Comedian Adam Conover joins the Culture War crew to talk about gun control, the Philando Castille case, and why he thinks cops should have been armed in the first place. Plus, we talk about the new Kia K4 and why it s better than the Kia Optima.
00:05:14.820It's – we've got people being thrown in unmarked vans.
00:05:19.040We've got, like, the destruction of the civil service, which is, like, a pretty standard authoritarian tactic, like, early on in an administration of that type.
00:05:25.760And, yeah, it's, like, sort of remains to be seen how far they'll get and if they'll actually be able to transform America in the ways that they're trying to.
00:05:35.980But, yeah, it's pretty – my side of America, things are – people are a little – people are a little on edge.
00:05:56.920But still, when you look at – there was a RealClearPolitics aggregate polling found that – they didn't do it necessarily by demographic.
00:06:32.600And this is contrasting to, like, all the approval rating stats I've seen have him at, like, what, like, 40, 47 percent and dropping or something like that?
00:06:41.560It's largely based on the older crowd.
00:06:45.440Just – that seems like the opposite of every stat I've seen in the past.
00:06:51.660But I don't, like, follow this really closely.
00:06:53.820I don't know how to find this image because it was a few weeks ago, but let me see if I can try and pull it up and talk at the same time, which I probably can't.
00:07:00.320But I don't actually – do you want to see if you can try and find it while we talk?
00:07:05.200Otherwise, I'm going to be sitting here typing –
00:07:30.560And his audience on Reddit was saying, this is just a family man who is trying to escape harsh conditions in Central America who has been effectively disappeared by the Trump administration.
00:07:43.680Which is a gross mischaracterization of what happened.
00:07:46.600If we were to say that a judge granted Abrego Garcia withholding of deportation due to Barrios 18 in Guatemala and threats against his life in El Salvador, then the question of due process is he needed to get a hearing as pertaining to that withholding of deportation.
00:08:00.800But he did already have two hearings in which he was determined to be an MS-13 gang member.
00:08:06.680He was pulled over and law enforcement believed to be human trafficking.
00:08:11.340He has two filings from his wife for beating her.
00:08:15.860And so it's fine if, in my view, the liberals – the liberal side of things or the podcasters like Pakman and Brian Tyler Cohen and others are going to say, hey, he was supposed to get a hearing.
00:08:28.400But it is a gross mischaracterization.
00:08:30.080So when you mention that people on the left are on edge, I'm like, yeah, well, they think that a guy who lives in Maryland who was working like a regular union job or whatever just disappeared one day as opposed to a guy who had gone through several hearings,
00:08:43.240was arrested with MS-13, had symbols on his hand that law enforcement believe were MS-13 gang tattoos.
00:08:50.360And so the real question is what was the error in that deportation?
00:08:54.880On the right, it's legally called harmless error in that he didn't get a hearing as to the withholding of deportation.
00:09:01.760However, he wouldn't have got it approved anyway.
00:09:11.620But people on the left, the liberal side of things, they think that this is a working-class family guy who's vanished one night, an American citizen.
00:10:10.460I don't really give a shit about, like, the character of the guy.
00:10:14.280And I didn't think that was a big part of the story.
00:10:16.400It was like the fact that he did not, you know, receive due process before being, you know, rendered to a prison—like this bizarre prison in El Salvador.
00:10:33.060I mean, he's, like, sent directly to this, like, gigantic, you know, complex.
00:10:38.840It's in a, like, highly public way, in a way where, like, the administration, you know, is making a show of their refusal to, you know, follow the law.
00:10:55.540And, like, you know, the sort of narrow legalistic, oh, he had a hearing, he was da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
00:11:00.700It's irrelevant to, like, the purposeful spectacle of the Trump administration, you know, sending this guy who they admit they should not have done this.
00:11:11.140But they're like, we don't give a shit, we're doing it just because we hate guys like this and we want, like, even people who are in the country legally to, you know, be afraid and to, what, self-deport?
00:11:22.380Like, it seems like the only justification is purposeful cruelty for doing this.
00:11:28.840I don't think they call on any legal immigrants to self-deport.
00:11:32.020They're calling on illegal immigrants to self-deport, offering up $1,000 if they do.
00:11:35.380The guy had a legal status to be in the country legally.
00:11:38.860Withholding of deportation isn't legal status.
00:11:41.140Withholding of deportation means he was ordered to leave the country, but the U.S. was barred from sending him to El Salvador, specifically because Barrios 18 in Guatemala had threatened his family.
00:11:53.040So the question as to due process was, this is why I think the actual legal standard is called harmless error.
00:12:00.340If he actually got a, either USCIS interview as to the withholding of deportation, it would have been voided because El Salvador no longer has the crime rate that it did 12 years ago or 10 years ago.
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00:15:54.440No, actually, universal injunctions are unconstitutional.
00:15:58.000So there's a concern that precedent will be set by Trump adhering to universal injunctions pertaining to the Alien Enemies Act or mass deportation.
00:16:05.160And he's not going to allow that to happen.
00:16:06.840So he doesn't want to set a precedent in the future that you should on universal injunctions don't exist anywhere in the Constitution.
00:16:13.840And we've seen some 40 percent of all injunctions ever issued in this way against Trump and his administration.
00:16:53.000Yeah, I mean, it's like a he's he, you know, as an executive is trying to destroy the power of the other branches of government by ignoring their authority by, you know, mounting aggressive, aggressive, legalistic defenses like the ones that you're making in order to, like, you know, expand the power of the presidency and be able to act with impunity.
00:17:13.320Judges is part of why he's sending them.
00:17:40.080But we're not talking about a judge ordering Trump to kill anybody.
00:17:42.720We're talking about judges in I think we're up to like 87 instances issuing universal mandates across the entire nation based on lawsuits of single individuals.
00:17:54.060So what, for example, a recent one was the transgender military ban.
00:17:58.860Donald Trump issued an executive order saying, you know, DSM five mental disorder.
00:18:05.960You are now going to be inadmissible from the armed forces and will and will be severed unless you are not showing symptoms.
00:18:55.420So in the issue of lower courts and this universal injunction, lower courts have the authority over the singular individuals in their courtroom unless it's a class action.
00:19:07.600So they could have made it a class action.
00:19:11.300They could have gotten the signatures and said, we need X amount of transgender military service men and women because we want this to apply to all.
00:19:17.160Instead, what happened was and I'll argue this.
00:19:20.520This is this is where it encroaches into the authoritarian.
00:19:27.640This created a huge uproar because it meant that the military now had to enlist schizophrenics.
00:19:33.920That if if someone showed up suffering from manic depressive disorder and they were paraplegic, they were now under this universal injunction entitled to join the military.
00:19:42.360But I mean, a schizophrenic bipolar who's suffering delusions is not going to be able to complete basic training.
00:19:49.480Now, perhaps there'd be an argument, as you're saying it, if the judge only said this day will apply just to transgender military men and women.
00:20:11.340Well, I mean, I don't think he's like he probably knew what's happening, but I don't think he had a hand in the day to day operations of it.
00:20:32.660He's like, you know, doing loopty loops out on the golf course.
