Friendly Fireļ¼ Gavin for President, Greenland for Sale
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 4 minutes
Summary
Daily Wire's Peter Bergen and Ben Shapiro are joined by Michael Bloomberg to talk about Gavin Newsom and why he should be the next president of California. They also discuss the new movie, "Melania: The First Lady," and the new documentary, "The Devil Next Door" by Matt Long.
Transcript
00:00:02.780
Every protocol, every precaution, every move coordinated.
00:00:06.400
This new film takes you inside the 20 days leading up to the 2025 presidential inauguration
00:00:14.140
The briefings, the planning, the private conversations.
00:00:16.820
Witness what it takes to secure her return to one of the world's most powerful roles.
00:00:23.740
Gavin Newsom just tweeted something out about me that's hilarious.
00:00:31.700
I have also been lusting after Greenland my whole life.
00:00:36.380
I know it's uncouth to say it, but like, am I wrong?
00:00:49.500
Matt, first time that Matt wants to talk foreign policy.
00:00:56.880
Yeah, that's just more for you guys to talk about.
00:00:59.020
I know, I know, but normally we mention any place that is outside the United States, and
00:01:06.120
Greenland is the only country outside the U.S. that I care about.
00:01:12.340
I just love that we have as a listed topic the slave trade.
00:01:14.900
Matt is going to take the Aristotelian pro position.
00:01:30.040
Daily Wire's very own Ben Shapiro just became Paul Allen sitting down with the Patrick Bateman of California.
00:01:37.020
Then Matt, I believe, is calling for a civil rights movement for white people as he releases his new mini documentary on the slave trade.
00:01:47.780
Anyway, he's going to be giving the history on that.
00:01:49.420
And then we will be going all the way into Greenland.
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Denmark has said that they will not sell Greenland to the United States.
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Then France came out and they said the French military will defend you.
00:02:02.060
And then immediately Denmark said, okay, listen, we'll make a deal.
00:02:04.940
So we will get into all of those things on Friendly Fire.
00:02:13.020
Christmas is still on until February 2nd as far as I'm concerned.
00:02:21.400
Yeah, I actually, I count Christmas as lasting through until the next Advent.
00:02:25.860
So I've still got all the decorations up in my set.
00:02:31.160
And Ben, you were just over with Mr. Slimy himself.
00:02:34.980
I was with Gavin Newsom at the Governor's Mansion in California, which, by the way, is very tiny.
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It is a very, very small building in Sacramento.
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You have to brush thousands of homeless people out of your way just to get to it.
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But, you know, it was definitely an interesting experience.
00:02:52.120
I had a little bit of time off camera with Gavin Newsom.
00:02:57.340
And like most politicians, he's very good in person.
00:02:59.540
I will say that just as a class of people, politicians in person way better than politicians on camera, just generally speaking.
00:03:08.060
And I think that this is the general rule about literally all of them.
00:03:14.900
He will kind of get a little more honest with you than he might in terms of his positions on camera.
00:03:19.900
And then I was out there because he had invited me to come on his podcast.
00:03:23.820
That's a podcast where he has, I guess, once every couple of weeks, I believe.
00:03:39.980
Before I get to your epic sit down with him, because I want to know if he's going to be the next president.
00:03:45.360
I want to get to an even more epic topic, which is, of course, the Pendragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin, which is coming out.
00:03:54.440
This is the latest reason that you have to subscribe.
00:03:59.540
This just amazing, elaborate, multi-continental journey.
00:04:05.000
If only we had waited a little longer to make it.
00:04:10.520
And, by the way, if you go check it out right now, you can go to dailywire.com slash shop and get the Pendragon cycle Rise of the Merlin board game.
00:04:21.900
Depending on how long this goes, maybe we can all play it together, guys.
00:04:28.240
This is looking, I don't know, we spent some money on this.
00:04:38.200
And then possibly in January of 2029, our whole country falls apart if Gavin Newsom becomes president.
00:04:45.060
It turns out that that series is the only thing more ambitious than Gavin Newsom.
00:04:51.440
What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God?
00:05:14.220
The Pendragon Cycle, Rise of the Merlin, a seven-part series.
00:05:18.480
Premieres January 22nd, only on Daily Wire Plus.
00:05:22.760
I mean, it is as good or better than anything that you will see on HBO.
00:05:27.020
And you won't get the gratuitous sex and the insane nihilism.
00:05:38.440
Because they said we're going to play the Pendragon trailer, and they came in and gave me this fake sword.
00:05:46.000
So this is a bit where I'm supposed to pull the...
00:05:48.200
I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this, but they gave me the sword and said,
00:05:51.500
well, you could do a bit where you have a sword.
00:05:58.120
It's a police sword looking for the lady in the lake.
00:06:00.380
Does anyone in my ear want to tell me what the bit is with the sword?
00:06:03.420
Is there a thing I'm supposed to be doing with it?
00:06:07.060
I think I'm supposed to just have the sword, and you guys are supposed to laugh hysterically
00:06:12.460
You could use it to smash in the windows of illegals in Minneapolis or something.
00:06:16.180
You could use it for, like, a very practical political purpose.
00:06:20.960
If you wish to buy Matt a real sword, then you can get a subscription to Daily Wire,
00:06:24.920
and you can watch Pendragon, and then we can pay for actual metal swords that Matt can use
00:06:29.200
to go and, I don't know, chop down trees in whatever part of rural America he is in right at this very moment.
00:06:37.340
So, Newsom, I will say that he is good on his feet.
00:06:42.220
He's squirrely enough that he knows his talking points well enough that if you hit him on California policy,
00:06:47.400
he is able to sort of shift responsibility, his big moves, he likes to shift responsibility onto local officials for failures
00:06:54.000
and then take credit for any state successes, or he likes to make sort of grandiose claims about the robustness of California,
00:07:01.220
and if you point out it is not as robust as he has said that it would be, then he'll start talking about Louisiana.
00:07:07.880
So, for example, I was dinging him on California's income tax policy because it's driving business out of the state,
00:07:12.800
and his immediate response was, well, yeah, but we're fairer than, say, Louisiana, and here's how that kind of went.
00:07:19.520
Luckily, lowering the income tax rates in the state.
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They tax their low-wage earners more than California taxes its high-wage earners.
00:07:32.740
Let's talk about lowering those tax rates in those 16 states.
00:07:36.560
Okay, so, again, notice what he tends to do is he will misdirect away from the actual topic,
00:07:40.880
and even when it comes to the topic of taxes, he'll misdirect, because the point I'm making is not a fairness point.
00:07:46.780
It is an efficacy point, meaning you're driving every taxpayer out of your state, which is what's happened in California.
00:07:52.800
He'll shift it over to Louisiana, and then he will have his online minions talk about how he owned everybody
00:07:57.420
by showing that you pay a lot of tax in Louisiana as a poor person based on excise taxes and such.
00:08:02.260
So that's kind of one of his squirrely strategies.
00:08:04.080
There are certain places where he is less squirrely, and that's kind of what's interesting.
00:08:08.100
I will say, the thing that I found interesting is his overt attempt to moderate his sort of online persona.
00:08:13.700
So there are a couple of points where he did this.
00:08:17.660
So his crazy social media account, his press office account, which has been dedicated to trolling President Trump for a while,
00:08:25.540
had tweeted out that they'd engaged in ICE, had engaged in state-sponsored terrorism.
00:08:31.080
And I asked him straight up about it and really pushed him on it.
00:08:33.100
One was a narrative that was immediately pushed by the Trump administration and Secretary of Homeland Security, Christine Noem,
00:08:40.080
that she was a domestic terrorist who was attempting to run over officers with her car
00:08:43.880
and was legitimately trying, not just this officer, but multiple officers.
