00:05:42.020It was actually about, wasn't it about Netanyahu?
00:05:45.300And they posted one piece of the answer on one show and another piece of the answer on another show.
00:05:49.100And it became very clear to those of us out in the world that they'd been manipulating us, which they had been.
00:05:54.100So now 60 Minutes posts many of its full interviews with newsmakers.
00:05:57.360And they are sometimes quite illuminating, like in March when we showed you a misleading edit of Pete Hegseth's interview with Major Garrett, when the show suggested that Secretary Hegseth was responding to a question about Israel dragging the U.S. into the war.
00:06:12.560And the extended interview showed the question didn't mention Israel at all.
00:06:17.360There's manipulation going on over at CBS, especially around the topic of Israel.
00:06:24.560Now, this time, there was no smoking gun showing journalistic malpractice in last night's Netanyahu interview, but there were some notable ways in which the edited piece differed from the actual full interview in substantive ways.
00:06:39.960The interview began with Bibi saying the war is not over.
00:06:44.700And here's an extended version that's slightly longer than what you might have seen if you watched 60 Minutes last night.
00:06:50.700Is the war with Iran over, and if it isn't, who will decide when it is?
00:06:57.100I think it accomplished a great deal, but it's not over because there's still nuclear material, enriched uranium, that has to be taken out of Iran.
00:07:05.780There are still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled.
00:07:10.620There are still proxies that Iran supports.
00:07:13.980There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce.
00:07:17.520Now, we've degraded a lot of it, but all of that is still there, and there's work to be done.
00:07:23.720How do you envision the highly enriched uranium will be removed from Iran?
00:11:33.820And it's the thing that is holding everything up.
00:11:36.000It's holding up the closure of this war,
00:11:38.100the progress of talks around this war.
00:11:39.880We've given them a new tool, even more powerful than a nuke.
00:11:44.680That's what this war has done to Iran.
00:11:47.240And if you don't think that's empowering, you haven't been paying attention.
00:11:51.560And unfortunately, it's incredibly empowering for Iran.
00:11:55.560Right now, they hold a lot of cards and they're going to hold them forever unless we have a permanent military presence in the Strait of Hormuz, which we police from now to the end of time.
00:12:07.260I don't think we're prepared to do that.
00:12:08.640You know how much money that's going to be?
00:12:09.760okay so why why didn't we or they apparently anticipate that they could and would take
00:12:19.780control of the strait here's the answer most most of this again did not air on tv watch
00:12:24.820no i don't claim a perfect foresight and nobody had perfect foresight
00:12:29.040neither did the iranians they should have figured out that that's what's coming
00:12:32.320did you say that most of these risks would be minimal i don't remember using that language
00:12:38.100And I would that be a fair interpretation. No, I would say I would say that the overall conception was that this would elicit a problem or response that they probably would not shoulder.
00:12:49.140But they did shoulder. And now they respond. They're attacking. They're being attacked accordingly.
00:12:54.720Yeah. Yes, it's a problem. Yeah. We're aware. So there are at least some telegraph of the truth.
00:13:01.580They didn't anticipate it. They didn't think that they could shoulder it. Well, they could.