00:20:35.760But like the legalistic like points that you're making to me, it's all a fig leaf for like the the larger thing that he's doing, which is, you know, bending the law in these in these bizarre ways.
00:20:52.300What what is the point of like sending people to El Salvador?
00:21:00.660Part of the reason to send him there, to send Garcia there, Abrego Garcia there as quick as quickly as possible, is it just shields him from the rest of the legal system.
00:21:24.180If you shove people into this like hole in another country as quickly as possible, gives you plausible deniability.
00:21:31.760I don't really give a shit about, you know, the various, you know, again, legalistic like little nuances of the ruling.
00:21:39.980The important part to me is, you know, Trump saying being under an order to bring the guy back and say, I can't because the president of El Salvador, my best friend, says he won't return him.
00:22:11.860It's like it's in order to the reason to do it is to is to just make it more difficult to do the right thing.
00:22:19.520I suppose the issue is when Bukele Garcia got deported, the administration right out was like, this is an administrative error.
00:22:27.580We it was an oversight on the withholding of deportation.
00:22:30.020The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Trump must facilitate his return.
00:22:33.760And now the political debate is what does facilitate mean?
00:22:38.080The Supreme Court hasn't clarified, which they definitely need to do when you have two factions arguing.
00:22:42.720The left argues it means literally bring him back.
00:22:44.380And the right says, no, it means provide him the means to return should he be able.
00:22:49.500And then I say, OK, the Supreme Court can literally just come out right now and issue like a writ and be like, no, we mean go and negotiate.
00:22:56.780However, the other challenge is Supreme Court also stated that no one can direct the executive branch to conduct foreign policy.
00:23:01.760So this would mean that Donald Trump could get him back in the sense that he could negotiate simple terms very easily.
00:23:08.560He could literally say to Bukele, listen, you're going to release the guy from prison.
00:23:53.200He's an El Salvadoran citizen in El Salvador who was imprisoned by El Salvador.
00:23:57.700My point is this, the reason there's any number of things that they could do, there's some things that both of us agree that they should do.
00:24:08.160There's more things that I think they should do than you do.
00:24:10.840But, et cetera, the point is they are, like, loudly and proudly not doing any of that, deporting a guy they know shouldn't be deported.
00:24:21.340But that's, hold on, that's not true in any of the media.
00:24:24.600The media, the full reporting that we get across the board from the New York Times to CNN to even Fox News was he was accidentally deported without his hearing on withholding.
00:24:34.920So it wasn't an intentional, we're going to get this guy and get him out.
00:24:38.620So when Trump is, like, holding up photos of his tattoos with, like, MS-13 on it and, like, they're giving press conferences about he beat us, what they're doing, character, you know, assassination on the guy, like, all of that is accidental.
00:24:53.980No, that's a political attack against Democrats.
00:24:56.860And so let me just get to the end of my point, okay, is that, you know, they turn it into a political attack because they are acting lawlessly.
00:25:09.020The point is to demonstrate on this issue we will act lawlessly.
00:25:13.320You're not safe if you are, you know, even under the protection of a court order in this country and you should be frightened and you should leave.
00:25:20.300It's just, like, it's an authoritarian attack against immigrants directly and it's designed, it's a leveraging of the state to try to frighten immigrants and other groups, not only illegal immigrants.
00:25:35.200Okay, so let's talk about the students who have been detained and deported, right?
00:25:39.600These are people who are under student visas, right?
00:25:42.040They appear at a protest or two and, you know, they're thrown into vans, they're held in, you know, these bizarre facilities, you know, there's multiple cases.
00:25:53.280If you want to say that they're thrown in vans and held in vans.
00:25:54.840So the point of this is to frighten, A, people at universities, B, pro-Palestinian protesters, and that means any protester on the left, of course, and C, immigrants of all types, including those who are here on legal immigrant visas.
00:26:11.740Like, it's, they, they, the details of the individual cases don't matter.
00:26:16.360They like creating a firestorm around someone who is here legally, creating a huge controversy about them, and then saying, we don't give a fuck, we're going to do whatever we want to these people because we want you to be afraid, right?
00:26:29.880And that, to me, is, that's an expression of, like, pure authoritarianism.
00:26:35.500It's a leveraging of state power to frighten, you know, undergroups in society that these people don't like.
00:26:43.400We can mount as many legal defenses as we want of it and say, ah, blah, blah, blah, according to this statute or that statute, but the actual action is just designed to frighten people Trump doesn't like.
00:26:53.380And it's, like, it's bizarre to see him do it.
00:26:55.260Let's say yes, but none of that's illegal.
00:26:57.320That's all actually codified law that they're allowed to do.
00:27:05.880We can talk about a lot of bad things that every administration has done in the past that liberals and Democrats have covered up or, or participated in or didn't argue against.
00:27:17.920It feels disingenuous to talk about one thing that the Trump administration is doing because Democrats have done bad things, too?
00:27:21.900Well, like, for instance, Donald Trump, through Marco Rubio specifically, revoking student visas, saying that these individuals represent a threat to our national security by adhering to our enemies.
00:27:33.120And literally, that's what they're claiming.
00:27:34.760I think it's ridiculous to claim that a student who's anti-Israel is working with Hamas.
00:27:50.080So this is okay with you because it's narrowly legal under Marco Rubio's, uh...
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00:29:41.400Like, like nothing so easily black and white.
00:29:43.160Rebeza Ozturk who, you know, she wrote an op-ed.
00:29:45.080The only thing that anybody has even claimed that she's done is she wrote an extremely mild op-ed in her campus newspaper asking that the camp, you know, the college like sort of consider, you know, being supportive of the Palestinian cause in some vaguely defined way.
00:30:21.360They, they, they did, they did it in a, there's, Hey, if you want to, uh, a student, like a young woman, you, there's other ways to arrest them to have, than have six people show up wearing masks, surround her in a pincer formation.
00:30:34.760Like it's, it's designed to greet terror.
00:30:37.420So like what, what, what, what, okay, great.
00:30:40.820They didn't have, uh, and, and Biden's DOJ didn't need to show up at Roger Stone's house at four in the morning.
00:31:08.340So it's literal Israel and, and it, and it's, it's absurd that they'd argue, um, they're, you know, what they're doing when it comes to these students is they're saying they're a threat to our national security.
00:31:18.340And that's, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's technically the truth, which is the best kind of the truth in that, yes, opposing, uh, U.S. alliance with Israel is bad.
00:31:32.540Rallying in any meaningful way students to oppose Israel is bad for the U.S. foreign policy, but come on, you know what I mean?
00:31:39.440Like a woman writing an op-ed that's not from here is, is nothing compared to the people from here writing the same op-eds.
00:31:45.740What they're, what they're doing is they're basically saying, we're, we're, I agree with you in that they're saying, do not do these things or we will deport you.
00:31:56.140We will find the thinnest of hairs of a reason to revoke your visa if you, if you come out against us.
00:32:04.560So the reason why I say 60% when you asked me if I thought it was morally right, because obviously they don't need six guys swarming or in a pincer formation.
00:32:11.600One guy could have knocked on her door and said, ma'am, your visa has been revoked.
00:32:22.340The, uh, the claim about a threat to our national security is, is grossly overestimated.