00:08:47.600
That was the original statement I said at the time.
00:08:50.880
And then your press office tweeted out that it was state-sponsored terrorism,
00:08:54.940
which, I mean, Governor, I have to ask you about that.
00:09:03.120
I mean, our ICE officers obviously are not terrorists.
00:09:06.200
A tragic situation is not state-sponsored terrorism.
00:09:09.960
Okay, so again, you can see him trying to, like, take his own press office and just chuck it under the bus.
00:09:14.460
One is he will kind of rhetorically appeal to the radicals in his base.
00:09:17.940
And then when he's called on it, then he will back really quickly away from it
00:09:21.400
because he still wants to win moderates for 2028.
00:09:23.460
By the way, our sponsor, Kalshi, in the prediction markets,
00:09:26.180
shows that he is right now the leader in the clubhouse among Democrats for the 2028 nomination.
00:09:33.480
Before, I want to hear, because you saw him actually personally,
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I want to hear what you think about him for 2028.
00:09:39.180
But before you sully the opinions of the, you know, you sway our fellow DW guys here,
00:09:46.780
do you think, Drew and Matt, do you think that Newsom's the guy for 2028?
00:09:51.660
No, I think he's the Jeb Bush of the Democrats.
00:09:55.660
I think, you know, one of the continual arguments we have had on this show and when it was backstage
00:10:01.180
is, you know, Ben and Jeremy would always say that if Michelle Obama runs, she'd win against anybody.
00:10:07.940
And I think, I don't think it's underestimating the American public.
00:10:11.080
I think it's misunderstanding the American public.
00:10:13.820
The American public actually is keyed into issues more than the media wants them to be.
00:10:18.320
The media wants them to look at people, what they look like and how they behave and whether
00:10:24.400
But the people actually do care about topics and issues, especially when they affect them.
00:10:35.460
I think the fact that they, anybody who runs against them is going to bring up the fact that
00:10:39.100
they have spent $40 billion almost on fixing the homeless issue and their homelessness has
00:10:50.260
Where the hell did that, those billions of dollars go?
00:10:52.640
Money disappears in California because like any one state, one party state, it's full of
00:11:00.160
But Drew, wouldn't you also say that Bill Clinton and Joe Biden were greasy haircuts?
00:11:04.080
Bill Clinton was one of the great, and Barack Obama.
00:11:07.660
This is the other thing about Democrats, by the way.
00:11:09.420
We've had three Democrat presidents over the last, you know, several decades.
00:11:13.680
Obama and Clinton were two of the greatest politicians of my lifetime.
00:11:20.220
And Joe Biden won under very suspicious circumstances.
00:11:31.560
And in Europe, they're basically stamping it down, but we don't have the capability of
00:11:36.220
And I think Gavin Newsom is toast the minute his record comes up.
00:11:39.900
And the social stuff, the way he handled COVID, the way he had everybody, he shut down
00:11:45.100
John MacArthur's church and tried to and harass them while he was dining out at a French
00:11:51.920
I mean, the guy is just, he's too easy a target to really make it whence the national
00:11:58.920
And I just don't think he's, look, I understand he's ahead in the polls.
00:12:06.540
I'm not making a prediction, but he's just not the guy I'm looking at.
00:12:11.040
Is the question whether he's going to win the presidency in 2028 or whether he's the
00:12:17.380
Even just the, even start with just the nomination.
00:12:19.460
Yeah, because, well, among Democrats, uh, Gavin, I guess I could put this sword on Gavin Newsom
00:12:26.420
among Democrats has a, has something that no other Democrat has that I'm aware of on the
00:12:33.260
entire national stage, which is that he can actually talk to people.
00:12:39.320
He can go on any podcast and have a conversation and yeah, he's lying the entire time, but, but
00:12:47.260
There's, I mean, can you name any other Democrat at any level who could even potentially run for
00:12:53.300
the presidency in 2028 who would, who could go on, say Joe Rogan and have a conversation
00:13:03.740
And again, although what he's saying is off is almost always false, everything he believes
00:13:11.600
Uh, he's at least able to go do that in that environment.
00:13:14.660
And he's the only Democrat, not only the only Democrat in the field right now who could do
00:13:18.720
He's the only Democrat in the last like 20 years who has that kind of ability.
00:13:22.440
Uh, I think what, so that's an argument for why all things being equal, he has a good
00:13:28.840
chance of being the, you know, the nominee for the Democrats in 2028.
00:13:32.420
I don't think he's going to win the presidency for a lot of the reasons that, uh, that Drew
00:13:36.960
You think that J.D. vans, assuming that J.D. is the presumptive nominee, you think J.D.
00:13:45.120
But, but then, uh, not that I know what mog means, but I think he would.
00:13:49.420
But the problem for Gavin Newsom is that, like, the obvious thing in the, for a Democrat
00:13:56.760
And in a primary, like, is, would the Democrat voters be willing to say, hey, we tried a
00:14:09.800
So now we're just going to go back to a white guy because they're the only ones who can
00:14:14.760
Uh, I, I don't know that the Democrat voters be willing to say that.
00:14:17.580
Like a black woman midget or something like that.
00:14:19.740
He is, he is smoother on his feet than virtually any of the Democrats that I've talked to.
00:14:25.480
Uh, he is also, I think that there's a, a more than decent likelihood he's the nominee
00:14:31.860
in, in 2028 because his chief rival is AOC, meaning that AOC is not a black woman.
00:14:40.860
And as if you, if you look at the Democratic voting base, particularly in the South, that
00:14:47.380
Uh, there's no evidence that that crosses over to quote unquote, the people of color
00:14:50.440
category, a category that has never existed nor will ever exist in real life.
00:14:53.800
Uh, and, and you, you've already seen cases, uh, in which the black vote has mobilized behind
00:14:59.220
a white person to stop another white person or a Hispanic.
00:15:01.640
So I, I would not be surprised if he's able to pull out the nomination.
00:15:05.340
I will say that again, the game that he's playing, which is a smart game is he's usually
00:15:09.300
rhetorically radical with regard to president Trump personally.
00:15:12.500
And with regard to Trump, you know, that, that makes you real popular inside the Democratic
00:15:15.580
party, but he's trying to moderate on a lot of the issues where he actually is most
00:15:19.340
Like in that interview, he suggested that he's cooperating with ICE, which I find, you know,
00:15:24.880
Um, in that interview, he tried to pretend sort of moderation on the trans issue.
00:15:28.620
His state is not moderate on that issue at all.
00:15:31.060
And that brings up sort of the second question that you're, you're raising Michael, which
00:15:33.980
is how does he do in a general election if it's JD Vance?
00:15:36.440
So, you know, obviously the number one question there is going to be, how's the U S doing,
00:15:42.540
Uh, and I think everybody acknowledges that circumstantially, that's just the reality.
00:15:45.900
Um, as far as sort of head to head as candidates, uh, yeah, I, I will say that I look
00:15:50.800
that my biggest question mark for JD is, can he grow any part of Trump's coalition?
00:15:57.520
I look at Trump's coalition and I think to myself, Trump has maxed out in many ways,
00:16:04.060
What is the part that JD grows that Trump was unable to grow?
00:16:09.000
If you look, it was a couple hundred thousand votes in a couple of different places and very,
00:16:13.400
Because again, people really, really love Trump in a way that, you know, again, that's not
00:16:19.680
But you've been saying for a while, Ben, and this is something I totally agree with
00:16:22.440
that almost all of this is going to depend on the economy, which I think is getting better.
00:16:26.420
I mean, even the wall street journal, which has been hysterically depressed ever since
00:16:29.760
the tariff thing comes up, is admitting that the economy is actually turning around and
00:16:34.000
And the other thing is also, you know, again, I don't think we talk too much and the media
00:16:40.100
They want to talk about everything, uh, as, as people's faces and their style and the way
00:16:44.940
And I admit all that is important, but people actually do pay attention to certain things.
