00:00:00.000The Met Gala, it is the annual high holy day of the secular left.
00:00:03.000Basically, Democrats descend on the Metropolitan Museum of Art to dress in costumes that cost more than the average American's mortgage, all while lecturing you about the evils of the 1%.
00:00:17.000But while the champagne was flowing inside, chaos was erupting outside.
00:00:21.000We will look at the commie protesters targeting the event and predictably event chair Jeff Bezos, because apparently building a company that revolutionized global logistics and provides over a million jobs Makes you a villain in the eyes of people currently using Amazon's livered iPhones to organize their rallies.
00:00:38.000Yes, it is worse than you could have imagined.
00:00:41.000Also on the show today, we're continuing our deep dive into Luke Rosiak and the Daily Wire's shocking investigation into massive Medicare fraud in Ohio.
00:00:48.000Plus, Vivek Ramaswamy joins me to discuss the systemic rot in the administrative state and what can be done to stop it.
00:00:54.000And finally, because we all need a break from the collapse of Western civilization, I will be giving my first reaction to the new trailer for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.
00:02:14.000You see somebody trying to get in, and the cops charging the guy.
00:02:23.000Well, things are going well over in New York.
00:02:28.000Meanwhile, apparently, some Met Gala protesters decided to place hundreds of bottles of pee inside the museum in order to protest Jeff Bezos.
00:02:36.000The good news is that the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they probably consider that a form of art.
00:02:39.000So you could just stack those bottles of pee and call it an art display.
00:02:46.000But the fact that they are very, very angry at Jeff Bezos for dropping $10 million to sponsor the thing is pretty astonishing.
00:02:52.000In a statement accompanying the latest stunt, the activist collective, it's called Everyone Hates Elon, an anti billionaire group funded by roughly 1,000 donors worldwide, they said Amazon founder and oligarch Jeff Bezos just finished his Met Gala pre party at his penthouse and is getting ready for the big night.
00:03:08.000We couldn't let him get away with using celebrity and fashion to hide his crimes or exposing them instead.
00:03:14.000What are Jeff Bezos' crimes other than being able to bring people products and services at an incredibly cheap price in extraordinarily mobile fashion?
00:04:13.000After that bottle of champagne when you go to bed.
00:04:16.000We're going to keep growing, and we're going to keep building, and we're going to keep protesting, and we're going to keep marching, and we're going to keep fighting this dystopian culture.
00:04:27.000We're not stopping, we're just getting cranked up.
00:04:43.000But I will say that disproportionately, the Met Gala is a bunch of Hollywood Democrats with a gigantic wad of cash.
00:04:51.000It is kind of amazing that you have everyone cosplaying the revolution on all sides.
00:04:54.000My favorite outfit from the Met Gala, by the way, was there's an actress named Sarah Paulson who's worth, I believe, $12 million.
00:05:01.000And she showed up wearing this monstrosity.
00:05:02.000She was wearing a bizarre dress, but she was wearing dollar bills over her eyes because money is blinding her while wearing an expensive dress to the Met Gala.
00:05:22.000Now, again, I do have to make fun of the cultural aspect of this because every year the outfits of the Met Gala are increasingly bizarre and stupid.
00:05:28.000Sam Smith, who used to be just a gay man and has now decided that he is a non binary fat gay man, I guess.
00:05:34.000He showed up dressed as Fat Game Maleficent.
00:05:42.000Listen, I'll admit, I'll admit, the ostentatious display of obnoxious wealth from some of the world's most useless people here is enough to turn anybody into a communist.
00:05:53.000Not because communism is good, but because this stuff is ridiculous.
00:05:57.000It is ridiculous, but it is also not an aspect of capitalism per se, it's an aspect of decadence.
00:06:05.000Meanwhile, a trans Tony Award winning producer named Jordan Roth showed up wearing a creepy sculpture, wearing like a creepy mannequin over his shoulder while he was dressed as a woman.
00:06:18.000So, oh man, I don't even know what's going on.
00:06:21.000Lena Dunham showed up as a character from Stranger Things who is apparently flayed from the inside out by the mind flayer.
00:06:28.000I don't know what happened to this dress.
00:06:31.000That's some scary stuff happening right there.
00:07:50.000Bad Bunny showed up dressed as Joe Biden.
00:07:53.000By which I mean he aged himself like 40 years and should have dressed as an old man.
00:07:59.000Yeah, again, ostentatious displays of wealth are not likely to make capitalism popular.
00:08:05.000But let's just remember every single person who is doing this is preaching on behalf of anti capitalism.
00:08:12.000They preach about the decadence of capitalism as they participate in it and foment it.
00:08:18.000Okay, meanwhile, in more serious news so yesterday, based on our investigation in Ohio, the vice president of the United States put out a tweet pledging.
00:08:26.000That he would look into what was going on.