00:32:26.360The claim that these people have adhered to Hamas is gross, grossly overestimated.
00:32:30.180That being said, it is still completely legal in that an individual who comes here on a conditional visa, not violate the conditions of that visa.
00:33:38.820The, the, the U.S. interest in, is with Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia has a lot to do with like the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.
00:33:46.560This is why Donald Trump is obsessed with Panama and Greenland.
00:33:48.720He wants to control the global trade routes is what America's largely done.
00:33:51.180This is, that, that's why I say it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a gross mischaracterization to claim that an op-ed is a threat to national security in that it is in the smallest of senses.
00:34:04.080Students coming here and telling us to oppose our support with Israel puts it, it puts us at risk in terms of the sentiment of a younger generation as to whether or not we'll fund Israel and control the Suez Canal.
00:34:14.120But, but, but I asked you if you thought it was good to deport her.
00:34:39.840So you think that America should be a country where if you come here on a student visa, you're paying into our, you know, university system.
00:34:48.980You're coming here for the reasons that, you know, completely legally we've invited you to come, right?
00:34:54.520This is, this is why America is the country it is partially because people like this have come for, for decades.
00:35:01.120If you express a political opinion that is like mildly at odds with a U.S. interest in another country of a canal that you should be deported.
00:35:13.900You think America should be the kind of country where if somebody comes here, they write an op-ed that says literally anything about U.S. foreign policy, they should be deported.
00:35:23.980So, so, so, so going forward, so, so going forward, literally everyone in the world should know if you are on foot on U.S. soil, you should not say anything in public about U.S. national priorities of any kind or else you could be deported.
00:35:39.320You think it's good to have a country where that's the understanding?
00:35:43.200This is what I'm trying to go down to.
00:35:44.580The individuals who come to this country and apply for student visas have made that agreement already.
00:35:49.380So while I would argue the deportation of Romesa is the thinnest of hairs, Mahmoud Khalil makes more sense.
00:35:58.600I mean, he organized and helped lead protests that resulted in damage, occupations of buildings, several staff at the University of Columbia.
00:36:05.460Let's say on Romesa because then we don't have to split hairs.
00:36:14.280If you're here as a guest of this nation, you do not start rallying its people in opposition to its to the will of the voters and what the government is doing.
00:36:22.260I mean, I really thought the point of America was, you know, freedom of speech was like a main value here that that I think that's why people come here.
00:36:33.220It's why I like living here, because I always felt that, hey, I can express an opinion, especially about U.S. foreign policy and not have anything happen to me.
00:36:42.280So that's a right that only citizens have.
00:36:46.560And you think America should be a country where if you are not literally an American citizen, if you express any opinion about U.S. foreign policy, I mean, and we both agree the opinion she expressed was pretty mild.
00:37:00.600It wasn't like a very inflammatory opinion.
00:37:10.880That should be grounds for being forcibly removed from the country.
00:37:15.180And like whether or not it's legally the case that we could do that, do you think it's good?
00:37:21.080You think it's good to have a country where things like that happen?
00:37:24.320You think a thriving country is one where people come into the country, they write an op-ed for the paper of the organization of which they're a member.
00:37:33.200She's paying tuition to go to this school, and she's working for the student newspaper or whatever.
00:37:55.460The Immigration and Naturalization Act has multiple provisions that outright say this is the case.
00:38:02.560And so that's why I say it's marginally good, because the issue is the U.S. asserting its sovereignty and saying, as a guest in this nation, we ask you not do certain things.
00:38:10.300We ask you don't write mildly worded op-eds about U.S. foreign policy vis-a-vis a different country's war.
00:38:27.320So America is a country where, in your view, if you are a foreign national, you are here on a student visa, you've been invited to the country, you should not—
00:38:53.780My attitude is Congress has passed a law.
00:38:57.780It was passed in the House, in the Senate, signed by the president, and upheld by the courts.
00:39:01.140This law states it is the purview of the Secretary of State to make the decisions as to whether or not these visas can stand for a variety of reasons.
00:39:10.460Her opinion was mild, and I don't think it—I think it's silly to claim that she's adhering to Hamas because of an anti-Israel position.
00:39:18.480My point is, for the government to assert its authority under the law as codified by Congress, the president, and the courts is marginally good.
00:39:32.740But the idea that our country asserts its authority to say, you are guests in this country and we will make the determination whether you can stay or not, is a normal process.
00:39:40.580And to argue that the government should not assert its authority when it feels it should, I think is silly.
00:40:04.380My point is that if you want to change the law, you have to do it through the constitutional process.
00:40:08.000And that adhering to that is typically a good thing.
00:40:11.400I don't know how we got on nuclear weapons.
00:40:15.040It's a point about process of law and saying the government has a right to do something.
00:40:20.840So if they choose to do it, okay, if you have a problem with it, then Congress should repeal those—specifically amend the INA to remove those provisions.
00:40:28.860It is completely legal under the United States at the will of the American people that this happened.
00:40:32.980You don't like that it's happening now, but this was the will of the voters and Congress, and it's been law for like 50 years.
00:40:39.660Dude, when—just because something is legal doesn't mean it's right, right?
00:45:08.720I think it's a change in America to most people around the world to feel that, oh, wait, if I go to America and I express a mild opinion about their foreign policy in my own student paper, or maybe on a stage or maybe somewhere else, I could be, without any warning to me, accosted by six people on the street, thrown into a van, and taken out of the country.
00:45:52.520I think it's a violation of most of the values that I grew up with as an American.
00:45:56.300And that's my view of what's happening in the country.
00:45:58.900Now, if you want to say, hey, I don't like free speech for foreign nationals who are in the country who express mild opinions about other countries' foreign wars, then that's your prerogative.
00:46:09.680It's a big difference between us that you don't like free speech in that way.
00:46:35.600She was arrested by a relatively large group of men compared to what a normal arrest would require, which I think they didn't need to do and was silly.
00:46:44.740So we can say she was arrested by several men, unmarked, or plain clothes, which didn't need to happen.
00:46:51.580But I don't need to say, like, she was accosted by men on the street and, like, it was about a mild opinion.
00:46:55.940It's like, okay, listen, the facts of the case, like I said, I don't like the idea that people come to this country and then try and tell us how to live our lives.
00:47:07.400I think American citizens have self-determination and sovereignty, and I will say this even of the Canadians who keep coming here, and they keep getting involved in our politics.
00:47:16.420But I think it's fair to say that there is an issue with Canadians, largely conservatives, who come to this country and then start advocating for conservative as in a country they're not from.
00:47:25.300To be fair, there are liberals Canadians who do it, too.
00:47:28.860That being said, Canada as a bordering nation with a largely overlapping culture is a morally different question but still applies in much the same way principally.
00:47:37.280So I do take issue with foreigners coming to my country.
00:47:39.760It's a nice white country, so we like it.
00:47:41.820Canada is – they call it, what, the most multicultural country in the world, I think.
00:47:52.820So Canada actually is – you can call it a nice white country, that's technically the truth, but it also is very, very much in favor of immigration and diversity and all these things, largely what many of the conservatives are coming here speaking out against.
00:48:05.860So this is a country where if you're from another country and you're in America, don't say anything about our politics or you could be forcibly removed from the country.