00:16:49.320
Like for instance, the parade of U-Hauls leaving California looks like a Howard Hawks cattle
00:16:55.300
I mean, people are just like deserting the state and the state, as we all know, is paradise.
00:17:00.320
If you left it alone, if you took the people out, it would be, it would be paradise.
00:17:03.740
And I, it's just, he's ruined everything that he touches.
00:17:06.480
And I just, I mean, listen, I left his state, we all left his state.
00:17:11.120
We all left his state because again, I don't think that his state was well run, but there
00:17:19.200
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Drew, I agree with you, obviously, about all of Gavin Newsom's policy failures.
00:18:51.440
The real question to him, and I even agree with you, obviously, about the economy.
00:18:54.260
It's hard to disagree with a 5.3% GDP growth in Q4, following a 4.5% GDP growth in Q3.
00:19:03.460
Here is the problem, and I go back to it, just coalitionally speaking.
00:19:06.000
You look at Trump's coalition, it's a very weird coalition, right?
00:19:08.120
It's a different coalition than the sort of historic Republican coalition.
00:19:11.300
It's blue-collar voters, his heavy share of Hispanics, slightly outsized portion of
00:19:15.540
black males, particularly, and skewing younger than traditionally.
00:19:20.840
It's hard for me to see exactly where JD grows any part of that coalition.
00:19:26.300
He's going to win fewer Hispanics than President Trump did.
00:19:28.600
Trump has a sort of weird capacity to move beyond his own person.
00:19:32.760
He's kind of everybody's idea of a rich person in their various ethnic group.
00:19:38.040
Like, if you talk to, you know, if you talk to my people, you talk to the Jews, he's
00:19:41.700
like, oh, yeah, he's like every rich Jew that I know.
00:19:43.500
And then you talk to, like, a white Italian guy.
00:19:44.920
He's like, yeah, he's just like the rich Italian guys.
00:19:46.640
He's like, no, he talked to a Syrian person, he's bizarrely every person and no person at
00:19:53.820
That's not true of JD Vance, who is a very talented politician, but clearly a politician.
00:19:58.340
And so you take sort of Trump's comments about ICE, and he's not going to, it doesn't come
00:20:05.480
My chief critique of JD in this way is that I think JD is too online, and he needs to get
00:20:09.060
This is also my chief critique of everyone, because I think X rots your brain.
00:20:12.180
And if you're a politician and you're using that as your echo chamber, telling you which
00:20:15.820
direction to row, I think you're going to end up rowing in the wrong direction.
00:20:18.080
But hold on, Ben, doesn't that undercut your point on Trump, who is the tweeter in chief?
00:20:26.680
Trump, literally, they print out things for him and put them in front of him.
00:20:31.440
They were literally, he doesn't, like, Trump does not spend any time at all on CNN.com or
00:20:36.560
They literally print out, if there's a tweet that he has seen, it's because his staff literally
00:20:39.960
prints out the tweet on physical paper and puts it in front of him.
00:20:43.120
Okay, but how does Gavin Newsom grow the coalition?
00:20:47.020
Because isn't this conversation, Gavin Newsom hypothetically versus J.D. Vance?
00:20:52.300
So the way that, so again, when it's two choices, then shrinking your coalition is growing the
00:20:58.140
So if you have a Hispanic voter, he's only going to go in one of two directions.
00:21:01.140
If that guy does not vote for J.D. Vance and now he votes in the election and doesn't
00:21:05.300
just go home, he's going to vote for Gavin Newsom.
00:21:07.240
So I think that Gavin Newsom does win a larger share of Hispanic voters than Kamala Harris
00:21:16.780
One is a lot of people were predicting that Trump had maxed out his coalition the first
00:21:22.740
They weren't getting exactly what they wanted, you know, all these disappointments.
00:21:26.360
He goes on to win the popular vote the second time.
00:21:28.420
So if J.D. were able to maintain Trump's coalition, that alone, he'd be great.
00:21:32.380
And let's say that things change because, obviously, in 2024, almost half the voters
00:21:36.760
were millennials and Zoomers, skewed a little younger.
00:21:39.440
In my meanderings through the young right, I think the young right does like the vice
00:21:45.000
But the other thing, so, you know, to me, that's a bonus.
00:21:47.580
I do think this guy is very, very talented in that he came up as this, you know, Ohio guy,
00:21:54.340
this guy who wrote a very famous memoir about his lower class upbringing.
00:22:02.920
He plays well with rural people who want industrial policy.
00:22:06.740
He plays well, you know, he's, I think he's got a lot of talent.
00:22:09.540
But this actually gets to my point vis-a-vis Newsom, which is Newsom is overestimated.
00:22:18.020
The thing he's most famous for in politics is just being really deceitful.
00:22:21.400
You know, and he's, and Nicki Minaj had that whole line.
00:22:26.820
So he, I think he's being overestimated in the ways that people overestimated guys like
00:22:35.020
I don't think it's always great to be the top guy in the race a year or a year and a
00:22:39.300
But second of all, there was a great interview once between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
00:22:44.560
And Clinton said, he goes, you know, George and I have benefited from the same thing, which
00:22:55.480
And you think about the winning presidential candidates, they tend to be very underestimated.
00:23:11.060
On that subject, though, I have to say, last time we were here, which is not that long ago,
00:23:16.940
And I'm not a betting man, but I would have bet money on J.D. Vance being the nominee right
00:23:21.200
I'm a little uncertain if that's if we're actually talking about the next nominee, because he's
00:23:27.100
I mean, Trump has been very going very hard on foreign policy and he has people around
00:23:34.340
And Vance is nowhere to be seen because Vance is one of these guys who's trying to take
00:23:38.200
MAGA and turn it into isolationism, which it never was.
00:23:48.960
I don't know if you guys caught this interview with Saurabh Amari right after the Venezuela
00:23:54.860
And he said, wow, these comments the vice president made a couple of weeks ago really hit differently
00:23:59.380
And he was being asked, you know, his involvement in the admin.
00:24:05.300
It's not verbatim, but this is the thrust of it.
00:24:07.480
He said, look, if let's say hypothetically there were an action to be taken by the administration
00:24:13.060
that would look really good for Marco that I would not be all that publicly involved in,
00:24:18.700
in part because you don't have the president and vice president in the same place, often
00:24:21.580
outside of the White House, where, you know, Marco would be center stage and I would seem
00:24:27.180
If I were optimizing for 2028, I would try to kill that action.
00:24:30.880
But if I were optimizing for the good of the country and just to be a good person, I would
00:24:37.400
And, you know, it's kind of unclear what he was talking about there.
00:24:39.680
After the Venezuela strike, it seems clear as day to me.
00:24:43.540
I think the idea that J.D. is some isolationist, I don't buy it.
00:24:49.540
He's been very close with Tucker Carlson, who I don't know if Tucker Carlson believes
00:24:54.840
But I mean, he's actually kind of on the phone, remember, on that signal call that
00:25:02.380
You know, he's not always like, it doesn't seem to be online with the president's foreign
00:25:06.760
policy, which frankly, I think is working out great right now.
00:25:12.980
I'm not saying, look, I'm not counting him out by any stretch of the imagination.
00:25:16.560
I'm just saying the guy who looks great is Marco Rubio.
00:25:21.220
I think Marco has basically already said that he is not going to run if J.D. runs.
00:25:27.340
And I think that right now, if you're looking at the vice president, obviously, his benefit
00:25:33.280
No one's underestimating that he's incredibly talented.