00:08:28.000Quote, these shocking allegations, if true, show why the frauds task force work is so important.
00:08:33.000I'm directing the task force to look into it and take immediate action to prosecute any fraudsters involved and stop all further payments as appropriate.
00:08:41.000So we are already getting action here at Daily Wire.
00:08:43.000This is why we exist, not just to bring you things that entertain you, but obviously to change the world in better ways.
00:08:50.000Luke Rosiak, who is our senior investigative reporter over here, he has the second part of his large scale investigative series today talking about the extent of Medicaid fraud in Ohio.
00:09:01.000There are seven buildings along East Dublin, Granville Road in Columbus, Ohio, that are filled with hundreds of office suites, all owned by a company called Cordoba Real Estate.
00:09:10.000Almost every tenant in the building bills Medicaid for the impoverished, obviously, as a home health care business that provides low-skilled, usually non-medical care to elderly or disabled people.
00:09:20.000So basically, seems very much like what Nick Shirley was uncovering in Minnesota.
00:09:25.000Essentially, we have these gigantic buildings that are filled with home health care providers, completely empty of people.
00:09:31.000Because we actually have video of Luke walking through the halls here.
00:09:35.000Here is Luke walking through the halls in an empty office building in Ohio that presumably millions of dollars are flooding through.
00:09:45.000I noticed that you guys have gotten $10 million in Medicaid.
00:09:48.000What exactly goes into a home healthcare business?
00:09:58.000Home health, H Again, the accusations of racism, him walking through full on empty buildings.
00:10:12.000Apparently, one Cordoba Road employee said that the government actually pays people to take care of their own families.
00:10:18.000This, of course, is the scam, according to Luke's reporting.
00:10:22.000The Cordoba owned buildings in Columbus house 288 businesses registered with Medicaid.
00:10:27.000Together, they charge taxpayers more than a quarter of a billion dollars between 2018 and 2024 in a city where there are only about 6,200 people who are 75 or older on Medicaid.
00:10:38.000Apparently, at one address, there are 80 companies that collectively build at least $73 million to Medicaid and receive $23 million from the state of Ohio.
00:10:48.000Again, shocking levels of what appear to be alleged fraud.
00:10:52.000And again, here is Luke talking to one of the employees at Cordoba Road who admits the government basically pays you to take care of your own family.
00:11:00.000In the Cordoba office building at 1425 East Dublin Granville Road, we finally located a business suite with somebody in it, DC Home Healthcare LLC.
00:11:11.000Asked how he recruits employees, he said employees and patients come as a package.
00:11:16.00070% of the employees are just being paid to spend time with their own family members.
00:11:21.000The patient, like they have someone in their family that has the qualifications to be an aide and CBR and everything.
00:12:23.000Luke reports that there is one home health care service called Omega, which charged taxpayers $11 million between December 2017 and October 2024.
00:12:33.000Omega was incorporated in 2011 by a person named Mohamed Jama, a Democratic politician.
00:12:38.000Jama founded a newspaper called the Somali Post, also a Somali coffee house, and has been affiliated with the Somali Education Resource Center, which received $6 million in federal aid in 2023, all on top of raising nine kids and working as an engineer.
00:12:53.000When he ran for State Senate as a Democrat in 2024, that home health care business was not even mentioned in his profile.
00:13:40.000Part two just dropped, and we've got a number of actual details going.
00:13:44.000But JD Vance, right from the beginning, said that the task force that he's helming with Andrew Ferguson, who's a very competent lawyer, is going to be descending upon Ohio.
00:13:54.000There's been a number of other reactions in the Senate, including from the Chairman of the aging committee, and so on.
00:14:01.000But at the center of this is the Medicaid waiver program for home health care, and in particular, what they call personal services, which is what I'm calling butlers for Somalis.
00:14:14.000Medicaid is supposed to be for medical stuff, and personal services is just like butlers.
00:14:19.000It's people that go there to help you with whatever you need.
00:14:21.000You could cook, you can clean, even just conversation and companionship.
00:14:26.000And so I just got back from Columbus, and you can walk through these buildings, and there's a whole street of them.
00:14:32.000And you go inside these buildings and there's like hundreds of the small businesses.
00:14:38.000And they'll have signs that just say that that's the service they provide is companionship and conversation.
00:14:44.000Um, and so that's kind of the question that's for fraud investigators.
00:14:48.000I think there's a lot of leads that, that we're going to be providing to them and people are going to see in the stories we have rolling out, including today.
00:14:55.000Um, but there's also the question of lowercase F fraud, which is, um, some of this may well be legal.
00:15:03.000And it may well be very poor policy decisions that our leaders have made that allow people to bill for hanging out with their family members or hanging out, going to somebody's house to provide them with this companionship or cleaning their house in a way that's totally unverifiable.
00:15:23.000And so I think there are both fraud questions.