00:48:14.400You're comfortable with America being that kind of country.
00:48:24.440I'm trying to understand what you actually believe.
00:48:27.020Yeah, I would say marginally it's a good –
00:48:29.000Because I think that's a point of distinction.
00:48:31.220Like it's useful in a conversation like this to be like, okay, I have my value, you have your value, and my value is like I really like it when people say what the fuck they think about any country's politics.
00:48:44.140My value would just be to whatever mathematical degree American sovereignty supersedes the right of foreigners to speak about our policies.
00:53:49.460I would have thought that – I don't know that much about you.
00:53:55.940I know you're very involved with Occupy and stuff like that and protest movements, which I think is cool work.
00:53:59.920I would have thought that, like, a student writing an op-ed about another country's war and her own institution's support for it vis-a-vis our country's foreign policy would be the kind of thing that you would think is a sort of free speech that we should value.
00:54:18.440And, you know, that is the kind of free speech that I think – I personally think, like, a lot of the idea of America is built upon.
00:54:27.740I think it's one of the good things about the country, that this is a country where you can come here and you can express your opinion mildly in the newspaper.
00:55:01.820I think the people of her university care.
00:55:03.660I think other – I think – like, change the law, man.
00:55:07.520This is a marginal issue for a single person who is in violation of the INA as it's enforced by a government that was elected by a popular majority – or I should say by a plurality, but the popular vote.
00:55:17.660So let me pull this up because this is what we were talking about earlier.
00:55:36.880I'm just trying to make sense of your position around free speech because you agree with me about all the past things in America that you're talking about.
00:55:45.680Kent State, you're talking about George Carlin and all these other things, and these were bad abrogations of free speech.
00:57:50.220To come here and advocate for policies of the American people.
00:57:53.240So you feel that foreign nationals of all kinds, when they're in the United States, should never speak about our politics ever upon pain of legal punishment that is a position that you have about America generally?
00:58:29.000I'm not asking about what they agreed to.
00:58:30.820I'm not asking about the legal justification.
00:58:32.260Don't agree to things you don't want to hear to.
00:58:33.280Do you, Tim Pool, believe that as a moral issue, as a practical issue?
00:58:40.540Do you think that America should be a country in which every foreign national in the country should feel that they should never speak about American politics under pain of legal punishment?
00:58:59.240So Remesa Ozturk, I think, is a really illustrative example because it was such a mild version.
00:59:04.000I understand that they've made an agreement upon entering this country that if they are in violation of the terms of their visa, it may be revoked.
00:59:11.220If they come here with the intent of advocating against U.S. foreign policy, that is a consequence.
00:59:25.840I think I've pinned you down well enough that, like, you just, like, really have a much smaller view of free speech than I do, and I think a lot of Americans do.
00:59:35.180I don't think what you said means anything.
00:59:36.940I think it's a change to the American spirit.
00:59:57.040I suppose your memory goes back three years—
00:59:59.840Your whole bullshit culture-baiting thing about the Islam stuff in England, if what you say is true, and it may be, I don't know, because I don't really give—like, I don't really follow that as you do.
01:00:10.480But I think it's bad about that country.
01:00:13.080You would never go to the U.K. and do those things.
01:00:17.400If I were—now, look, I don't know of the policies of which you speak, okay?
01:00:21.380But if I were to be in England, and I were to make a joke on their stage, and I were to be put into a van and removed from a country, I would say, this is a bad thing about England, and I would—I think that the country sucks, and I think that they should change it, and I don't think people should go there anymore, and that sucks for them, and it sucks for us.
01:00:43.800I wouldn't make a joke about Islam in the United States.
01:02:53.000You think if you did that, they might want to shoot?
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01:05:19.640I think that would—if it's as you say, that sounds like a—if it would apply to me as a comedian, I think it would say that's a bad law.
01:05:26.840I would not go to Turkey and speak out against Islam, and I would not go to the U.K. and violate their speech laws.
01:06:05.220This is a recent change in the way that the U.S. prosecutes and selectively enforces the laws that are on the books, and that's, again, what happened to Ramesa Osterk, and again, that's like a material change in, like—
01:06:19.780Well, I will say, just because I think we spent like an hour on the one subject.
01:06:41.620Is the authoritarian push from the Trump administration—obviously there's going to be procedural distinctions, but I mean, like, were other administrations not also doing similar authoritarian maneuvers that were a gas?
01:06:56.820Yeah, I mean, every single American administration could—I'm sure I can find things that I disagree with.
01:07:05.480I think one of the challenges that we have in the United States right now is the people that largely support Trump and voted for him, particularly in his first term, and largely carrying over in the second one, non-consecutive, had never voted before.
01:07:19.340We saw parts of the country that normally don't vote start turning red, start lighting up with new voters.
01:07:24.620I was at a rally for Trump in Fort Lauderdale, and most of the people that I met were like, I don't vote.
01:07:33.020So these were new voters, which were like poor, white, you know, working-class people.
01:07:38.520And so what I think we end up seeing happen, especially right now, is for younger voters, it's interesting considering they are shifting to the right, but they also have less memory of administrations past.
01:07:49.980For me, I voted for Obama, he was an evil man, and I didn't vote in 2016 because I said the system is corrupt.
01:08:00.600I've lived through—you know, I was a teenager when the Gore v. Bush stuff happened, and I just saw bickering and arguments, and I'm right, I'm right, then war and bullshit.
01:08:10.820Then Obama comes around, and I was—how old was I, 22 or something, and people were like, you gotta vote for him, he's changed, it's new, he wasn't supposed to win.
01:08:20.400Hillary Clinton was supposed to be the person, so I voted for Obama.
01:08:22.740One of the first things he does is he bombs a Pakistani village, kills a bunch of women and children.
01:08:27.260And I went, holy fuck, stopped voting.
01:08:29.280Didn't vote in 2016 either, because I said, fuck this.
01:08:31.280The issue we see largely now is, to see so many people who are, you know, older millennials, Gen X, and boomer, acting like Donald Trump is an aberration, for a lot of people, it's like, you're fucking lying.
01:08:44.980You're lying or you're—you have a myopic view.
01:08:48.540I lived through when Barack Obama signed the indefinite detention rendition provisions of the NDAA, or when George W. Bush lied to the American people, didn't declare war, got a bullshit AUMF, and at the time, during the Iraq and Afghanistan war, it was, if you did not agree, they'd blacklist you from media and all these things.
01:09:08.300I don't see a functional difference until now.
01:09:12.000What I see now, I wouldn't necessarily call authoritarianism in that Trump gutting the budget and shutting down departments is weakening federal authority for the first time in my life.
01:09:22.460I mean, it's not—he's not weakening federal authority.
01:09:28.160He's, you know, destroying our ability to, like, predict the weather.
01:09:31.780He's, like, firing scientists and, like, park service people and stuff like that.
01:09:36.420In terms of authority, you know, they're beefing up the law enforcement departments and they're sort of, you know, reaching out legally in, you know, stronger ways than ever.
01:09:46.020So, like, the law enforcement, the capacity for the state to sort of control your behavior is, you know, the people with guns are—there's more of them and they're more powerful than ever.