00:25:36.820
I think that there are a couple of systemic factors that are running against him, because
00:25:42.920
I mean, the reality, he's the vice president who currently has a 40 percent approval rating.
00:25:46.840
Vice presidents who have a 40 percent approval rating running after presidents who have a
00:25:50.360
40 percent approval rating don't typically do amazing in general elections.
00:25:57.120
But I think that the sort of core assumption that a lot of Republicans are making, that
00:26:00.080
there is sort of a cakewalk into the presidency for the vice president, that I don't see.
00:26:04.300
And I will say that I do think that the memery, if you do care about the very online, every
00:26:08.260
meme of Marco Rubio, the big meme of Marco Rubio, obviously, is Marco having a different job
00:26:15.960
Now it's just him in that pose being like annoyed that he's been given a new job as
00:26:20.240
king of Venezuela or now the new governor of Greenland or whatever it's going to be
00:26:24.940
And then all the memes of JD or that JD is fat with weird hair.
00:26:28.460
And like that's not kind of where you want to be, just in sort of meme land.
00:26:36.740
Like your guest clavicular will now agree with me, which is hilarious.
00:26:39.680
I don't think the looks maxing, you know, meth addicted 19 year old is representative of
00:26:48.300
And it gets to my point on Newsom, is I think it was so smart of the VP to lean into the
00:26:55.060
And the reason I think it was so smart is you want to be underestimated so that the reality
00:27:01.400
So even down to the physicality, the fact that the meme is he's like this big fat guy.
00:27:14.420
So I think all of those things play really well, even to the point ideologically, some
00:27:17.900
people tried to pin him down on he's an isolationist or he's this or he's that.
00:27:21.060
But he's defended the administration's actions in Iran, in Venezuela, quite vociferously.
00:27:27.060
To me, like if I were in this position, I would not want the memes to be making me out to be
00:27:34.060
Frankly, you even saw this with Trump in 2015, 2016.
00:27:36.880
All the memery was that he was like a big, dumb idiot.
00:27:38.960
And I think to be underestimated actually puts you in a better position.
00:27:41.980
And he's not taking himself too seriously, which is a rare quality for politicians.
00:27:47.920
But the question is, for Republicans, what other Republican, I mean, to go to Ben's point
00:27:51.540
about Trump's coalition, what other Republican has a better chance of at least maintaining
00:27:57.180
most of Trump's coalition, if not expanding it?
00:28:00.840
I mean, there are others who might have a shot.
00:28:02.420
There are others who I could like in that spot, but I think J.D. Vance certainly would
00:28:07.340
And as far as approval ratings go, it's like every president and vice president my whole
00:28:12.340
life has had terrible approval ratings, it feels like.
00:28:18.260
It's part of the political reality we live in, that you just hate whoever's in there
00:28:23.740
And it still just goes to, I don't see anyone else in the, and this could change, obviously.
00:28:27.940
We're still a couple years out, but I don't see anyone else in the Republican
00:28:30.260
field who I'd look at them and say, well, you know, we know what Trump's coalition is
00:28:34.020
and that guy over there really is going to resonate with that coalition more than J.D.
00:28:39.840
And I have to say, by the way, I wasn't suggesting he won't be the nominee or the next president
00:28:45.340
I'm just saying that my certainty is a little less certain nowadays.
00:28:50.580
Well, just what Matt was saying, I agree with this.
00:28:53.720
I think, you know, the incombancy is a big deal.
00:28:55.460
And think about having Donald Trump's policies without Donald Trump, you know, the Trumpian
00:29:02.280
A lot of people don't like his brashness and his big mouth and all that stuff.
00:29:06.000
And if you, if we thought we could get MAGA without Trump, I think a lot of people would
00:29:14.620
I think that MAGA without Trump is boring and stupid in many ways, because I just don't
00:29:20.680
There's no, everyone keeps trying to say, what is MAGA?
00:29:23.140
And so you have the isolation of saying MAGA is America first, meaning America alone.
00:29:26.740
And then you have people who are saying, no, no, no, what MAGA really means is X, Y, MAGA
00:29:32.840
And trying to take away the sizzle from the steak and then say, yes, but now it's very
00:29:39.240
And if I were going to look at, here's what I've said about JD, I'll say about Rubio
00:29:43.640
Every politician must form their own coalition.
00:29:45.960
Anybody who thinks they're just going to pick up the last guy's coalition, they're wrong.
00:29:53.880
But in what way, in what way did Biden do that?
00:29:56.540
He was just running on Obama's third term, basically, in strange circumstances.
00:30:01.180
The 2020 election, as I think we will all acknowledge, those of us who think that he won and those
00:30:05.360
who bizarrely think that he lost, are the, are the, we will acknowledge that was the weirdest
00:30:10.440
election of our lifetime and that, that those circumstances are, are not replicable.
00:30:15.320
Um, absent some sort of massive pandemic that shuts down the entire world.
00:30:19.740
Unless, unless, unless we just, unless, unless we do it again, I mean, which could, but it's,
00:30:23.360
but the biggest problem is that if you look at, here's the thing, I look at JD and I look
00:30:27.440
at JD's coalition and it looks like Trump's coalition, but smaller.
00:30:31.640
And if I were going to build a coalition as a Marco Rubio, it would not actually be Trump's
00:30:36.040
It would be Rubio's coalition, meaning more college educated white people, more Hispanics,
00:30:42.020
I mean, that that's actually what his coalition would look like.
00:30:47.300
And when we dismiss that kind of thing, it ignores the fact that that's actually what
00:30:51.580
He didn't just replicate George W. Bush's coalition.
00:30:54.300
He built an entirely new coalition where he went to low propensity voters who weren't
00:30:59.320
My guess is somebody like Marco Rubio dropped some low propensity voters and maybe convinces
00:31:03.580
some more higher propensity voters who voted for Mitt Romney, but not for Donald Trump
00:31:07.520
Now, again, I'm not saying that means that Rubio wins or that JD loses.
00:31:10.000
I'm just saying that when I look at JD Vance, I cannot see how if Donald Trump got 77 million
00:31:15.420
votes in the last election cycle, how JD Vance gets to 79 million votes in the next election
00:31:26.640
So when I'm saying Gavin could be the next president, I'm not talking about Gavin because
00:31:30.300
he's so intellectually superior and such an amazing candidate.
00:31:33.540
I'm saying we have now had a series of binary elections in which everyone was kind of squirrelly
00:31:39.960
Then we came down to the final two and there were a couple of core bases who were like,
00:31:44.520
And then a huge swath of the middle was like, man, this kind of sucks.
00:31:49.200
And if you look at the Gallup poll right now, more than 45% of Americans are now identifying
00:31:53.600
as politically independent, not because they actually are, but because they don't want
00:31:57.200
to be identified as either member of either party.
00:32:02.780
I mean, as you pointed out, Ben, Trump's policies, you know, eliminate Trump, his policies are
00:32:09.540
I mean, I think some things he's more right and some things he's more left, but he's not
00:32:16.060
It's just that our politics has been so radicalized that he sometimes looks like it.
00:32:20.340
And I can't help feeling that you could pick up the Trump MAGA and present it in a somewhat
00:32:27.500
And, you know, I always feel that what the people are asking for is normalcy.
00:32:31.760
They're asking to kind of get back to the way we're supposed to be.
00:32:35.080
And I could see Vance selling that really easily.
00:32:39.480
The other issue, I see your point, Ben, that I agree with it, that MAGA is what Trump says
00:32:44.680
But I think where I disagree is, I think that Trump actually has a pretty coherent policy
00:32:49.040
vision, though it's often called incoherent or capricious.
00:32:51.640
And you see this especially with foreign policy.
00:32:55.200
I was just debating some guys on this the other day on Piers Morgan's show.