00:15:27.000And I think if JD Vance's task force finds that they can't prove with the standard that would be required in a court of law, Then you get to the question of do we just have to get rid of these programs?
00:15:39.000Because maybe we had programs that used to work in a time when Americans could be relied on, to be honest, that kind of break down in situations where you import people from low trust societies.
00:15:55.000So, Luke, take us back to the beginning of the story.
00:15:57.000How did you first uncover this level of fraud?
00:16:00.000And what was it like walking through these empty buildings that supposedly hundreds of millions of dollars are being funneled through for home health care?
00:16:12.000Doge working with HHS, a database of Medicaid spending to what companies are getting paid by Medicaid.
00:16:19.000And I've been trying to get that for many years because when you look at that pie chart of the federal budget, so much of it is in Medicaid to the point where a lot of liberals kind of mocked Doge saying there's nothing to even cut unless you're going to go for the non discretionary stuff.
00:16:33.000And so when we can actually see what Medicaid is going to, and then we find out that it's actually not just all like untouchable, like doctor's visits, it's like, Very much fair game for those that want to make the government more efficient.
00:16:47.000I think that's a huge potential for kind of saving our country.
00:16:53.000And it's a huge win for transparency that they did that.
00:16:57.000I've been doing data analysis for a long time, and I had my computer run queries that told me where the really sketchy stuff was.
00:17:03.000And it took me right to a red state, Ohio, Columbus, and the Northeast sector of Columbus, which turns out to be where all the Somalis live.
00:17:13.000Um, but it's funny because I didn't go say I want to go find Somalis.
00:17:17.000I didn't really tell it anything except tell me where some really sketchy money stuff is going on.
00:17:45.000Aliens abducted people on some day at noon, like months ago, because a lot of them will have signs saying we're out to lunch.
00:17:51.000And it's like you can tell they've been out to lunch for a long time.
00:17:54.000There's like mail piling up, like postmarked from months prior.
00:18:00.000So at the end of the day, you know, we kind of did the Nick Shirley thing and found the same results in Ohio.
00:18:04.000But then we coupled that with really rigorous database research and we went through all these individuals in public records.
00:18:11.000And, you know, for those that implied that somehow Nick Shirley got the story wrong or didn't do a rigorous enough job, I can tell you when you take two months and you look up hundreds of these people and you tell the full story, it actually makes it worse for the Medicaid people and the Somalis, not better.
00:18:33.000Do you have any clues as to what's coming?
00:18:37.000So, you know, we'll have a person, you'll hear an interview with me talking to a guy who's been charged 30 times in court, all kinds of multiple fraud arrests, violence arrests.
00:18:50.000And he's arguing me with me that it's totally fine to, to run a, a Medicaid company.
00:18:56.000Um, you know, he says, I was just too dumb to know what the law is.
00:19:00.000And so this is what we're dealing with here.
00:19:02.000I mean, that's the excuse of these people is I'm, I'm really dumb.
00:19:05.000I just didn't even know it was wrong to, to, to steal and lie constantly.
00:19:10.000Um, but there's a lot to go through in, in part two.
00:19:12.000There's a tons of different examples from what just dropped.
00:19:15.000Um, that's going to take, I think, people a while to, to, to go through.
00:19:19.000Um, for example, a Democrat politician.
00:19:23.000By the name of Muhammad Jama, who ran for state senate with the Democrat endorsement in Ohio.
00:19:31.000He founded an $11 million home healthcare company while he was doing other stuff.
00:20:14.000I spent a great deal of time investigating all these people and keeping track of, well, Ahmed Muhammad and how does he relate to Muhammad Ahmed and is Abdurrazaq Ahmed the brother?
00:20:27.000It's very difficult to track these people because they don't even have birthday.
00:20:30.000A lot of them don't even know when they were born.
00:20:32.000So our system is designed to keep track of people based on the idea that family members have the same names and you have birth dates and stuff.
00:20:39.000And I put the time in and I was able to find some really good stuff.
00:20:43.000But I'm certain that the government is not able to do this at scale because it's just too laborious.
00:20:49.000And I get the sense that there's whack a mole going on.
00:20:52.000And I get into this in some of the stories where somebody goes to jail for fraud, but pretty soon all of his associates are like popping up with like similar assets.
00:21:00.000And it's like, are they just moving money around?
00:21:03.000Is it really just a game of whack a mole to be trying to stop fraud when it's going to be really hard to prove?
00:21:12.000At the end of the day, they may not even be punished that severely, and somebody else is just going to do it.
00:21:16.000So I'm interested to see whether, um, they rescind these waivers.
00:21:21.000I think the states are spending this money pretty freely because it's the federal money.
00:21:26.000Um, and it's a little unfair, I think, for certain states to have waivers like Minnesota and Ohio that let them bill federal taxpayers for services that people in, in, in other states don't get to do.