01:09:58.400Now, there's some I'm sure that will disagree about, like, the EPA you'd probably see as, you know, the sort of department that's forcing people to do things.
01:10:08.120But, like, most of the stuff that they're—that he's firing are just the basic, like, good things that the government does.
01:10:16.260Like, you know, the government does a lot of really bad shit.
01:10:18.740Government does a lot of really good shit.
01:10:20.560One of them is, like, predicting the weather, you know, firing, like, thousands of NOAA scientists who are, like, you know, predict, like, when tornadoes are going to come hit, you know, places like this here in West Virginia, right?
01:10:29.240We don't get to—we're in the mountains.
01:10:40.300It's just funny, you know, like, the—some of the people who, like, interact with the weather service the most are, you know, in, like, the reddest areas, the tornado-prone places, you know, the storm watch people, stuff like that.
01:10:56.520So a lot of it is—yeah, and, you know, it's really sad because it's just sort of, like, ignorance, like, anti—this anti-science, anti-intellectual sentiment sort of sweeping the country is really bad.
01:11:07.260But I think the interesting thing that you point out, though, is, yeah, there are past authoritarian things that other past presidents did, and I'll agree to that and say, yeah, that's really bad.
01:11:16.940The difference is you're stumping for it when Trump does it, and I find that really interesting.
01:11:20.260Well, you're stumping for, yeah, we should deport foreign students who write an op-ed.
01:12:05.600You know, to be fair, this is pre-tariff, so I'm sure it's gone down.
01:12:08.940But he's got general approval from most demographics except for the 70-plus bunch.
01:12:12.960And I don't see the removal of government agencies as authoritarian, especially when he promised to do it and then did it based on the people who voted for him.
01:12:21.320You know, I'm listening to just finish an audiobook about the rise of the Third Reich, just, you know, boning up a little history.
01:12:28.400You know, one of the first things that they do is that, you know, they destroy the civil service, right, and that kind of state capacity.
01:12:34.020Frighten those people, get them to fall into line.
01:12:37.000And that's a big part of what Trump has done.
01:12:39.320And I think it's been, like, really effective, you know.
01:12:47.000Well, firing them and frightening the rest, right, and, you know, getting them to behave differently, installing loyalists, stuff like that.
01:12:57.360Every administration will change out the department heads.
01:13:00.120They won't, and, you know, there's, I did a show about the U.S. government and I, like, you know, met some department heads who are, like, oh, this person's a political appointee and they're not that bright, right, from both, you know, both administrations.
01:13:13.000But the civil service underneath them, right, the people who are, like, the trained experts, the, you know, the weather scientists at NOAA, the regulators at, like, the FDIC who, like, keep your bank balance safe, stuff like that.
01:13:23.500You know, then wiping those people out and replacing, like, the actual people with expertise with loyalists, right?
01:13:30.060And that's where you end up with, you know, the primary value is loyalty to Trump rather than actually getting the thing done properly.
01:13:38.220And, you know, the DEI push to, like, you know, that's a fig leaf for, you know, removing people who are not sufficiently loyal as well as, well, there's a lot of reasons that they're doing that.
01:13:50.080I'll say on that regard, I won't make a direct counterargument to that, but I do think that's pretty assumptive.
01:13:56.800Oh, yeah, I'm making a claim and you can get into it or not.
01:14:00.640Yeah, it's trying to read into the intent, which may or may not be correct, maybe.
01:14:05.280Yeah, it may or may not be correct. That is my view, though.
01:14:08.420Right. My point is, and I respect that, like, your view is based on those actions.
01:14:12.980There actually absolutely is an easy vehicle for firing people if your move is DEI.
01:14:17.760It's like, these people here, I don't want them here.
01:14:20.080Oh, you were hired incorrectly. You're part of a department. I don't want to get rid of them.
01:14:22.740On the surface, outside of that, I think the DEI stuff is illegal, and I'm glad to see it purged and removed.
01:14:29.600I think it violates the Civil Rights Act.
01:14:31.660Like, DEI programs, you think, violate the Civil Rights Act?
01:14:35.600Yeah, I think, you know, there's an interesting conversation around what is legal and what's not.
01:14:39.900A lot of people think if SCOTUS has it true, it's legal. I don't think that's fair.
01:14:42.800Because that would mean that Roe v. Wade should have been overturned, but I think most liberals think it shouldn't have been.
01:14:47.020So they would argue that it wasn't constitutional or legal.
01:14:50.060But the Civil Rights Act says we're not supposed to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion, gender, etc.
01:14:55.560And when you create DEI programs where you're specifically targeting based on those factors, you're in clear violation of the Civil Rights Act.
01:15:04.180I mean, you've got to amend the law or change it or create new provisions.
01:15:06.800But I'm, you know, how I grew up, I would never want to be in a circumstance where race was a determining factor and whether or not I could get into school or get a job.
01:15:15.600Yeah, neither would I. But for a lot of people, it fucking is, man.
01:15:18.980But that's why we got the Civil Rights Act. And you have a right to sue the institutions that are in violation of that.
01:15:22.960And through those laws, we've eliminated largely blockbusting and redlining.
01:15:26.420And then Democrats largely started to enact a lot of redlining still, but it's better than true.
01:15:31.300It's true. And that shouldn't be allowed.
01:15:33.620And it's through the Civil Rights Act, through the lawsuits.
01:16:28.060But there are racist people out there.
01:16:29.640But the Democrats are still engaged in racist practices through DEI and gender-based discrimination, etc., which is just clear violation of every title of the Civil Rights Act.
01:16:41.360I mean, there's a million different programs that get lumped in as DEI.
01:16:46.380I'm interested to know, you do think racism exists in America and it's a problem that we should keep fighting?
01:17:18.400And I mean, like, literally white areas that are predominantly white, that don't like black people, don't like Mexicans, don't like Chinese people.
01:18:37.180When, like, you know, there's a plane crash or a fire or something like that, and the Trump administration, the first thing they do is they say, ah, too many black air traffic controllers.
01:21:34.300Yeah, you know, I've been through some seminars that were, like, a waste of time or whatever, kind of annoying.
01:21:39.120And I think that, you know, the corporate response to, you know, George Floyd's murder and everything that happened afterwards was, like, pretty toothless and stupid.
01:21:48.620But I find it bizarre to watch the right, like, something goes wrong and they're immediately like, oh, the problem is that we have a, you know, woman fire chief or we have a, you know, people of color air traffic controllers.
01:22:04.540Like, it's like, oh, that's just straight up racism.
01:22:51.280The target is people who are hired without passing, not the fact that they're black.
01:22:55.480So Charlie Kirk got a lot of flack for this because he said, you know, I go on a plane, I see a black pilot, and I think, am I supposed to be worried?
01:23:02.640But the point he was making was he was calling you racist, dude, and you guys didn't get that.
01:23:08.460He said, you have created a situation where average people think you are hiring people who can't do the job based on race, and we don't want to live that way.
01:23:18.000I mean, he's the one getting on the plane and seeing a black person and saying that person's not qualified.
01:23:40.380I would say that when the left and the right only listen to the surface-level clips and arguments, they don't actually understand what the person is conveying.