00:13:05.860And honestly, did he really not know? Did Netanyahu and Israel not anticipate that? I just,
00:13:14.080I have that a very hard time believing that. I mean, like their, their intelligence is second
00:13:21.560to none. They knew the Ayatollah was going to be above ground on a certain day with his top
00:13:27.620emissaries. Their intelligence was really good on the Ayatollah's whereabouts and his plans and
00:13:32.980was spot on. But they didn't anticipate that they could effectively take control of the
00:13:38.440Strait of Hormuz? Or did they just not care? Because their goal is chaos in the Middle
00:13:44.140East, which benefits them. And our goal is very, very different. Our goal is not chaos
00:13:48.920in the Middle East. We have a lot of friends and partners and allies there with whom we
00:13:52.140do great business and whose relations with us have only been getting stronger. And that's
00:13:55.700a good thing for the United States. Is it really great for us to have chaos in the Middle
00:13:59.220East? Is it great for us to have, by the way, Iran bombing our allies over there, which is what
00:14:05.440they've been doing? That's another thing that was just very, very interesting piece in the Atlantic
00:14:10.240by a big time neocon hawk, a guy who was behind the Iraq war, the surge in Iraq, and push for,
00:14:18.120you know, all sorts of conflicts, writing some tough talk about how the war in Iran is going,
00:14:23.200saying, basically, we've lost, and it's worse than our loss in Vietnam. It's worse than anything
00:14:31.000than Afghanistan. It's worse than Iraq. It's very, very bad, because we've empowered Iran
00:14:37.620in a way that we didn't anticipate. And Robert Kagan is the name of the guy.
00:14:44.600And yeah, talking about how Iran has now become empowered as a result of its control of the
00:14:51.100Strait of Hormuz. And one of the ways in which we've been compromised is in fighting back. Not
00:14:57.480only did it take the Strait, it started bombing all of its allies in the neighborhood, our allies
00:15:01.460in the neighborhood. And that the reason Trump entered into a ceasefire was not a desire for
00:15:08.300a ceasefire so much as it was the fact that Iran had bombed the energy infrastructure in Qatar.
00:15:18.240and that if anything like that continued,
00:15:22.840we were going to be setting the energy markets back
00:15:25.000by years, decades, and it needed to stop ASAP.
00:15:31.080They actually pulled another trick out of their hat
00:15:33.100that materially changed the course of the war.
00:15:37.000It wasn't just a, oh, we're going to be nice.
00:15:39.800All right, so there's been a lot happening.
00:26:26.840I have been offered money by very pro-Israeli.
00:26:29.280And when I was very pro-Israeli, you know, two years ago, and I always said no, because I just, I understood that it could compromise me as a journalist.
00:26:40.800I didn't, I don't like anybody having me by a leash.
00:26:44.000But in any event, Charlie and I talked openly about how Israel was very bad at the propaganda war, about how the Palestinians were so much better at propaganda than Israel.
00:26:55.380And the thing that he and I discussed Israel needed to do, excuse me, was to get its own Caroline Levitt to be out there every day.
00:27:07.080And Charlie said, for example, why should I be out there doing this?
00:33:04.020for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sent a series of invoices for its influencer campaign
00:33:11.920to Havas Media Group Germany, an international media group working for Israel. Very interesting.
00:33:21.700A group in Germany working for Israel, Germany. I may be coming back to that in days to come,
00:33:27.960and I'll explain why then. The invoices detail a sum of $900,000 starting in June and slated
00:33:35.300to end in November for a cohort of 14 to 18 influencers to create content. They had to
00:33:41.960disclose this because this group had to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act,
00:33:47.820and they noted in it that the funding is for payments for influencers and production.
00:33:54.220So we don't know exactly what the number was or exactly who the influencers were or even
00:34:00.480whether this is the only such program, but it is absolutely true that Israel was paying
00:34:06.280thousands of dollars per post to several influencers to attack those perceived as
00:34:12.940dangers to Israel or enemies of the Israeli state or Netanyahu and to promote stories
00:34:20.980about Israel that reflected well on it. It was called Project Esther. In addition, by the way,
00:34:25.740this same publication, Responsible Statecraft, broke the news, which is also true that Brad
00:34:32.300Parscale, who is senior executive at Salem Media and has his own AI company, had to register as a
00:34:42.180foreign agent for Israel. Same situation. This is from The Hill, September 30th, 2025. Does that
00:34:51.640date sound familiar? It's all happening. It was the Unleashed last September. Pascal, this is
00:34:56.680according to The Hill, the Pascal has registered as a foreign agent for Israel, hired to create
00:35:00.940digital campaigns combating anti-Semitism in a contract worth $6 million. By the way, I've also
00:35:08.720it's nine, nine million. According to his contract, his company is hired to create content
00:35:14.140where at least 80% is tailored to Gen Z audiences across platforms, including TikTok, Instagram,
00:35:20.440YouTube podcasts, and other relevant digital and broadcast outlets. Axios also reporting that
00:35:27.580Parscale, a top eight on President Trump's first two campaigns, registered as a foreign agent
00:35:31.320to work on Israel's behalf and create digital media combating anti-Semitism.