00:21:39.000Um, and I think personal services is one that maybe there's a policy solution here rather than, than you get at the root of the fraud and you just cut it off, uh, you know, at the root.
00:21:49.000And say no more personal services, no more butlers for Somalis.
00:21:53.000Um, if you're, if you have an aging parent and they need help cleaning their house once a week or cooking a dinner once a day, um, I think this is what people have done for all of human history.
00:22:03.000You chip in to your family because it's the right thing to do.
00:22:06.000Um, and you don't, you don't insist on a government paycheck because it's just too easily abused.
00:22:11.000And even when it is abused, um, it's, it's hard to prove fraud because this kind of thing happens behind closed doors in private residences.
00:22:19.000And I think we can no longer afford to have programs.
00:22:21.000Where proving fraud to the standard that's required in court is so hard.
00:22:28.000If there's going to be blatant, what seems like fraud, what seems super sketchy, I don't think if anybody was in those buildings that I was in in Columbus, they'd be like, oh, yeah, this is totally normal, totally normal that this person got $10 million.
00:23:34.000You've got policies scattered everywhere, applications that keep asking for the same information, no real picture of how it all fits together when something goes wrong.
00:23:41.000Our sponsor, SuperSure, is built to blow all of that up.
00:23:44.000It's one brokerage for your business coverage with a licensed super agent and account team that actually works your account year round, not just at renewal.
00:23:51.000Instead of wondering who to call, you have one place, one team, one platform to keep your policies organized in a single insurance vault.
00:23:57.000If you've ever stared at a policy and thought, I speak English, this is not English, SuperSure's fine print fax tool translates the legalese into plain language so you can finally see what you have.
00:25:18.000Yeah, look, I mean, the primaries are usually quite competitive.
00:25:21.000I would say we're cautiously optimistic that we will shatter recent norms for what those primary outcomes are.
00:25:29.000If you look at the 2024, 2022 governor and Senate primaries, you had competitive primaries where Bernie Moreno and JD Vance and Mike DeWine were elected.
00:25:39.000You're looking at 40, at most 50% of the vote that went for the Republican.
00:25:45.000Even if you go back to 2018, when Mike DeWine was first elected, when someone else was elected to the Senate, you see the same thing.
00:25:51.000It's been a ceiling of 40 to 50 percent.
00:25:54.000So we'll see what the results come in.
00:25:55.000I don't want to count the chickens before they hatch, but take a look at it tomorrow or even late tonight.
00:26:00.000And I'm cautiously optimistic that we're going to significantly beat that ceiling.
00:26:09.000So obviously, we here at Daily Wire have been covering extensively the investigative reporting of Luke Rosiak and the rest of our investigative team about.
00:26:16.000What appears to be alleged fraud in Ohio, Medicaid fraud.
00:26:21.000Again, we've seen this in a wide variety of states.
00:26:23.000The extent of it in Ohio appears to be quite shocking.
00:26:26.000Again, what you're looking at is buildings that look largely empty with tons of registered businesses that are receiving Medicaid monies.
00:26:34.000And what would you do as governor of Ohio to crack down on that?
00:26:38.000So, look, I think that the reality is all states, including Ohio, I think have turned a blind eye to this level of rampant fraud of the welfare system broadly, including Medicaid.
00:26:50.000And it starts, Ben, with enforcing the laws that are already on the books.
00:26:55.000So you could talk about passing new laws.
00:26:56.000I think that's a reasonable conversation to have, but that requires a legislature.
00:27:01.000And furthermore, you get asked the question of what's the point of passing new laws if the ones that are already on the books aren't being sufficiently enforced?
00:27:09.000So one of my top priorities is to take the egregious cases here of fraud that, you know, frankly, your reporting was really intriguing, or, you know, Daily Wire's reporting was really intriguing to me.
00:27:19.000I wish I could say that it was a shock.
00:27:21.000Compared to what I hear on the ground, unfortunately, it was not a shock, but I appreciate you putting a national spotlight on it in my own home state.
00:27:28.000And I think what that does is it forces those who are in power to be able to pay attention to an issue that may have been swept under the rug for too long before.
00:27:37.000When I am in power, hopefully, if we're elected, we're not going to sweep it under the rug.
00:28:16.000In a modern era of AI, you have a toolkit that allows you to spot abnormalities even more quickly and more reliably than at prior points in human history.
00:29:03.000You know, fixing the waste, fraud, and abuse, particularly in the Medicaid system.
00:29:07.000And you think about the analogy to that to every other system that's over bureaucratized, which, you know, we're not talking about today, but the public education system, how broken that is with the bureaucracy that suppresses the students and their achievement and their ability to report that to the public to, in a different sense, keep legally bilking the public without standing for results.
00:29:27.000You look at the overgrowth of government in every sector from Medicaid to the welfare state to even public education, K 12, higher education, it's a mess.