01:23:49.320And so the argument then is Charlie Kirk is a racist, which is not true.
01:23:52.500Charlie Kirk's point on that plane was, let's just map it out one, two, three.
01:23:56.680Democrats have created policies by which they will put people in positions of authority who don't have the same caliber degree or have passed certain tests because of race.
01:24:06.300We've seen policies where they will actually go down the list of top candidates until they get to a race.
01:24:11.960This creates a concern among people that individuals are being hired without the capability based on race.
01:24:18.520That's the idea he's trying to convey.
01:24:20.080Not that he doesn't want to fly with a black pilot.
01:24:21.480Do you think that in the time when we only had white pilots or white executives or white whatever, all those people were hired on merit?
01:24:30.440None of them floated through for some other reason?
01:24:39.580The systems are like they already do that for everybody.
01:24:44.160So for him to go in and say, oh, when I see a black person, that's when I think that, not when I see a white person, then that's racist on his part because he's only focusing on when the black people are there.
01:24:58.080But it's because the policy is race-based.
01:25:05.080And so the issue is not Charlie Kirk saying he doesn't like black people.
01:25:08.000He's saying Democrats are hiring people who are less qualified based on race.
01:25:12.260This is creating a concern for people which we don't want to experience.
01:25:16.200So the counter-argument would be if you have a system that...
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01:26:21.860You have a pool of people doing the job that has no black people in it that clearly is not based on merit because, you know, black people are X percent of the population.
01:26:34.560And surely some would have gotten through if it was really based on nothing but merit.
01:26:37.500So some of the existing white people must actually not have gotten there via merit.
01:26:42.680It must be because of a race-based system.
01:26:45.040So instead, let's adjust the system so that we give everybody an equal opportunity.
01:26:50.820That is going to mean that there are going to be more black people in the system.
01:26:54.760Now that that happens, he now gets on the plane.
01:26:56.840And he sees a black person and he says, oh, now it seems they seem unqualified to me.
01:27:00.620I actually think that it was racist systems that kept out qualified candidates.
01:27:08.160What I would say to your argument is the only distinction between what you said and white nationalists is that you want a system to bring those people in.
01:27:20.140So you both the left and the right agree that there is some kind of phenomenon where black people should be qualified and aren't aren't qualifying.
01:27:31.540I think that there were institutions throughout history that have put that hampered the process by which minorities were able to go to schools to effectively get those degrees.
01:28:03.020Yeah, not not intentionally, but this was like, holy shit, brother, like maybe you shouldn't be tweeting this.
01:28:10.180The 1350 is a meme which references 13, despite being 13 percent of the population, black people commit 50 percent of the crimes.
01:28:18.040And so that is a meme shared among white nationalists.
01:28:20.620Ben and Jerry's put out the exact same meme, but tried approaching it from a DEI standpoint.
01:28:26.960And this lit the fucking Internet up with people mocking Ben and Jerry's being like, holy shit, they've gone full white nationalists.
01:28:34.160They they said, despite making up 13 percent of the population, black people make up 50 percent of the arrests and the white nationalists said, you're correct.
01:28:42.520We agree with you on everything and started cheering for Ben and Jerry's.
01:28:45.180And I was like, well, guys, don't take their arguments from them.
01:28:49.720Like, I think it's fair to say that there are racist, you know, components of racism that have existed in this country for a long time.
01:28:56.120The solution would be colorblind hiring processes and educational benefits that target class and not race, because then you remove the racial component from the argument completely instead of creating a racial argument for the white nationalists.
01:29:10.280But if you admit that people in America are racist, you can't if you want to you can't build systems that are completely blind to race.
01:29:30.860Right. So, for instance, for hiring practices, when it comes to the hiring managers, they should have no access to the name or the race of the individual.
01:29:37.940It should literally be here's the resume.
01:30:03.900Two different neighborhoods looking at each other like others.
01:30:07.600And if you were white and went to the black neighborhood, you got arrested.
01:30:10.940If you were black and went to the white neighborhood, the police wouldn't go near them because they were scared of being called racist.
01:30:15.340The gangs would come from the black side and rob people on the white side, creating a lot of anger where the white people would be like, it's black people doing it.
01:30:23.740And then I'd be like, I actually think it's a different community.
01:30:26.040It doesn't matter if it's white or otherwise.
01:30:27.620They just don't view as part of their community.
01:30:36.780But this created massive racial tensions.
01:30:38.820If you went into that neighborhood and gave the blacks, the black neighborhood, a ton of benefits, resources, checks or whatever based on race, brother, that'd be murders.
01:30:52.640But if we do it based on income and class, then you'd have equal amounts of both neighborhoods now going to the same schools, making friends with each other.
01:31:01.020And then you're going to have one guy who's going to be like, yeah, I live on 46th.
01:31:10.900They don't they don't feel like their taxes are going to one racial group.
01:31:14.160Instead, what's ended up happening is DEI programs have said it's going to be based on race.
01:31:18.680And so then you get, you know, if you go to like Appalachia, for instance, these are the poorest of the poor.
01:31:22.840And they feel like what little they could have is being given away to other people based on race.
01:31:27.100And they're being left behind, which breeds racial animosity.
01:31:29.840Yeah, I mean, the pitting of, you know, poor white people against black people is like just part of the strategy of, you know, the people in power.
01:31:41.680It's unfortunate to watch, you know, it's unfortunate to watch the country like descend into that again.
01:31:48.960You know, racial issues are hard to tackle because it's we're very susceptible to it.
01:31:53.280And unfortunately, we've backslid into a period of white racial backlash again, where, you know, the people around the country are just they're just like I mean, the Trump administration literally just treats any black person as unqualified and fires them from the federal government.
01:32:06.660Like that's what Pete Hegseth is doing the Department of Defense.
01:32:09.220It's like it's just like out and out racism.
01:32:13.980You know, it's like a racial purge of the government.
01:32:18.460They're trying to like reset the country.
01:32:20.900Where did that where did that happen where they were firing black people?
01:32:23.160I mean, I don't know the names off the top of my head, but yeah, that sounds that sounds not true.
01:32:28.680I mean, yeah, I mean, because like I'll put it this way, even if it were true, it's so overt that like they're being really overt about it.
01:32:35.940I mean, Donald Trump is going on television and going planes are crashing because of DEI.
01:32:50.380He's a racist man and he's issuing racist policy and the entire country is going along with it because we're in a period of white racial backlash.
01:43:06.540I will give you my full support of your articles of impeachment against Trump if you also draft retroactive impeachment against Obama for the extrajudicial, extrajudicial assassinations of American citizens.
01:43:16.220He said, no. And I said, we is retroactive impeachment is, in fact.
01:43:22.500So because of presidential immunity, you can't go after Obama for having killed a 16 year old American citizen.
01:43:28.420Like the new Supreme Court ruling, you can no longer do it or presidential immunity.
01:43:32.140So presidential immunity in general, it was presumed to be the case there.
01:43:37.360There is, however, an argument that you can't even impeach at this point.
01:43:40.660But I believe the general legal consensus is in order to convict a president for actions conducted while president, he has to be impeached and convicted for those actions first.