00:32:58.080
And there's some people who insist America first means conservative or libertarian isolationism.
00:33:05.320
Some people that say the alternative is a liberal internationalism, whether we're, you
00:33:09.740
know, talking about, I don't know, like George W. Bush or something, spread liberalism
00:33:14.240
I think Trump's is this third option, which is a conservative imperialism.
00:33:23.720
That obviously doesn't mean you're just going to only focus within your borders.
00:33:26.600
But when he does intervene, it seems to be in this way that's a little bit more restrained.
00:33:30.900
We're going to have these real tactical, you know, in and out kind of hits in the Middle
00:33:35.000
And then we're going to focus a little more in the Western Hemisphere.
00:33:37.620
But in the Western Hemisphere, that's going to have cascading effects that do affect Iran,
00:33:43.060
And so to me, it's a third option that is kind of coherent and that therefore could
00:33:51.900
He's always setting us up to fight the Cold War with China.
00:33:55.660
You know, when you look at Venezuela, the Chinese ran for their lives, like a lot of running
00:34:02.160
They were setting up shop in Venezuela and now they're not so much.
00:34:06.380
You know, now they're sort of thinking, well, maybe we can use this as an excuse to go into
00:34:13.300
And I think Trump is thinking about that all the time.
00:34:15.200
I think if you explain everything he does in terms of China.
00:34:18.740
I think that the danger in trying to intellectualize MAGA is that I think that when you abstract
00:34:23.860
into sort of absolute terms what his foreign policy is, then when you zoom back in into
00:34:29.600
what the specific decisions that are made are by somebody who's not Trump, they don't
00:34:35.000
I think that, for example, you could make easily the case right now, and I'll make two
00:34:39.680
One is that President Trump is what I think he is, which is sort of a hawkish realist, which
00:34:44.000
is that he only wants to get involved in the most minimal possible way to achieve the
00:34:46.980
maximum possible effect on behalf of American interests abroad.
00:34:49.960
And that's not restricted to the Western Hemisphere, right?
00:34:52.040
That he will bomb the Fordow nuclear facility in Iran if he feels that that's necessary.
00:34:56.760
Maybe he'll go ahead and he'll take a military action in Iran if he believes it'll be necessary
00:34:59.800
right now, but only if it achieves his desired effect.
00:35:02.180
He's not going to just do something like fire a missile at a camel and hit him in the ass
00:35:08.600
And then there's an equally coherent version that I find really off-putting and I think would
00:35:13.080
be wrong in policy, which is this sort of multipolar hemispherism.
00:35:17.420
This idea that what Trump's actually trying to do is create a Western Hemisphere free
00:35:20.780
of foreign intervention, but he's totally fine with Russia dominating both the Near
00:35:24.360
East and Eastern Europe and maybe a little bit Western Europe.
00:35:26.760
And he's fine with China dominating Taiwan and the Far East, right?
00:35:30.300
That vision has actually been put forward by people who consider themselves in sort of
00:35:34.020
And because Trump is not, I would say, rhetorically coherent in the way that he approaches these
00:35:38.460
issues, even though I think you can read the policy line in the ways that I've presented.
00:35:42.480
And I think the first one is much more accurate than the second.
00:35:44.280
I think that's why you're seeing concerns about, you know, when people say, well, what
00:35:49.160
Those are real open questions because again, ideology does sort of matter and President
00:35:54.360
And so he's the best pragmatist you'll ever find without a root idea.
00:35:57.980
But what that means is very difficult to have an ideological air.
00:36:00.700
How do you have an ideological air without an idea?
00:36:02.800
Am I the only one who listens to the MAGA people talk and think, thank God, somebody's
00:36:06.760
finally talking about America's benefits again?
00:36:11.760
Like these guys come out and they say, you know, we want this to be good for America because
00:36:18.380
You know, like you suddenly remembered that all this stuff that we hear, like, you know,
00:36:22.460
you're a racist if you don't open your borders.
00:36:32.720
And I just, I think this is the first time I don't hear us being accused of anything.
00:36:36.460
They remember that we actually pay their salaries.
00:36:38.820
Yeah, there's something kind of funny about when Trump goes in and he says, we're going
00:36:42.000
to Venezuela for the oil, which is not even exactly true.
00:36:45.640
I mean, like we would be justified in part, but it actually does have a lot more to it
00:36:51.180
And Ben, I think you make a great point, which is you can't quite tell exactly what this
00:36:55.340
is, or you could read in two things because there is a retrenchment that's going on.
00:37:01.060
That's what the assertion of the Don Rowe Doctrine is about.
00:37:04.420
And the question is, is the retrenchment a way that we can make sure that we're strong,
00:37:10.160
we're, you know, we're not spread too thin so that we can preserve American strength around
00:37:15.180
Or is the retrenchment this kind of surrender that says we just don't want to be involved
00:37:19.400
And I agree, it's kind of ambiguous right now, but I just don't see any real American
00:37:24.400
politician on the right running to say, I want to make America weaker.
00:37:27.660
You know, that's the, that's the opposite of what, of what MAGA literally.
00:37:35.140
I mean, Gavin Newsom just tweeted something out about me.
00:37:41.600
He, he tweeted out like, here's what Ben Shapiro is hiding.
00:37:44.020
And it's like, gets president, it gets, Gavin Newsom gets Ben to criticize Trump's tariffs.
00:37:52.160
Gets, gets Ben Shapiro to oppose the invasion of Greenland.
00:37:56.400
Gets Ben Shapiro to say that Republicans are going to have a hard time in the midterms.
00:38:07.020
Speaking of a very hard right turn, Matt, you, I think are what you're defending
00:38:17.620
Well, it's a, look, it's a, it's a controversial issue with slavery.
00:38:36.960
So we, you know, I've got a, this little, uh, this, this, not little, but a serious
00:38:43.520
And they're shorter, you know, shorter documentaries on, um, on various topics, very historical topics
00:38:52.060
that have so often been, uh, lied about, misrepresented.
00:38:57.440
And these are generally going to be topics that are talked about a lot.
00:39:00.320
I mean, people talk about slavery all the time, but, um, I think the average American
00:39:05.860
doesn't, uh, understands the topic very little because schools lie about it.
00:39:11.500
Media represent, misrepresents it, Hollywood, um, and there are all kinds of realities around
00:39:16.260
these topics that are never, never talked about at all.
00:39:18.560
And we're going to start with, uh, with slavery.
00:39:21.320
And, uh, it's, it's like, it's very interesting because although slavery comes up a lot in our
00:39:27.960
political debates, uh, like I said, I think, you know, the average person knows almost nothing
00:39:33.240
about it because we're not taught about it in schools.
00:39:35.640
And, uh, and that's because the, the history that we've been taught, and this isn't, this
00:39:41.520
isn't just something that started five years ago and in the age of wokeness or whatever,
00:39:46.700
I mean, I can remember being in public school, uh, you know, 30 plus years ago and it was the
00:39:53.440
And that's because the, the education about American history that we get in the mainstream
00:39:58.660
is designed to make us hate ourselves, uh, hate this country and feel guilty about it.
00:40:07.460
So in the series, we're going to begin with, uh, a look at the, uh, you know, a global look
00:40:13.520
Slavery existed as an institution across the entire world for thousands of years.
00:40:18.540
If it's possible to carry the guilt of slavery in your blood somehow, as we're told white Americans
00:40:25.160
do, if that's possible, then every single person who exists on the planet carries that guilt
00:40:31.340
because slavery existed everywhere on the planet.
00:40:34.260
And then we kind of narrow it in to slavery in America, because even if everybody will
00:40:40.820
acknowledge that of course slavery existed everywhere, uh, then they moved to, yeah, but
00:40:50.500
And we get into some of the facts about, you know, where, where did these slaves come from?