00:35:37.480Now, I know Pascal personally, and I have had long discussions with him about what his AI can do.
00:35:46.680And let me tell you, it's substantial.
00:35:49.260This is before he decided to become a foreign agent for Israel.
00:35:53.060And when he thought that I was completely in Israel's corner and not Israel skeptical,
00:35:57.940And I was. I used to be. Honestly, it's like they have their own bad behavior to thank for losing me. And Netanyahu's paranoia about like, oh, social media, they get on there and like people from, you know, some third world country are on there saying, I live in Texas and I've turned on Israel and it's all BS propaganda. That's Israel's claim.
00:36:20.160That's not at all what changed my views.
00:37:42.680So people in the United States who are having some negative feelings toward not the Israeli people who we love and have a lot in common with, but their government have every reason to feel that way.
00:37:58.580And it's not because of fucking tick tock.
00:38:00.580okay? Like, honestly, I want to read this guy, the poem that Dr. Ben Carson loves,
00:38:09.260right? By Mamie Waite about yourself to blame. Is it Mamie Waite Brown? I'm trying to remember
00:38:14.200her exact last name. It's amazing. I've read it on the air before that basically every refrain
00:38:20.140ends with, you have yourself to blame. Look inward. That's what the Miller is the last name.
00:38:26.920Um, look inward. Those words are actually in the poem. Look inward. I, it's crazy to me that he's
00:38:35.020spending time lamenting how it's really totally social media. I think what's happened here is
00:38:41.260Israel's behaved badly in a number of ways, extremely confrontationally and in a way that's
00:38:49.000actually gotten us into a war now. And that's what's led people that plus what they did in Gaza.
00:38:54.140And honestly, he's worried about like the social media campaign about Gaza.
00:38:57.480That's another thing that didn't work on me, sir.
00:39:00.120It wasn't any social media campaign about Gaza.
00:39:03.260I tried to defend you on Gaza as long as humanly possible.
00:39:06.100But you just the thirst for bloodlust over there was a little too much.
00:39:10.640It went on for years every day where that were all the dead children propaganda by Palestine.
00:43:46.700Just for those listening at home, apparently the response, this is per the Wall Street Journal, hasn't been made public yet, but it doesn't speak to our demand for commitments on the fate of Iran's nuclear program or its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
00:44:07.000Instead, reports the journal, Iran proposes an end to the fighting and a gradual opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
00:44:14.080then they punch the nuclear issues to getting negotiated over the next 30 days.
00:44:20.500And they do offer some sort of a proposal on the highly enriched uranium and having it diluted
00:44:27.480and possibly transferred, but apparently not to satisfy Trump or really feel that
00:44:32.980our proposal was directly addressed. You know, the problem we have now is that more and more,
00:44:40.780This is Bloomberg reporting this, too, that the president's not that interested in the war anymore.
00:44:47.200He wants it to go away, but we can't really make it go away without reopening that strait.
00:44:52.060That's that's for damn sure, which was it was reopened before it was opened before we launched this war.
00:44:58.280But whatever that may be, Michael, we can't end it without that thing coming back open.
00:45:03.020And the Iranians know they have a pretty powerful card.