00:29:38.000And I think what we need now more than ever in Ohio, and frankly, in states like Ohio across the country, are real entrepreneurs who aren't willing to tolerate nonsense, who are willing to cut through the nonsense when needed.
00:29:50.000And that's why I'm doing this job, because I know I can get it done.
00:29:55.000So, Vivek, obviously, you were involved at the beginning with Doge.
00:29:59.000Our reporting was largely based on some of the revelations that came via Doge, because a lot of the information that Doge uncovered served as sort of the basis for our investigation.
00:30:08.000Why do you think it is that so many members of government at the state and the federal level?
00:30:12.000Have brushed all of this under the rug because you would assume that good hearted people in government who would like for these programs to work efficiently would be unhappy with the fraud.
00:30:21.000But it seems as though they have more of an incentive to pretend the fraud isn't happening, thus to claim that the programs are working better than they are or something.
00:30:46.000As you said, it's well intentioned people producing outcomes that are not well and that are not really doing well by the people who are supposed to serve.
00:30:56.000So, this incentive failure is important.
00:30:58.000Where if a given state today cracks down on this waste, fraud, and abuse, okay, cracks down on Medicaid overexpenditures, and you could talk about uppercase F fraud and there's also lowercase F fraud, which is to say maybe technically legal but doesn't comport with anyone's sense of who should be getting these dollars.
00:31:17.000The problem is the state that does that heavy lifting.
00:31:20.000The equivalent of a doja state, say, if you did that, you as a state don't really get to keep most of those dollars.
00:31:35.000So, so for people aren't familiar how this works, it's like you get reimbursed for your expenses, almost all of them from the federal government.
00:31:42.000So if you cut those expenses, but you're losing the reimbursement, Then you, as a state, let's say you're a governor of a state, say, okay, well, I got other competing priorities because I would rather look after some other priority in my state.
00:31:55.000This is going to make me less popular, giving free government money away to people who could be voting for me.
00:32:01.000But in return, the federal government is still the backstop anyway.
00:32:06.000So I think that incentive failure needs to change.
00:32:08.000And one of the things that I intend to do when I'm governor, my first two years, remember, will be President Trump's last two years as president.
00:32:16.000I have great relationships with many members of the cabinet.
00:32:18.000With President Trump, of course, and, and, you know, Dr. Oz and I have had great conversations, including in potential visits we've talked about to Ohio, to think about how we're able to change that game, to be able to say, I mean, having, having, a lot of these insights came to me from the two and a half months that I did co-head Doge.
00:32:35.000We need to fix those incentive structures just like you would in a business, where if somebody who's running a given division of a business generates greater profitability, you want that person to be rewarded for it.
00:32:45.000I'd say the same thing with respect to the states that, You know, from the federal government, if you're saving the federal government the money, you also, as a state, should participate in a greater portion of those savings.
00:32:56.000So that'll be something that I'm definitely going to work on when I'm governor.
00:32:59.000And I'm confident that with a friendly administration, we will be able to deliver common sense solutions.
00:33:05.000The other issue, Ben, is just human nature.
00:33:06.000I mean, at the end of the day, if someone's grown dependent on the federal welfare state, most politicians are afraid to touch that.
00:33:15.000And the reality is that goes for, if we're calling a spade a spade, Republicans and Democrats alike.
00:33:20.000Democrats have been worse in this respect, but a lot of Republicans.
00:33:23.000Prefer to talk about or change the subject to other issues.
00:33:26.000And at some point as a country, we're going to have to reckon with this.
00:33:29.000We've got a $37 trillion national debt and growing.
00:33:33.000Our children, their generation are not going to be able to sustain the brunt of this level of federal spending.
00:33:40.000And you look at how the creep scope, the scope creep of these programs from welfare to SNAP to Medicaid, often now finding their way to individuals who were never intended to be the beneficiaries of those programs.
00:33:54.000That's not only bad for the federal budget, not only bad for state budgets, it's in the long run also bad for the very people who are supposedly the recipients of those dollars.
00:34:05.000That's what's driving an epidemic of purposelessness, of depression, anxiety, a loss of meaning.
00:34:11.000When you ultimately aren't working and are permanently dependent on Uncle Sam, that actually reduces your own sense of agency too.
00:34:19.000And this should be something that conservatives are concerned with, conservatives are talking about.
00:34:24.000And I think it's really important that we restore.
00:34:27.000A direction in the Republican party and in the conservative movement that confronts these issues head on rather than changing the topic to, you know, pandering about how we're going to create a different kind of nanny state.
00:34:40.000And so I'm hoping that this is a message that will not only help save Ohio from a lot of this waste, fraud, and abuse, but we use the waste, fraud, and abuse as a jumping off point to say that we're also going to focus on empowerment.