00:40:56.420
Uh, how did the slave traders, the European and American slave traders get their hands on
00:41:03.680
Well, it turns out that there were entire African empires, uh, who, this is what they did.
00:41:09.440
I mean, this, this, this is how they became empires is that they enslaved other African tribes
00:41:14.840
And, and not only that, but if you were captured by one of these, um, African tribes to be sold
00:41:21.960
as a slave, the, the best case scenario for you is that you'd be put on a ship and shipped
00:41:33.420
These are basic facts that I think, uh, most people don't know.
00:41:36.860
As you mentioned, or as you maybe, uh, intended to mention, this is coming out once a month
00:41:43.980
I, can I just sound like a little bit of a lib though for a second?
00:41:46.600
This is one of my most lib opinions, but it's correct.
00:41:49.940
Uh, you know, when they talk about the legacy of slavery and the enduring, you know, challenges
00:41:55.780
that come because their great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandpa was brought
00:42:03.060
I don't think that comes from, I don't, you know, in the sense that like, look, I'm smoking
00:42:06.660
a Mayflower cigar, a brand new blend that's extremely exquisite that I'm not yet going to debut
00:42:12.080
But I, I love the fact that some, a very small number of my ancestors came here on the Mayflower.
00:42:19.620
It makes me view the country in a certain way, makes me feel a kind of pride and ownership
00:42:24.340
If my ancestors had come on a slave ship, even if I were rich, I were a rapper, I had, you
00:42:30.040
know, gold teeth and everything, and I was materially really well off, I would view the
00:42:37.060
And I think as conservatives, we say that heritage matters and tradition matters and all that.
00:42:44.220
And if I were a black guy in America, it would, that would color my view.
00:42:50.660
Matt, I completely agree with the history you're saying.
00:42:52.980
I know that history and you're absolutely right about it.
00:42:55.460
But I also think it's important while we're saying this, that we should put out the idea
00:43:03.040
I think, you know, this is the Daily Wire, I think an official, official Daily Wire,
00:43:11.420
Like, let the people go, you know, like I always, you know, you read Aristotle and he
00:43:25.280
And I just, I just think that, you know, of course it's true that, you know, it actually
00:43:29.960
I mean, I live in the, in the South and I, people come up to me and they say, well, you
00:43:34.680
And I think, okay, but can we begin with no, you know, like don't hold people's slaves.
00:43:40.780
And I think we, we could put that on our, our masthead maybe.
00:43:43.540
But I, but other than that, it is true that it was, you know, I won't say it was better
00:43:49.000
It's just, it's just an, an evil, but it is, it is true that we didn't start, start
00:43:54.100
We bought people from, we bought people who had already been enslaved.
00:43:56.920
And if you read, I think at one point, Matt, I sent you the, the memoir of Mungo, the guy
00:44:02.020
who made it into, I believe it was Nigeria, the explorer.
00:44:05.560
And he just described a world of slavery when he got to Africa.
00:44:09.280
I mean, he, he had some, I can't even, I can't remember the number, but he said like
00:44:15.460
And of course, if you got caught by the Arabs, they also castrated you, which was like an
00:44:20.480
unpleasant thing in and of itself, because you couldn't just then claim you were a woman
00:44:24.640
and play soccer for the team you could beat, you know, it was really bad.
00:44:28.160
So, so, I mean, I think, you know, I, I agree with, with Knowles as well.
00:44:32.000
I think I do understand the guy who sold me, my gun was a black guy.
00:44:35.280
And he said, he said, believe me, I believe in gun rights because if I had gun rights, I
00:44:41.580
So I actually disagree with, with, with Knowles on this and I'm, I'm with Walsh.
00:44:45.300
I think on, on the question of, you know, this kind of generational, I would feel differently
00:44:51.080
I think that the, the history of black Americans is one of the most glorious things, meaning
00:44:57.560
like moving from slavery to freedom, moving from, you know, abject slavery to participating
00:45:04.360
in the building of the greatest country in the history of the world and becoming leaders
00:45:09.060
in a wide variety of fields in that space is an amazing history.
00:45:13.140
And, you know, the, and, and the idea that you should carry with you some sort of generational
00:45:16.760
stigma or shame, or that you should feel internally as though that, that is like, obviously, you
00:45:22.300
know, the history has consequences and you feel those consequences over the course of
00:45:27.660
But, you know, I, I, I, I'm not willing to sort of grant the premise that a history of
00:45:32.680
slavery is so deep that it ought to make you think that today's America is the problem.
00:45:37.760
This is also the America that fought a civil war to abolish slavery.
00:45:40.740
This is also the America that did the civil rights movement.
00:45:46.080
Well, that's, I, I, I, can I just, can I say one thing here?
00:45:50.360
First of all, to Drew's point that slavery is bad, uh, that's debatable.
00:45:54.160
No, it's, no, it's, slavery, no, it's, no, it's, no, it's, no, it's, no, it's, no.
00:46:00.860
No, obviously slavery is bad, but I do think that assessing that there is, there is a, that there's
00:46:06.400
an important point in, in bringing up that it was a, it was a global institution, which
00:46:11.220
is that it was bad, but when you're assessing the individual moral guilt of people who were
00:46:16.700
involved in slavery, say 500 years ago or 600 years ago, their individual moral guilt is
00:46:21.840
severely mitigated because it was a global institution.
00:46:26.140
And at this time in history, they just didn't have concepts like universal human equality
00:46:32.620
just simply did not exist for the majority of human history.
00:46:36.240
And, and that means that slavery was bad, but it also means that to kind of look at it
00:46:40.680
through a modern lens and assess the kind of moral guilt on those people that we would
00:46:46.820
But secondly, to, to the black Americans today, I agree that the fact that they, that, you know,
00:46:52.040
if this is your, actually your heritage, of course, there's plenty of black Americans who
00:46:54.820
came here afterwards. And so that's not their heritage, but if that is your heritage.
00:46:59.680
Yes. So if, if that is your heritage, then that's relevant. It's like your, your heritage
00:47:04.260
is very, is very relevant, of course. Uh, but what is incoherent is to be mad about it,
00:47:09.760
to be mad today that slavery that, you know, that your ancestors were enslaved is completely
00:47:14.600
incoherent, not only because it happened a long time ago. I mean, there is that it happened
00:47:18.020
a long time ago. It didn't happen to you. So to be mad about a thing that didn't happen
00:47:22.060
to you doesn't make a lot of sense, but also there's the other part
00:47:24.780
of this, which nobody really wants to say. And every time I say it, I get in a lot of
00:47:27.900
trouble, but I'll say it again, which is that, okay, let's just be real about it. If, if you're
00:47:34.220
a black person in America today and your ancestors were enslaved, you are better off today because
00:47:42.080
of that than you likely would be if your ancestors had not been enslaved. That's the reality.
00:47:47.460
If you had, if your ancestors had not been enslaved, then guess what? Either you would not
00:47:51.620
exist most likely, or if you do exist, you'd exist in Africa and it is better to be in America than
00:47:57.640
to be in Africa. That is not an argument that slavery is okay. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not making
00:48:01.520
an end justify that means argument. I'm only saying that to be mad about a thing that ultimately has
00:48:06.680
actually benefited you today makes no sense. What would you prefer that you're in Africa
00:48:14.700
No, this is wrong, Ben. Yeah, no, it's just, no, it's right. No, it's actually, I mean, look,
00:48:17.580
no, it's actually said something that makes sense and is almost profound, which I think we should all
00:48:20.960
stop for a minute and just understand that a miracle has taken place in front of us.
00:48:26.940
No, I mean, it doesn't matter whether it's rational or not.
00:48:30.260
And Ben, I completely agree that even though you have these feelings, you should be able to overcome them and understand that you've been given the gift of being born in America.