00:45:05.920Yeah, I love President Trump's vivid language, typically graphic. He's describing the life
00:45:12.660support of the ceasefire. But then what does that mean? For the ceasefire to disappear either means
00:45:17.360you're going to have a negotiated end to the war, actually put an end to hostilities,
00:45:21.200or you're going to have an escalation again. And unfortunately, this is an area where I,
00:45:26.980you know how much I hate to say I told you so on any number of political issues, but
00:45:30.240this was always my fear before the Iran war. And while it was being launched, you had a lot of
00:45:36.640people celebrating, waiting for, I don't know, freedom parades in Iran and a pro-Western return
00:45:43.520of the Shah or something like that. I never really thought that was going to happen. And really what
00:45:48.160I assumed was at the end, you'd either end up with a deal you don't want or a massive military
00:45:54.100operation that would be politically unsellable at home. So there were really no good options.
00:45:59.440I know some people make the claim that war in Iran would be unjust, that the regime doesn't
00:46:05.040deserve it or something like that. I never thought that. We've been in hostilities with Iran for 50
00:46:09.420years. But the problem is in order to establish a just war, you need to have a reasonable probability
00:46:15.400of success, which means you have to know exactly what your objective is. Is the objective just to
00:46:19.920get rid of the nuclear program? Is it to set back the nuclear program? Is it regime change as many
00:46:24.580people wanted from the beginning? So you need a reasonable probability of success, which I don't
00:46:28.640think we're really going to have, at least on the regime change front. Don't forget the mullahs,
00:46:32.240for all their wickedness and sins, lasted twice as long in power as the CIA regime that we helped
00:46:37.940to promote in 1953 with the CIA coup that helped get rid of Mossadegh and ensconce the Shah. So I
00:46:43.920thought the mullahs are a lot tougher than people give them credit for. And then the other thing
00:46:47.480that you need is proportionality, that the goods to be achieved are going to outweigh the losses
00:46:52.760incurred. And there too, it's just, it's a real country. These guys are really tough. They're a
00:46:58.380very evil regime. So they're willing to, to use all the sorts of tricks at their disposal. And
00:47:03.680on the, on the American front, people have PTSD from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. So they don't
00:47:10.180want a protracted military engagement. They don't want a ton of boots on the ground. So it's, it's
00:47:14.400a brutal kind of quagmire. The one thing I would say for president Trump's position here, trying
00:47:19.200to negotiate a way out of this thing is that many of our toughest presidents, not just many
00:47:25.400American presidents, but even some of our toughest presidents on matters of war and peace actually
00:47:31.380took the more dovish side. So you think of Ronald Reagan famously, and this one involves Iran after
00:47:36.600the Beirut barracks bombings. Reagan did not directly retaliate. He actually pulled the troops
00:47:41.020out of Lebanon. You think of Truman being reserved on war with China. You think of Eisenhower and
00:47:47.400Kennedy being more reserved on war with Vietnam. So I don't think that Trump is in an impossible
00:47:53.560situation here. He's in a brutal situation. He's in a very difficult situation. There's no real
00:47:58.460win available to him. So to your point, Megan, the reporting that says he's kind of sick of the
00:48:02.600war in Iran. Yeah, I get it. That's a big threat to the Republicans right now, even as we've got
00:48:07.760a lot of structural wins thanks to the courts, thanks to redistricting. So any way to wind this
00:48:13.600thing down, I think is probably the right thing to do, because the probability of ousting that
00:48:19.620regime under current political conditions, I think, is basically zero. Yeah, I totally agree
00:48:26.120with all that. Like, let's just get out. It's not going to be graceful. It's not going to look so
00:48:30.340great. President Trump's a great salesman. He can probably sell it as a win no matter what.
00:48:37.560Whether it is or it isn't, honestly, almost doesn't even matter at this point. It's like
00:48:41.600we have our own problems to worry about, including now political ones for the GOP
00:48:45.440that definitely need care and feeding. So let's let's just go whatever. I know that they control
00:48:50.900the strait. It's very complicated. But like New York Times reported last Monday that these
00:48:56.940Revolutionary Guard guys actually are somewhat mercenary, like money may speak to them. It may
00:49:03.000not just be this theocratic, you know, Allah type motivated action. And so if that's true,
01:00:34.800Everybody knows that Trump has upheld the Constitution, and people recognize that today,
01:00:40.340at the state level and at the federal level, the great threats to the constitutional order
01:00:44.620come from the Democrats. I mean, here they're talking about essentially throwing out the
01:00:48.580Supreme Court in Virginia. But what's so stunning is that the Democrats are getting knocked down
01:00:54.180on constitutional points every which way. I think a lot of people are going to be confused. They're
01:00:58.060going to think that the reason the redistricting in Virginia has gone down is because of the U.S.