01:43:51.200Nobody, nobody, I think even even the people who don't want to bring it up.
01:43:55.940I think everybody would agree Barack Obama should not have killed that 16 year old American citizen.
01:44:00.500And if it was an accident, well, I'm sorry, but if you accidentally run somebody over, you get some kind of penalty, even if it's like a fine.
01:44:07.420I think, you know, you might get some kind of courts of provision or application of license.
01:44:17.120Draft articles of impeachment for Barack Obama for the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens and keep it specific to Abdul Rahman Al-Awlaki.
01:44:23.260Because you want to argue Anwar and the other guys who are jihadis or whatever, but Americans.
01:44:30.300He says, I don't I'm focused on here and now.
01:44:32.180And I said, if he's impeached and convicted, we can get criminal charges for a president who murdered an American, even if it was negligence or accidental.
01:44:42.520He said, listen, I'm concerned about now.
01:44:46.200Not a single Republican would do it either.
01:44:47.820Because when it comes to the executive authority, what we have learned over the past 50 years since the end of World War Two is every politician in this country will get on their knees and lick the feet of the president and allow them to blow up whatever fucking country they want.
01:44:59.800And no member of Congress, no senator.
01:45:02.300Well, to be fair, Thomas Massey would probably say no.
01:45:07.580And so I guess I'm I don't understand why you are so supportive of Trump, because part of his entire government, his entire part of his entire presidency is about expanding the executive power of the president.
01:45:21.640Like that's the whole Heritage Foundation's whole thing, the imperial presidency.
01:45:24.720You know, they're they're trying to, you know, increase the amount of impunity that the president has and remove checks and balances, which I think is the ones that the few that did exist, which I think is bad.
01:45:38.180Like Congress is more supine than it was during the Obama years.
01:45:42.580Like they're not even protecting their power as a branch.
01:46:04.240So the challenge is you've got two rogue branches, the judiciary and the executive by this argument.
01:46:11.500I don't I think Trump is applying the language of the executive branch in any way that's beneficial to him to enable to enable himself to do these things.
01:46:19.460And actually, I think that's what Kristi Noem actually said to me that, you know, they're going to use the language of whatever is codified to try and get these deportations through.
01:46:28.180The problem is you've got a judiciary that is rogue at the same time.
01:46:31.440And Congress has abdicated their responsibility for checking either branches.
01:47:00.400You know, the the the the issue then is the the liberal side of things can allow Trump to make his assertions under like the Alien Enemies Act without without challenge.
01:47:20.560So there's no check or balance between either of these branches.
01:47:23.020And it's just going to come to a point we're in a perpetual state of constitutional crisis until one side finally says.
01:47:30.380I don't think it matters anymore what what you say at all.
01:47:35.180I would I would argue that there's I mean, that's what they're currently do.
01:47:38.640Both sides, both the executive and the judiciary are doing this.
01:47:41.700I mean, the judiciary like they can authority for for universal injunctions.
01:47:45.380I to me, what it sounds like is you're participating in the campaign by the executive branch to discredit the judiciary.
01:47:55.520Now, I'm not going to like go to town, you know, go to the mattresses for like any particular injunction.
01:48:00.620But like the observation that I'll make is that weakening the judiciary, you know, setting the legal groundwork for why, you know, they can defy any particular court order they want to.
01:48:13.500Because if it goes against the Trump administration, it's de facto illegal.
01:48:24.560I personally, I'm not like that's not an argument.
01:48:27.480I'm not as like apocalyptic currently as a lot of really frightened liberals are who are like we're descending into Nazism or whatever.
01:48:36.360Because I think Trump is like ultimately a lot weaker than that.
01:48:39.240And I think he's like kind of too old and dumb to like really do it.
01:48:42.840Like I like he's he's losing his mind.
01:48:44.960You know, it's you know, it's really funny.
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01:51:26.960However, he can find ways to penalize offshoring of CGI or choosing to film Chicago.
01:51:34.460But in Vancouver, but he's not going to do that because he doesn't have coherent policy about literally anything, even tariffs.
01:51:41.120The one thing that he like the regular tariffs, right?
01:51:44.300The one thing he really cares about, he's just fucking winging it, like saying random shit, doing math that doesn't make any sense, making deals, canceling deals, like just causing chaos.
01:51:56.160Because he has no, he has the attention span of a gnat.
01:51:58.960The reciprocal tariff stuff where they like did it based on the trade deficit and all that shit.
01:52:23.660So it's like they said, here's our – and then someone did the math and they were like, he basically took existing tariffs and then added in the trade deficit.
01:52:32.320So you exist in like an info ecosystem where what he did made sense?
01:52:36.100Like you hear people saying, oh, this makes sense and you felt that those charts like were ultimately physical?
01:52:42.140I'm saying – you said the math didn't make sense because he was using the trade deficit and all I said was it said on the chart he showed the trade deficit.
01:53:39.640So this is the challenge we face communication-wise.
01:53:42.320There are a couple islands that operate companies but don't have a living population that we do import from.
01:53:48.220So Trump imposed a tariff on any region that he could.
01:53:52.120That was the point, closing loopholes.
01:53:54.320The corporate press, like Newsweek, CNN, they all – and prominent liberal personalities started running this lie that Donald Trump was tariffing an island with only penguins on it, which is – we call that factual but not truthful.
01:54:06.080Like there's businesses that are on this island.
01:54:08.860Fishing refineries and they do ship products to the island as corporations.
01:54:13.720And then when they're done, they transport them to the United States.
01:54:16.300Trump wants a tariff on anyone who's trying to use that island loophole.
01:54:19.160But instead the media just claimed he was so stupid and didn't think about his plan.
01:54:23.260And I'm like, why would you just – why don't you just say you don't like the tariffs?
01:54:26.720I don't know why you have to make up that weird story.
01:54:28.660Well, I mean everything about them was senseless.
01:54:31.880This was simply the silliest detail without –
01:54:35.420But that's what discredits the actual – look, I think the universal tariffs were a bad idea.
01:54:40.320I think selective tariffs on like particular products on nations can make sense, especially like Canada or China.
01:54:45.640Universal tariffs seemed like a scattershot that was going to cause more problems in the short term.
01:56:29.780Because the issue we have – and I apologize because I'm not trying to shout at you.
01:56:33.200I'm shouting an exasperation that we've had two liberals on in the past two weeks who didn't know this.
01:56:38.540And I'm just like, for the love of all this holy – I just – all I do all day is I read probably 500 news articles every single day from CNN, the New York Times, MSNBC, and all their aggregates.
01:56:49.500And then liberals come on and they believe things that were debunked eight years ago.
01:57:52.900And we're just like, I don't understand how we've come to this point where there are so many stories like the Penguin Island hoax,
01:58:00.140Very Fine People hoax, Covington injecting bleach, Maryland man.
01:58:05.120It's like the media just lies and the liberals believe all of it.
01:58:07.860Look, man, so I'll tell you what it looks like from my side, which is that it looks like Trump does stuff that is either completely fucking moronic or completely indefensible, right?
01:59:46.340And, like, what's the narrow legal justification when it's like, do we want to be a country where, you know, you can come here and speak your mind or not?