00:48:40.600
But, you know, heritage does matter and it doesn't fuse you with a certain feeling.
00:48:44.720
And you hear the name of the famous black comedian who went up against the trans people.
00:48:51.360
You know, I'll hear him say, like, it was really the black people who freed themselves.
00:48:56.500
It was people from, you know, Maine and Vermont coming down and fighting for liberation.
00:49:05.060
You know, there's a sense of shame that goes with this.
00:49:09.420
You know, when I was growing up, I think Jews had a sense of shame that stemmed out of the Holocaust.
00:49:15.460
Which is a complete, obviously a complete false understanding of what happened in that country and what it was like to live through it.
00:49:21.280
But people feel these things and they affect the way you see the place that you're living in.
00:49:25.680
I think that's basically what Knowles is saying.
00:49:27.460
And feelings, you know, I hate to break this to you, Ben, but feelings matter.
00:49:31.060
You know, the way people feel affects their lives.
00:49:33.000
And so when you see things like, when you hear the word pride, you immediately know you're dealing with shame.
00:49:37.180
When you hear black pride, gay pride, you immediately know somebody feels ashamed.
00:49:40.660
And I think that you can't make it go away the way the left wants to make it go away by proclaiming that you're proud.
00:49:50.460
No, you're not wrong that the, you know, I have had black people say to me, slavery was bad.
00:49:59.060
I have had black people say that to me and I understand it.
00:50:03.560
And I think we can have some kind of compassion for that and understanding for it.
00:50:06.800
I mean, on a practical level, obviously, Matt, your history is all contingent, right?
00:50:13.000
So if X had not happened, then Y would not happen.
00:50:15.000
But that doesn't mean that you have to be super happy that X happened, you know, in and of itself.
00:50:23.900
Yeah, I'm not justifying it or saying you should be happy about it.
00:50:25.960
What I'm saying is that to be, to now in your life today, to be angry about it,
00:50:31.620
it just doesn't make any sense because if the thing hadn't happened,
00:50:38.780
then you would not exist and or you would exist probably in a worse situation than you do today.
00:50:44.000
I mean, I think that what we need is more specificity, actually.
00:50:48.300
That a bad thing happened in history or at the concept that may still be walking around of, say, black inferiority, right?
00:50:54.620
That there are still some people who think that and that's what leads to slavery.
00:50:59.900
You know, you're right in the sense that, like, anything that happened historically,
00:51:04.200
you can be angry at theāif you had been then, there, would you have been happy?
00:51:12.080
But I think we should be more specific about what it is we mean when we say angry at that.
00:51:16.580
I guess one way to think about it is just because we're conservatives, we're not libs, ideologues,
00:51:21.240
who think that, you know, one action of politics can just erase the totality of human experience.
00:51:26.440
You would say, well, look, the 13th Amendment was great, but it doesn'tāit's not a magic wand.
00:51:31.360
You know, the 14th Amendment or all the way up to, I don't know, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or whatever,
00:51:35.500
all sorts of bungled policies that have actually made things worse in many cases.
00:51:39.080
But in any case, those are just magic wands that erase a human identity or heritage
00:51:45.280
or a feeling of tradition or place in a society.
00:51:47.400
And so I guess my point is basically boiling down to I kind of get it.
00:51:55.260
And the libs are totally wrong about their conclusions from that.
00:51:58.300
But it's not to say that that isn't a real problem or a real phenomenon.
00:52:01.480
They're also wrong about what identity is, but I take your point.
00:52:04.800
I think one of the things that's actually quite important also is that if slavery was a human universal,
00:52:10.120
then the people who abolished it ought to get outsized credit.
00:52:17.000
But the truth is that, I mean, slavery existed in legal form in Saudi Arabia into the 60s.
00:52:22.440
And there is still slavery that is happening on a pretty wide scale, particularly in the Middle East today.
00:52:27.860
And very often it's people who are being brought there as wage laborers,
00:52:31.340
and then they're being basicallyātheir passports are taken away.
00:52:35.820
I mean, that sort of stuff is happening right now on the ground in a lot of places on Earth.
00:52:40.200
So, you know, the stuff that we take for granted is not easily taken for granted.
00:52:44.600
Well, it's controversial stuff, and you can only make controversial stuff if you have subscribers like ours,
00:52:48.020
which is why you should head on over to dailywire.com and go check out Matt's brand new series,
00:52:52.540
where he will be offending, I assume, a wide variety of people over the course of the next year
00:53:01.620
Speaking of taking stuff, are we going to take Greenland?
00:53:05.000
This is, by my count, the first foreign policy intervention in American history,
00:53:10.540
at least since the Louisiana Purchase, that Matt supports.
00:53:14.000
Matt, you are pro just F-35, like Don Rumsfeld flying over nuke and taking the ice?
00:53:25.120
I have also been lusting after Greenland my whole life, and we just need to go take it.
00:53:32.480
Look, I am often labeled an isolationist, and depending on how you define that, maybe I fit the bill.
00:53:40.520
But my actual very simple foreign policy view has always been, I've said forever,
00:53:46.640
is I'm in favor of anything that America does that actually advance the interests of Americans.
00:53:52.620
And I think that very often we do things, especially in faraway places,
00:53:57.540
that supposedly are to advance the interests of Americans,
00:53:59.600
but actually aren't doing that and aren't really intended to do that.
00:54:02.780
But if that's the goal, is to help Americans make America's life, make the lives of Americans better,
00:54:09.280
then at least it's potentially in the realm of something that I would support.
00:54:13.120
And with Greenland, I mean, I can easily see the advantages.
00:54:18.060
I mean, there's, of course, what Trump always talks about, the national security advantages.
00:54:22.080
There's also, you know, there's the resources that are there.
00:54:29.160
You know, only like 12 people live there anyway.
00:54:32.760
I will say that, you know, I think there are actually militarily invading Greenland
00:54:39.420
will probably wouldn't be necessary, first of all.
00:54:41.400
I mean, you just send in one team of Navy SEALs, you topple the whole country in about 12 minutes.
00:54:50.920
So that, you know, but doing that, I think it wouldn't come to that.
00:54:58.480
I will just say, though, that it's interesting to me when people today get so offended by
00:55:06.120
the very notion that we would try to acquire land, that we would try to grow sort of the
00:55:13.120
empire, and in particular that we would try to do it by force.
00:55:16.280
It's interesting when people are so offended by that, because how do you think America
00:55:20.040
right now, as it's currently constituted, came to be?
00:55:23.680
You know, America became what it is today, the continental United States plus Hawaii and
00:55:28.460
That happened through purchasing land, in some cases, going to war, taking it by force, displacing
00:55:37.100
people, kicking them out, and taking the land for ourselves.
00:55:42.460
We conquered this land, and we did it because we believed that, you know, manifest destiny
00:55:49.300
We knew that, you know, the American empire should reign.
00:55:53.060
And we had leaders who were looking out for the interests of our people, and that's how
00:55:58.860
the entire world has taken the shape that it's taken.
00:56:03.460
So that doesn't mean that I'm going to support any effort to just go and conquer land, but
00:56:10.400
it does mean that I'm not going to automatically rule it out, because that's the only way that
00:56:22.560
This is like my favorite version of Matt Walsh.
00:56:40.800
Matt makes a really, Matt makes an interesting point, though, which is like, we're supposed
00:56:45.160
And it occurs to me, the last time we seriously added territory was 1959, which coincidentally
00:56:51.940
is the last time we were like really strong and growing.
00:56:55.300
You know, it seems like since the 60s, everything's been kind of going downhill.