01:01:03.480Supreme Court decision, Louisiana versus Calais, which said the Democrats can no longer racially
01:01:09.080discriminate in their gerrymandering, that that was a violation of the 14th Amendment. But no,
01:01:14.100this is actually different. The Democrats are getting struck down on their redistricting
01:01:17.200on multiple fronts at the federal level, at the state level. And all of this, Megan,
01:01:22.760brings back a memory to me. About two months ago, I was interviewing the House Speaker,
01:01:26.740Mike Johnson. And I said, you know, hey, Mr. Speaker, things are looking pretty bad for the
01:01:30.480midterms, huh? And he looks at me, he says, Michael, looks me dead in the eye. He says,
01:01:35.320Michael, I think we're going to grow the majority in the midterms. I said, well,
01:01:39.380what's in your coffee? Hold on. Can I have a sip of that? I don't know if you smoked something
01:01:43.700before this interview, but you know, he said, look to me dead in the eye. He says, I think we're
01:01:47.160going to grow the majority. And I said, well, I like the enthusiasm. I like the optimism, but
01:01:51.300I don't know. I don't know if I agree with that. Now that we are looking because of the Virginia
01:01:56.800Supreme Court decision, the U.S. Supreme Court decision, redistricting going on around the
01:02:00.500country, we are looking at a potential gain of 14 congressional seats for Republicans.
01:02:07.480I'm now thinking that House Speaker Mike Johnson is Babe Ruth calling his shot to center field.
01:02:12.000If this actually works out for Republicans, it's a big if. But if it does, that will be the greatest political call in the history of the U.S. Congress.
01:02:20.700I'm counting here because you've got, OK, yeah, yeah, 14. You have five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 14.
01:02:27.740Yes. And Democrats look like they're going to gain six seats from redistricting, which, you know, according to my math, is less than 14.
01:02:35.140So that's good. At least even I can do that.
01:02:39.240However, the problem is, the question is, how big will the swing likely be to Democrats?
01:02:49.800I think most non-Republican speaker people think the Democrats are going to pick up seats because the party out of power almost always does.
01:02:59.380And because of the poll numbers surrounding everything Trump is doing right now.
01:03:03.940unfortunately the president's numbers i mean across the board are in the bottom third i mean
01:03:09.960they're just really bad yeah it's rough and especially just as a political reality we were
01:03:13.640talking about the iran war it's not great i mean that's the that's the big wild card but you know
01:03:18.420the the point that the democrats can make is that the president's poll numbers and the gop's poll
01:03:23.120numbers are quite bad right now the point the republicans can make is that's true but democrats
01:03:27.720are also historically unpopular right now uh which is how you might get i don't know people
01:03:32.780are talking about a potential upset in the L.A. mayor's race. I'm pretty skeptical of that.
01:03:36.580But both parties are looking very, very bad. And then you have the wild card of the Iran war,
01:03:40.980which is that if the war continues to drag on and we have a recession or we just have surging gas
01:03:47.680prices or we right now housing is looking very shaky and obviously you get a lot of inflation
01:03:54.020the longer that the strait remains closed, all of that could have a very, very acute effect on
01:03:59.120the midterm elections. Frankly, that is what the Iranians are counting on. That's probably the
01:04:03.300chief aspect of their political strategy right now. And then what the Trump administration's
01:04:08.280counting on is that Iran just implodes before that happens. So that's that very dangerous game.