00:34:54.000How do we put that money back in your pocket in the form of lower property taxes, lower income taxes, lower capital gains taxes that attract?
00:35:01.000Higher paying jobs to our state that ensure more of our young people graduating from high schools and from universities then can get those high paying jobs so they don't have to be dependent on SNAP or welfare or Medicaid.
00:35:14.000That's the way we should be building our country back.
00:35:24.000It does take somebody who understands how this stuff works, understands how incentives work, understands how to manage a bureaucracy.
00:35:31.000One of the things I learned while running a business, Ben, is oftentimes if the right person is not a good fit for the job, you got to make that decision and remove them from that job.
00:35:41.000And a lot of people who run these government bureaucracies are reluctant to do that.
00:35:48.000And it's the way I'm going to lead Ohio if you have people who are running these massive bureaucracies underneath them who are not willing to take action, we're going to remove them from their jobs and put in place people who are willing to do the job that the public hires them to do.
00:36:02.000And, you know, the most basic step to the point of what we're talking about today starts with prosecuting the obvious waste, fraud, and abuse that belongs.
00:36:11.000The dollars that are being bilked belong in the pockets of actual law abiding Ohioans.
00:36:51.000I mean, because the fact is that obviously you're running in a competitive primary, you're also running in a very competitive state.
00:36:55.000I mean, the Ohio governor's race is not a runaway race for Republicans in this election cycle.
00:37:00.000What effect do you think that the sort of grievance party is going to have on our politics going forward if it isn't stopped?
00:37:08.000Well, look, I'd encourage you to take a look at the Ohio primary results tonight or tomorrow morning, Ben, and tell your audience about it when they're out.
00:37:15.000I'm actually really curious as well, because if you look at the person who's running against me, In this race, it's a guy who put up a YouTube video saying that he was worried that AI was not highlighting enough of the good qualities of Hitler.
00:37:28.000He claims that I can't be the governor of Ohio because I'm an Indian, not an American, despite the fact that I'm born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I'm raising my kids in Ohio.
00:37:39.000It's an embodiment of what the Twitter lab creates in the real world.
00:37:45.000A lot of the policies sound socialist, just like my other opponent.
00:37:49.000And the Democrat race is also a socialist opponent, I'm going to face.
00:37:53.000And so I oppose that form of grievance driven identitarian socialism, whether it emerges on the left, for example, in the candidate who I'm running against in the general election, or whether it emerges on the so called right.
00:38:06.000And I can't even call it the right because it's not really conservative at all, but the so called right, which is what my primary election has been defined by.
00:38:13.000So to your question about what impact is this going to have on the politics of the future, I think that's where my primary will be pretty telling to be able to say, okay, I told you, you know, historically, the Republican.
00:38:24.000Front runner, the person who wins the primary gets between 35 and 50% of the vote in competitive Republican primaries in Ohio.
00:38:31.000And I think that that will be a leading indicator of where the future direction of the actual voter base is for the Republican Party, which may or may not be.
00:38:40.000I think it probably is going to be very different from the loudest voices you hear on some, you know, sick corner of the internet.
00:39:01.000Of course, it's not exactly what a standard political playbook would tell you is the talking points you're supposed to bring to a campaign these days.
00:39:10.000If it were, you'd see other Republicans doing it, and they're not.
00:39:16.000I would rather, I really am committed to winning this election.
00:39:20.000But if I had to choose, I would rather speak the truth and convey my beliefs and lose an election rather than to win by saying some fake can talking point.
00:39:29.000And I think we're going to win by actually speaking the truth.
00:40:20.000I was born an air to nothing, actually, literally.
00:40:23.000But what I love and what I'm so grateful to is a country that allowed me to achieve those things.
00:40:29.000And God willing, being in a position to lead the state where I was born and raised, that story is only possible in the United States of America.
00:40:38.000And I am so grateful to this state and to this country for giving me those opportunities that I feel a moral duty to revive that American dream where we Teach our kids the number one factor that determines what you achieve in life is you.
00:41:20.000And that's what I'm going to give you.
00:41:22.000I'm going to give it to you because I'm grateful to this country.
00:41:24.000And I think that is what is going to be required to save this country.
00:41:28.000And, you know, I think the red team, blue team stuff, it's fine.
00:41:33.000You know, it's the way partisan politics works, but I think that there's a deeper project we're going to have to undertake in this country to revive the spirit of that American dream from a culture of victimhood, from the popularity of socialism in the many, in the many avatars in which it shows up today.
00:41:55.000Biased, obviously, but I believe that my winning this election in Ohio will help us take a step forward as a country, as the former Rust Belt, as a state in the direction of economic empowerment, in the direction of educational achievement, in the direction of, dare I say, reviving that American dream that people like you and me have lived in this country.
00:42:20.000And if we do that in one little state in the heart of the country, which happens to be the sixth or seventh largest state in our economy, I think it'll be a good step for our country, and I'm working on it every day.