00:56:58.460
And, you know, if we did acquire Greenland in a serious way, that would expand the size
00:57:05.280
That would be, not by, in terms of people, obviously, but in terms of land, that would
00:57:08.940
And just think of the shrimp, the amount of shrimp we'd have.
00:57:11.440
The delicious shrimp would be, there is a real question, though.
00:57:14.180
Now, does this violate, you know, the NATO treaties or international law?
00:57:20.320
But I believe, I don't like to say this out loud because I know it's going to blow back
00:57:23.480
on me, but I believe that empire is a phase in the life of great nations, and I don't
00:57:31.540
I'm sort of hoping I'll be gone so you guys have to deal with it.
00:57:34.700
But still, I think ultimately that there's just an amoral truth about the fact that you
00:57:42.600
And I think, you know, war with Denmark is going to be so much fun.
00:57:46.420
And, you know, I love the foreign minister of Denmark.
00:57:48.640
He looks like a lawn troll, you know, and he's very civilized.
00:57:55.320
And he says, I agree with Trump in many ways that this, you know, but we can talk it out.
00:58:03.640
Okay, so as the apparently Abraham Lincoln through all of your imperialist ambitions to grab Texas
00:58:14.340
Yeah, I am not in favor of the invasion of Greenland.
00:58:18.000
I think it's great that you have to say it, though.
00:58:24.660
I am not in favor of the invasion of Greenland.
00:58:29.460
Listen, I'm fine with cutting whatever contract we want to cut with Greenland.
00:58:32.700
If we can pressure them into selling the thing, that's fine.
00:58:34.580
If we want to grab their mineral rights, that's cool, too.
00:58:36.400
But I'm wondering, I do love the fact that really all this has come down to is that Donald
00:58:42.060
Trump really wants to rename that place Trumpland and just increase the map and be like, this
00:58:52.080
Like right now, if we just decided to put 20,000 troops in Greenland without invading,
00:58:56.740
we could just build a base and put our troops there.
00:59:00.920
So this idea that like the Chinese are about to grab Greenland, the Russians are about
00:59:07.840
to wade ashore in nuke, and they're going to start shooting all the dogs from their dog
00:59:13.360
I was hoping now that Trump took the Venezuela ladies Nobel Prize.
00:59:22.740
Like, oh my gosh, the taking of the Nobel Prize is so, like, are you kidding me?
00:59:30.240
You know what it feels like to take in the Nobel Prize?
00:59:32.260
You know how on eBay there'll be some guy who won an Oscar and then he goes bankrupt and
00:59:37.300
And so you're sitting there and you've got like Marlon Brando's second Oscar on your
00:59:43.080
What do you do if you're trying to walk around like, here's Maria Machado's Nobel Prize?
00:59:47.040
I like the idea that she insisted, she insisted the White House, she insisted he take, she's
00:59:51.380
like this little piece of girl, you know, it's like, I insist you take my Nobel Prize.
01:00:00.240
And obviously when we build the greenhouse in Greenland, then President Trump will obviously
01:00:09.600
Well, I think, look, I think it's a good, even if you disagree with going in and conquering
01:00:18.960
Because that's another part of this we haven't talked about.
01:00:20.220
Yeah, yeah, we've got to say, you're absolutely up to the slave.
01:00:23.140
But even if you disagree with that, the fact that Trump has the desire at all to kind of
01:00:27.560
like expand in this way is, that's what presidents, I like that.
01:00:33.200
I mean, that's what our leaders should want to do.
01:00:35.440
I mean, like you said, 1959, right, was the last time when it felt like we were a country.
01:00:42.860
To me, 1969 was the last time when it felt like America was like reaching for something.
01:00:51.000
And that's when we landed on the moon, of course.
01:00:53.120
And we actually did land on the moon, first of all.
01:00:56.500
But I think there's also this kind of, and I know it's not the most compelling foreign
01:01:00.600
policy argument, but there's this kind of spiritual truth, which is that if you're a great country,
01:01:06.420
then you should be trying to expand, trying to reach for something, explore, go to unknown
01:01:17.720
Well, when America has been truly great, it's when it was driven by that desire, by manifest
01:01:24.260
And then it's kind of like, well, we expanded, we took over the continental United States and
01:01:30.020
And then we said, well, where is there left to go?
01:01:32.020
Then we started going up and we're not really doing that as much anymore.
01:01:35.040
At least that's now kind of in the private sector with Elon Musk.
01:01:38.060
And so Trump is the first leader in a while who says, no, let's continue to try to expand
01:01:44.820
And I think that that's, like you said, Drew, if you're not growing, you're dying.
01:01:48.900
I think there's like a real truth to that when it comes to nations.
01:01:52.140
There's a fact, too, which is we had been, you know, since the middle of the 19th century,
01:01:56.220
the State Department has been eyeing Greenland.
01:01:57.900
We've tried to buy it multiple times over the years, including the 20th century.
01:02:00.800
And it is kind of weird that Denmark controls Greenland in that, you know, Denmark has been
01:02:07.180
downhill ever since Claudius killed Hamlet's dad.
01:02:10.040
You know, like it has not been, it's not been a good few centuries.
01:02:13.520
And so you think it's bizarre that they're there.
01:02:16.780
When Trump was in the Oval Office, he said, Denmark said they're going to double up their
01:02:25.500
They have the serious dog sled Arctic defense, which I'm sure they're great people and great
01:02:29.680
dogs, but, you know, that's not really going to cut it.
01:02:31.980
And so, you know, then there's this argument that, well, this violates the spirit of NATO
01:02:39.320
It was developed in the Cold War to protect the American empire, you know, against the Soviet
01:02:45.060
And it doesn't mean exactly the same thing after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
01:02:49.000
And yeah, to your, to your, really to all of your points, well, no, not as much to Ben's,
01:02:53.100
you know, because he doesn't want us to just gobble up the whole world.
01:02:55.280
But to Matt and Drew's point, you know, we're, we're great.
01:03:01.720
And you just look at the map and you say, this is kind of weird, especially with a more
01:03:04.880
aggressive China and Russia, whether or not they're actually going to land and put up
01:03:09.280
Like the fact that they're a little, a little more on the move now means that, yeah, I think
01:03:14.960
And, you know, Denmark, I think you're going to get on board.
01:03:18.720
By the way, Calci says, according to our sponsors, Calci, 42% shot or 42% of the people
01:03:23.160
who are betting on it say that we're going to take Greenland.
01:03:27.160
And if that's, you know, you, you know, you might be able to tell, we'll see if there's
01:03:30.100
like an insider spike right before Trump declares that we, that we've taken Greenland.
01:03:34.420
So, you know, honestly, my, my main objective, my main objection to taking Greenland is just,
01:03:43.920
Like Trump is like, we must, we must deter Russia.
01:03:46.280
We must deter Russia from, from going after Greenland.
01:03:48.280
Like, you know, it's a really great way to deter Russia to fight it, to, to have the Ukrainians
01:03:52.860
Like there's like engaging a gigantic ass land war in the middle of Eastern
01:03:57.660
And it's like, no, no, no, no, they're not taking Greenland.
01:04:00.840
Greenland, like this is where we draw the line.
01:04:08.440
No, you're probably not in the minority, but you're wrong.
01:04:12.400
I think the shrimp is the one that turns me toward Greenland.
01:04:15.140
And as I, I keep kosher, so I don't care about the shrimp.
01:04:18.740
Let's see, that explains, it always comes down to that.
01:04:22.260
You know, and because, because we added Hawaii as a state in 1959, the vastness of the American
01:04:27.860
empire sea to sea, we can actually have coconut shrimp once we take Greenland.
01:04:35.860
There's two, we have to, we have to go and we need to go to Duke.
01:04:42.960
Go become a Daily Wire member right now and you can hear Matt Walsh vigorously defend slavery.