01:04:14.820But I agree with you. I mean, by all historical precedent, Republicans should be probably blown
01:04:19.620out of the water in the midterms. Whether or not these decisions from the courts can help to
01:04:25.780stop the tide, obviously that remains to be seen. Yeah. I mean, that certainly
01:04:30.400stems some of the bleeding, but you know, as I pointed out earlier in 2018, that was Trump's
01:04:36.800first term, his first midterms, the Republicans lost 40 seats. Now we also, I don't know,
01:04:45.340we expected a big Republican wave during president Biden's midterms. Remember in the middle of his
01:04:52.020term in 2022. And I remember talking to you that night and we didn't get it. The Republicans did
01:04:58.600take control of the House, but it was really slim. You know, they barely they barely had the margin
01:05:05.000and that slim margin has been relevant ever since. So it's like maybe that same dynamic will kick in
01:05:13.640here and save the Republicans to where like people are what they are and they don't really flip
01:05:19.500around and they're partisan voting anymore. And it's like, you know, I view it like, okay, so
01:05:26.020these people voted for Trump and they weren't all Republicans. It's like getting married and like
01:05:30.360your wife is like a size four and she's young and she's got the flaxen hair and the flowing dress
01:05:36.800and she makes you all your meals in the beginning. And then a couple of years into it, like she's
01:05:41.000gained a hundred pounds and she just sits on the couch all day and watches shows. The kids are
01:05:46.640unkempt and you never get a drink brought to you, never mind a meal made. And you're like,
01:05:51.080there's a hot, sexy lady at the office paying me attention. But then you get a little closer
01:05:56.220and the hot, sexy, lazy at the office is crazy. She wants to cut the penises off of your children.
01:06:01.880She wants to let millions of people into your home to take your job. You're like,
01:06:08.480eh, you know what? My original choice isn't looking so bad. So we're lucky over here on
01:06:15.180team's sanity that the left is so nuts. And it could save us. I certainly hope so. I hope that
01:06:22.900we have the discipline that when we lecherously show up to the office water cooler and stand over
01:06:28.580the desk of that beautiful looking woman who looks suspiciously like a mixture of Gavin Newsom and
01:06:34.480AOC, that we recognize it is not worth it. It is not. She's going to chop it off. It's not worth
01:06:40.620it as you said i agree and and yes you do actually see that reflected in some of the polls i mean
01:06:45.540obviously the the admin has has taken a hit but the democrats are looking really really bad there
01:06:51.800was that op-ed in the new york times just published yesterday i think it was maybe today
01:06:55.440that said that democrats need to stop talking about climate change which was their existential
01:07:00.820fundamentally religious issue for decades at this point i mean aoc made her career on the green new
01:07:07.380deal. Al Gore made his career on that PowerPoint movie. And the Democrats have been talking about
01:07:12.700this since 1972. Now they're saying, pull the plug on that. They're obviously trying to downplay
01:07:17.420the trans issue unsuccessfully, though, because they haven't changed their opinions at all.
01:07:21.720They're trying to downplay their support for open borders. They can't really even hide that.
01:07:25.560So we are lucky that the Democrats' strategy, they told us this months ago, was they're going
01:07:30.860to run like Abigail Spanberger in Virginia. Abigail Spanberger, who pretended to be a moderate and
01:07:35.500then immediately upon taking office, gave us the most left-wing agenda we'd ever seen in Virginia.
01:07:40.740The problem with that is we've now seen how it plays out. And so when you push these people
01:07:45.880even a little bit, you saw it in the California governor debate, you saw it in the LA mayor
01:07:49.820debate. When you ask them on any of these issues, do you want to give welfare to illegals? Do you
01:07:55.760want to just open up the borders to your country? They all say yes, they can't help it.
01:08:01.620And yeah, I mean, it's I always say the Republican Party is the worst party in the United States other than the Democrats.
01:08:07.880That's exactly it. That's what they have to bank on.