00:42:32.000You can go check out Vivek's campaign at Vivek4ohio.com.
00:42:35.000Vivek Ramaswamy, thanks so much for taking the time.
00:42:46.000The Kalshi odds over there, again, Kalshi is one of our sponsors.
00:42:50.000In the Ohio governor's race, it's basically 50 50.
00:42:52.000That is a toss up seat for the Ohio governor's race.
00:42:55.000And so backing Vivek would be a strong move in favor of Republican governance, obviously, in.
00:43:01.000A state that has gone red, but used to be a lot more purple.
00:43:05.000And meanwhile, the permission structures for violence that have been fomented by the left continue apace.
00:43:12.000According to Politico, on Monday, an episode unfolded in the late afternoon when plainclothes officers determined that a person had a gun, apparently near the White House.
00:43:22.000The man exchanged fire with officers while trying to flee the area, according to the deputy director of the Secret Service.
00:43:27.000A weapon was recovered from the man, unclear what the intentions were.
00:43:31.000Apparently, the vice president's motorcade drove through the area not long before the shooting occurred.
00:43:39.000We are seeing increasing threats to politicians.
00:43:42.000And again, the glorification of acts of violence is a huge part of the problem.
00:43:46.000We talked about permission structures for violence that have been created, ideologies that suggest you must do violence in order to save the country from fascism.
00:43:55.000Well, now it turns out that those gigantic fires in Los Angeles, the catastrophic Palisades Fire, were allegedly set by one person named Jonathan Rindernicht, who was apparently obsessed, according to the New York Post, with the accused healthcare CEO killer.
00:44:13.000He had routinely searched Free Luigi and let's take down all the billionaires online.
00:44:19.000He did billions of dollars in damage, destroyed people's lives, all based on the idea that violence against people who are rich is somehow good.
00:44:28.000Apparently, this person, the alleged arsonist, was an Uber driver and he ranted to customers about Luigi Mangione's arrest.
00:44:37.000According to prosecutors, many of the defendants' Uber passengers on December 31st, 2024, and January 1st, 2025, Described the defendant as angry, intense, driving erratically, and ranting about being pissed off at the world and Luigi Mangione, capitalism and vigilantism.
00:44:53.000Anti capitalism, anti institutionalism, these have consequences.
00:44:58.000And when you celebrate people who do violence, this is what you end up with.
00:45:03.000Incredibly enough, the left refuses to stop doing this, like legitimately refuses to stop doing this.
00:45:08.000So, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is campaigning with Bernie Sanders, and he's out there once again claiming that they're fighting fascism.
00:45:16.000If you keep saying, That your opponents are fascists without evidence?
00:45:20.000You are contributing to a permission structure for violence.
00:45:59.000But again, this is part and parcel of a left wing permission structure that says that political opposition is somehow an aspect of evil.
00:46:07.000And the beautiful thing about this is that once you decide that your generalized political opposition is, in fact, the font head of all evil, well, then that excuses pretty much anything.
00:46:28.000He's a person who said that he would not come out in favor of the killing of Ayatollah Khomeini because too many of his constituents liked Ayatollah Khomeini.
00:46:48.000First of all, Israel did not commit a genocide in Gaza, the population of Gaza has increased since the beginning of the war.
00:46:54.000Which is the most unsuccessful genocide in human history, if that is the case.
00:46:58.000And second of all, it is a lie that anyone has called for a genocide.
00:47:03.000But of course, it's all a permission structure to support people who are truly terrible, like the Hassan Pikers of the world.
00:47:11.000If you're more frustrated by the idea that I would campaign with Hassan Piker than you are frustrated by the idea that we have backstopped a genocide or that we continue to rob people of getting basic health care in their country, I think you don't understand morals.
00:48:57.000But of course, then they decry all violence.
00:48:59.000You say that the president is a fascist.
00:49:02.000You say that you're willing to campaign with people who openly support terrorism because the Republicans are so terrible and all the rest of this.
00:49:10.000Amazing stuff from the left, which is, of course, Another justificatory structure for how they can back people like Graham Platner, the main Senate candidate.
00:49:20.000So, Platner, of course, is the guy with the Totenkopf tattoo, meaning like an SS tattoo on his chest, which doesn't happen by accident.
00:49:29.000You don't just wake up one morning with a death's head tattoo on your chest, a giant one, by the way.
00:49:34.000People generally know why they get the tattoos they got.
00:49:38.000Also, he has appeared on the podcast of neo Nazis like Stew Peters and all the rest.
00:49:43.000So, you know, he's kind of a bad person, Graham Platner, but the entire Democratic Party is now mobilizing behind him because obviously, if you want to beat the evil, evil Republicans, you have to side with people like Graham Platner.