02:02:27.760So this is like—but you literally are, because you're saying that, like, liberals do that to the right.
02:02:35.260I am sitting here—you'd probably define me as a liberal or a leftist or progressive or whatever you want to say.
02:02:40.940But, like, I also believe myself to have a nuanced view of the variety of political positions on the right, right?
02:02:49.900And the point I'm bringing up is not pertaining to you as an individual, because we understand that it could be granular.
02:02:54.320The point I'm making is, say, ADL, for instance, and other left-aligned political organizations use the phrase the right to represent anything not left.
02:03:06.260I wouldn't define the ADL as a left political organization at this point, but—
02:06:06.720And the centrist—the more moderate—I shouldn't say moderate, but the left to the far left are pro-Palestine.
02:06:12.400Then you have on the Ukraine-Russia axis, moderate conservatives are pro-Ukraine, but largely the conservative to the far right is pro-Russia.
02:06:21.900And then on the left, it's largely pro-Ukraine, except for the far left, that's pro-Russia.
02:06:25.300They call this the new horseshoe theory as a joke.
02:06:28.340Yeah, and it's the problem with nationalism, you know, when it gets involved in the political system of a country.
02:06:35.820It, like, scrambles everything, and you get, like, all these weird alliances.
02:06:39.220And it becomes very hard to parse out, like, who's connected to who.
02:06:43.900So when you guys were being paid by the Russian government, you didn't know.
02:06:47.580We never got paid by the Russian government.
02:06:49.480But the Russian government paid Tenet Media, and they paid you.
02:06:58.800The case, as far as I know, has been dropped.
02:07:01.320But I thought that you were making statements like, oh, we were the victims of being—
02:07:05.380Should this prove to be true, we were defrauded and victimized.
02:07:08.720But I guess the challenge is right now, the Trump administration has no priority in going over a story they don't give a shit about, but the Biden admin dropped it.
02:07:18.460Oh, they didn't go forward on the prosecution.
02:07:20.980So I don't know exactly what I can say.
02:07:25.320And this is what the challenge is, is that my understanding is during the Biden administration, they dropped it.
02:07:31.780I don't know because we're not party to anything having to do with it.
02:07:36.040But, like, when they were, like—I saw a—there was a thing in the Guardian about someone had, like, told, like, RT or whatever, had, like, asked Tenant Media, oh, could we do some, you know, anti-Ukraine story?
02:07:50.640And then Tenant Media's like, oh, yes, one of our people will get on that.
02:07:54.020Was not RT, but the evidence has never been released.
02:08:41.160Dave Rubin, for instance, had a contract with them for licensing, I think, for half a year, where he did review—he did reaction content to viral videos, like a woman getting pulled over because she had too much milk in her car or some weird shit like that.
02:08:54.240So it was a particularly strange circumstance.
02:08:57.040The narrative that emerged from it is largely fake.
02:08:59.120Like, so this is a show that is owned by me, has been owned by me for a decade.
02:09:06.140We've produced for years, and a Tennessee company approached us to buy a license for it.
02:09:11.600Non-exclusive, meaning we distributed wherever we want, but they also wanted to live stream it.
02:09:15.520They had no say or control in anything we had to do, and they bought a license.
02:09:40.720But I mean—so let's look about what you have right now is an indictment of two Russians without any charges to Americans with no evidence that anything actually happened.
02:09:49.240I mean, if you want it to be true, you can say it is, but there's no evidence anything actually happened.
02:09:52.400Do you think Russia should have invaded Ukraine? You think that was good? No?
02:09:57.540No, I think Russia's a bunch of—I think the Russian government—I say this if you're like China.
02:12:10.980But I have no problem saying, like, yeah, yeah, we got a license for $100,000.
02:12:14.180It was a market rate negotiated by lawyers.
02:12:16.540That's why Dave Rubin and several others in it negotiated the exact same rates independent of us.
02:12:23.160You have to take a look at, like, for instance, this show is the, on average, seventh biggest live stream in the country.
02:12:30.120So, like, what do you think you're going to sell an ad for on the seventh biggest live show in the country that pulls in hundreds of thousands, you know, between on a low day, $200,000, but maybe upwards of $500,000 for one episode?
02:12:41.040Well, with a two-hour show, you could probably get in four or five ad reads at $10,000 each.
02:12:46.700So you're looking at, for one show, selling ads upwards of $50,000.
02:12:51.820And if we do premium buys, like Adam Conover, he's a big get, you know, a clothing company wants to sponsor it because they know people are going to want to watch.
02:13:01.940So singular episodes could actually run as high as $250,000.
02:13:04.520But every episode of your show being worth $100,000, like, how is an episode, how is a two-hour podcast of people talking worth $100,000 license fee?
02:13:14.880How are they going to make more than $100,000 on it on the other end?
02:13:21.760If we're doing a show that is routinely averaging the seventh biggest in the nation, when someone comes to you to make a licensing agreement, they're saying, I can make your show bigger and make more money than you could on your own.
02:13:33.020That's why Joe Rogan did the deal with Spotify.
02:13:35.140Like, how is Spotify going to make more than Joe Rogan did?
02:13:37.380Yeah, but this is just some, but that's like a platform.
02:13:39.580This is like a company that's just licensing it.
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02:17:07.080Yeah, there's just a huge difference between Spotify, the largest audio platform in the world, and people who are rebroadcasting it on YouTube.
02:18:28.400This does exemplify, I think, the problem left in the right house currently, right?
02:18:32.120You've said several times, rather insinuating it directly, that we intentionally took money from a foreign power.
02:18:38.200I was just curious to hear you talk about it.
02:18:41.680Right, so the issue I see is liberals largely don't, I'm not saying you, online, the argument is always, aha, Russia, which was never accused of us.
02:18:52.200We were reached, the feds reached out to us for victim statements and asked us to help go up against them and provide assistance against the literal Russians that they accused.
02:19:04.660So I don't understand what happened other than the liberals' side of things in the podcast have largely run with a narrative that never happened and used it as a smear against my companies.
02:19:24.980Right now, the only story that we know of is a media startup paid a license fee that was a standard market rate for one of the biggest podcasts in the country.
02:21:43.020But for IRL, liberals largely say no, because every story we do is predicated upon Newsweek or CNN or The New York Times or even sometimes MSNBC.
02:21:53.580And there's a problem that many liberals end up having.
02:21:56.800I'll give a shout to Luke Beasley or Hunter Avalon is a good example.
02:22:00.720When they make claims asserting like things like, you know, Donald Trump called neo-Nazis very fine people.
02:22:06.240And then we just pull up the article and say, hey, it didn't happen.
02:22:28.220Travel was it was it was really nice, man.
02:22:31.300But but the the travel was like I got I got like four hours of sleep last night.
02:22:35.780I'm like, man, this was this was rough getting out here.
02:22:37.680It's like hard to I went like out of my way to come on because I was just curious to come on and see what you do and like meet the weirdest guy on the Internet, you know, the weirdest.
02:22:50.100I, you know, whatever we are, whatever we do, I got Magic the Gathering, I got skateboarding, but to be fair, we're an hour and a half outside of D.C.
02:22:57.740So it's not easy, but it's not the hardest.