01:08:10.400It'll be interesting this month as Jerome Powell steps down from the Fed and we have his replacement come into power, you know, because I think Trump thinks the new guy will be more, you know, someone who can work with him on interest rates to try to get the economy going.
01:08:26.040But of course, the reason that Powell doesn't want to lower interest rates is he's still worried about inflation. Trump doesn't think that's a problem. But as inflation starts to gear up again, as a result of this oil problem, we're having this energy issue. I wonder whether the new guy will be inclined to lower interest rates. You know what I mean? Because inflation is more relevant right now than it was two months ago. That'll be an interesting thing to watch as we go into the summer.
01:08:52.040um and yeah the democrats have a lot they have a lot on their plate that they have to deal with
01:08:56.940too we'll see they got only the electorate can tell us its mood and we'll find out in about
01:09:01.580six months you know nothing drives inflation as reliably as as energy obviously and this is just
01:09:08.400one of these points that when you zoom out from the historical perspective i think this is what
01:09:11.820caused a lot of skepticism on the iran war is you know the way president trump talks about it i think
01:09:16.640he's totally sincere. I think he viewed this as a digression because it met his non-negotiable
01:09:22.620line, which is we can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. And reasonable minds might disagree about
01:09:27.340how close Iran was to a nuclear weapon. But he said, look, that's satisfied my criterion. So
01:09:31.820we're going to go there. But it's just going to be a little digression. Don't worry about it.
01:09:35.880We're going to put it in a compartment over here, and then we're going to get back to our agenda.
01:09:40.160And the problem, especially when it comes to war, but really with any geopolitical event is
01:09:44.780you can't just compartmentalize it all of a sudden there's so many externalities there's so many
01:09:49.880unintended consequences that yes to your point megan you might even be getting into issues with
01:09:55.160the fed because even if they were inclined to cut rates maybe now gas prices oil's driving
01:10:00.500inflation up a little too much because it raises cost of any good that's shipped and all of a
01:10:04.560sudden now that has an effect on housing and all you know these things spin out of control
01:10:08.740this is one reason that we conservatives are a little shyer about wielding the government than
01:10:14.040the left is the left thinks they can control everything in society. And really, you can't.
01:10:19.720Yeah. Well, AOC, you mentioned her. She has Green New Deal. That was her big thing. She also had
01:10:27.240pronouns in her Twitter bio, which have been removed. So those are two small victories as,
01:10:32.880you know, her green energy push gets demolished by her own party and she's taken out the pronouns.
01:10:39.160But she's on to a new thing, which she stole from Bernie Sanders.
01:10:43.140And here's, well, it's a bunch of disinformation, but it also gives you the highlight of where she's going.
01:11:42.320He was sacrificing a lot of his wealth in order to fight for the revolution.
01:11:46.480But we have some other data points as well.
01:11:48.180George Washington was not the single wealthiest person in the colonies at the time.
01:11:53.140He was pretty close, but not the single most.
01:11:55.380That would probably go to Robert Morris, who is one of the few founding fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution.
01:12:04.380the single wealthiest man in the colonies at the time of the revolution.
01:12:32.580So what I love about AOC's little history lesson here is not only is she a little bit off, she kind of messed around with a few facts, she is perfectly, 100% wrong.
01:12:46.900Her view is entirely diametrically opposed to the truth.
01:12:50.960And if anything, a reconsideration of the American Revolution should really make us love billionaires even more.