00:49:55.000John Favreau at the Pod Save America crew put out a tweet saying, Graham Platner isn't just our best and only chance to beat Susan Collins.
00:50:02.000He's a good, decent man who struggled and grown and is always trying to do better.
00:50:21.000The fact that the left is willing to side with legitimately anyone, anyone for any purpose to quote unquote stop the fascist right, this is how you end up where we are right now.
00:50:32.000And the temperature is really, really high.
00:50:35.000Okay, meanwhile, in more serious news, obviously it appears that some sort of action may be imminent in Iran.
00:50:42.000President Trump announced yesterday that the United States will guide non sanctioned ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
00:50:47.000This is an amazing move by the president.
00:50:49.000He says countries from all over the world, almost all of which are not involved in the Middle Eastern dispute going on so visibly and violently for all to see, have asked the United States if we could help free up their ships, which are locked up in the Strait of Hormuz, on something which they have absolutely nothing to do with.
00:51:02.000They're merely neutral and innocent bystanders.
00:51:03.000For the good of Iran, the Middle East, and the United States, we've told these countries we'll guide their ships safely out of these restricted waterways so they can freely and ably get on with their business.
00:51:15.000Well, Pete Hexath, the Secretary of Defense, he announced today, this morning, that Iran cannot block international waterways indiscriminately.
00:51:23.000Here is what the Secretary of Defense had to say American forces won't need to enter Iranian waters or airspace.
00:51:31.000We're not looking for a fight, but Iran also cannot be allowed to block.
00:51:36.000Innocent countries and their goods from an international waterway.
00:51:41.000Iran is the clear aggressor, harassing civilian vessels, threatening mariners from every nation indiscriminately, and weaponizing a critical choke point for its own financial benefit, or at least trying to.
00:51:58.000Well, over the course of the last 24 hours, the United States did help guide a tanker through the strait, a very large Mayorsk tanker through the strait.
00:52:06.000They're also trying to change the incentive structure so that more tankers.
00:52:09.000Are willing to go get insurance and then ship through the strait.
00:52:12.000Hegseth announced that Iran had been embarrassed by the fact that we are now opening up some lanes.
00:52:17.000Basically, if you think of the Strait of Hormuz as a freeway, there are certain lanes that are further from Iran.
00:52:21.000Those lanes are now open, and the United States is making sure that they remain open.
00:52:28.000Two U.S. commercial ships, along with American destroyers, have already safely transited the strait, showing the lane is clear.
00:52:36.000We know the Iranians are embarrassed by this fact.
00:52:41.000They said they control the strait, they do not.
00:52:45.000Well, this is a major problem for Iran.
00:52:47.000Their number one piece of leverage here was closing the Strait of Hormuz.
00:52:50.000They basically have two pieces of leverage left.
00:52:52.000One is to try and blow up all the oil supplies in surrounding countries, and the other is the Strait of Hormuz.
00:52:56.000And if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened and the only stuff that can't get in or out is Iranian, they have a massive, massive problem.
00:53:02.000They can't project power, they don't have a working economy.
00:53:07.000President Trump announced yesterday that Iran was taking shots at ships.
00:53:10.000It is a desperation play at this point that they are taking shots at ships.
00:53:15.000The president says Iran has taken some shots at unrelated nations with respect to ship movement, Project Freedom, including a South Korean cargo ship.
00:53:23.000Perhaps it's time for South Korea to come and join the mission.
00:53:25.000We've shot down seven small boats, or as they like to call them, fast boats.
00:54:09.000The United States reopening the strait and ensuring that shipping can move through at the same time that Iran cannot get its stuff out is disastrous.
00:54:26.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the UAE's defense ministry said late on Monday, it intercepted 12 ballistic missiles, three cruise missiles, and four drones launched from Iran.
00:54:54.000And that means that Iran has no refinery capacity.
00:54:56.000And that means their economy is basically sunk for the foreseeable future, which means the regime has no money to pay its own people.
00:55:04.000Now, it seems that the Trump administration would like to give Iran one final opportunity before that happens.
00:55:08.000That's what this chokehold is on Iranian resources moving in and out.
00:55:12.000President Trump says it's only a matter of time before their resources run dry, before they have to turn off their wells.
00:55:18.000Here's President Trump talking to Hugh Hewitt.
00:55:22.000They have a problem coming up because they have a very explosive situation in a lot of different ways.
00:55:29.000You know, their oil, when you turn off the oil underground and the mechanical, too, but underground has a tendency in like almost 100% of the cases to literally explode and just destroy everything around it.
00:56:26.000We could hit other energy resources inside the country.
00:56:28.000We could take down another layer of the IRGC.
00:56:31.000We'll probably have to do at some point another kinetic action against missile facilities that have been uncovered over the course of the last few weeks.
00:59:58.000Hey, so I promise you that way back when people were using a diminutive when they were talking about their fathers, also because that's normal.