various countries and have concluded the following.
00:37:00.000So the America First Movement, which is the isolationist movement that was very well-trafficked and very popular in 1939-1940 before it took a late turn into overt anti-Semitism, it actually had a lot of prominent Americans early on because in 1939-1940 it was very unclear whether the United States needed to get involved in the war.
00:37:17.000The case that was being made by interventionists was that Britain was about to fall.
00:37:20.000If Britain fell, then Germany would dominate the entire continent of Europe.
00:37:25.000It could build up its naval resources.
00:37:27.000It would take control, for example, of the British Navy.
00:37:28.000And then it could threaten the United States.
00:37:30.000That was the case interventionists were making.
00:37:32.000Isolationists were saying, we are very far away from Europe.
00:37:34.000There is no reason for us to be involved.
00:37:35.000Remember the last time we got involved, a lot of Americans died.
00:37:38.000Many prominent Americans were members very early on of the America First movement, including, for example, JFK and Gerald Ford when they were young men.
00:37:45.000Charles Lindbergh, who's most associated with America First, was not formally associated with America First until about 1941.
00:37:51.000That's when he formally joined the America First movement.
00:37:53.000But there's something that should be said here about American isolationists prior to World War II.
00:37:59.000Those American isolationists, generally, their worry was not that America's involvement would be bad for the world.
00:38:05.000Their worry was that Europe's wars would harm America, that America was a pristine place we needed to build up at home, that America had to focus in on itself and keeping itself pristine from the old world politics.
00:38:16.000We didn't want to get involved in the balance of power jousting that happened in Europe all the time.
00:38:21.000Instead, we needed to keep ourselves safe because America is better, not because America is worse.
00:38:27.000He's saying that America is and has historically been a nefarious force.
00:38:32.000In foreign policy, which is actually a left-wing argument from the 1960s, that America bears blood guilt.
00:38:39.000In fact, it sounds a lot more like radical protesters on today's college campuses than like a traditional conservative.
00:38:43.000You hear that when Russell Brand says to him, it sounds like what you are saying about Hiroshima and Nagasaki is what the left is saying about the history of race in the United States, that America bears blood guilt, that America is in its essence guilty and corrupt and sinful.
00:38:57.000That's a very strange perspective, and it's not traditionally conservative.
00:39:00.000Again, you can believe it, but it's not traditionally conservative.
00:39:04.000Tucker's narrative does have one important utility.
00:39:07.000It makes him the go-to source for everything.
00:39:09.000So to get back to his just asking questions, in this unfalsifiable world, where you can't trust anything, you can't believe what you see, you can't believe evidence provided because everybody's lying to you, and counter evidence is unnecessary because they hid all of it, this means the only person you can trust is the person who promulgates the reverse of any traditional narrative you've been hearing in America.
00:39:30.000It's a pure reaction against whatever is the story of the day.
00:39:33.000Whether it's true or whether it's false is irrelevant.
00:39:34.000It's just whatever is the story has to be false because I don't like the people who are telling the story.
00:39:39.000So they're hiding 9-11, and America's evil Hiroshima, and Alex Jones is just as solid an informational source as anyone else, which is, Tucker actually suggested he was prophetic on Joe Rogan's show.
00:39:50.000All our members of Congress, again, something that Tucker said on the show, every single one, effectively, are subject to blackmail by the intelligence agencies.
00:39:59.000According to Tucker, you have to believe Tucker.
00:40:01.000And if you don't, it's probably because you're part of the conspiracy or the cover-up.
00:40:09.000And you can be taken over by nefarious forces.
00:40:12.000The only man of courage in this routine is apparently the truth seeker, Tucker, who asks questions but doesn't actually examine the evidence on these particular issues.
00:40:20.000Because why do you need to know things when you can just ask questions?
00:40:23.000And what's the point of trying to find things out when all the sources are themselves corrupted?
00:40:29.000Now once upon a time, there was a young man who set fire to this exact narrative.
00:40:35.000Here he was discussing another isolationist politician with an attraction to some rather ugly conspiracies and some questions about World War II.
00:40:42.000Well, I mean, I think everyone would agree with America First in lower case.
00:40:46.000I mean, the idea that we're all Americans here and American interests are paramount, at least to Americans.
00:40:52.000But I think it's America First in capitals, the America First movement of the 30s and 40s that Buchanan's comments remind a lot of people of, and that's what people find creepy.
00:41:04.000I mean, I think that, you know, the sovereignty of the American military, etc.
00:41:07.000I mean, these are not just crank issues.
00:41:10.000But unfortunately, Pat Buchanan raises them in a way that I think is discredited.
00:41:15.000When it's hacked, he can always fall back on the line, well, the tiny cabal that controls American politics doesn't like me because I speak truth to power.
00:41:24.000This is actually, incidentally, almost verbatim what he said the other day, that I offend the plutocracy, that I'm a wanted man by the inside, the Beltway people, and in every sense cast himself As a victim who is sort of a Karen Silkwood of politics.
00:41:41.000Someone who's so truthful that he's being hunted down by the conspiracy that runs Washington.