01:12:58.060i mean honestly like one of their biggest complaints was taxation without representation
01:13:04.180they didn't want england taking all of that money without them having any say in the matter so you
01:13:11.000have to have means in order to object to the government taking them something she conveniently
01:13:15.780ignores she failed on every front i don't know what they're teaching them at boston university
01:13:20.440right now michael but her year i think she was out she was out to lunch or she was too busy making
01:13:25.160those margaritas. Somebody who does show political promise, unlike AOC, is Spencer Pratt. You
01:13:32.140mentioned him. And this guy, it's been very fun to watch him go unleash a can of reality whoop-ass
01:13:38.820on our friends in California. Now, I want to start with what you said before. You remain
01:13:43.600skeptical. I remain skeptical, too, because it's California. I mean, what are the odds they're
01:13:50.580going to do the right thing. He's still trailing in the polls behind Karen Bass. The Polly market
01:13:55.920and Kalshi, you know, that's the betting markets, look at these two, shows Spencer significantly
01:14:01.660improving his odds since that debate of last week. But Karen Bass also significantly improved,
01:14:07.920and she's reportedly some 20 points ahead of him in the betting markets and double digits ahead of
01:14:13.300him in the actual polls. The other woman is basically imploded as a result of that debate.
01:14:20.580But you remain skeptical that Californians are actually going to do it.
01:14:24.800Notwithstanding, let me just show something from him.
01:15:20.580No girls doing hopscotch or jump rope. Nothing. Because this neighborhood, like so many others in L.A., really is suffering from a homelessness problem that becomes a drug problem doors away from where their children play.
01:15:38.340You know, one of the attack ads on Spencer Pratt, which I thought was a parody, came out and said, you know, Spencer Pratt doesn't want to give a bunch of your money to junkie bums.
01:15:53.120Spencer Pratt doesn't want to funnel all your cash to unions or whatever.
01:15:57.620And I thought, oh, this is clearly a right winger who is making a joke about this.
01:16:01.800No, apparently it was a real ad from an AFL-CIO union.
01:16:05.760You can read this in the Electoral Commission reports.
01:16:08.960And so they're completely out of touch, and Spencer Pratt is tapping into something real.
01:16:13.240This is why he can go on TV in news interviews and say, you know, they call me the reality star.
01:16:17.800Yeah, I'm the only candidate in touch with reality.
01:16:20.300The problem is what you mentioned, Megan, on the Calci and Polly market prediction markets, which is, yes, when he came out there at that debate and just completely dominated, you know, created the legend of Pratt Daddy just coming home and restoring order.
01:16:34.480Unfortunately, all that really did was get rid of Nydia Raman, who was the socialist from the city council.
01:16:40.900And you say, OK, well, at least you take the really far left candidate out.
01:16:44.400Well, we had a socialist on the city council running for mayor.
01:16:46.420But the current mayor, Karen Bass, was a card carrying communist.
01:16:50.940She was a member of an actual communist organization.
01:17:58.760One of my producers lives in California, Lauren, and she's she's given me about 40 soundbites from Spencer Pratt because she's so desperate to see him elected.
01:18:09.440She's, you know, a good she's a good, nice Orange County, California Republican.
01:18:14.060And those poor, reasonable people are left in a field of hard leftists who still like Karen Bass after she burned down their city.
01:18:22.980I mean, it's like, forget the homelessness.
01:18:26.740There's like there's no more Palisades. And yet she's leading in the polls. Here's a little bit more from Spencer. I want to show this. Oh, wait, we have the ad to which you refer that you you thought was an ad for him. But really, it was a it was an attack ad here in Sot. I think it's 19 from the AFL-CIO.
01:18:45.700Republican Spencer Pratt is the last thing Los Angeles needs for mayor.
01:18:51.280Pratt opposes using taxpayer money to build brand new houses for our unhoused neighbors,
01:18:56.320saying it's time for the homeless to get help or get out.
01:18:59.840Pratt thinks L.A. needs thousands more police officers rather than more social workers,
01:19:04.500and Republican Spencer Pratt thinks public employee unions should have less power, not more.
01:19:09.420L.A. is on the right track and needs to stay the course.
01:19:15.700oh my god that really is incredible spencer pratt doesn't want to kick puppies
01:19:21.720spencer pratt loves tasty apple pie like what are you who are you appealing to what is what is the
01:19:28.740argument it does show you something about the average california democrat like that
01:19:35.540that they thought that ad would be really effective and maybe it will be that's what's
01:19:38.960crazy like we're laughing but they're probably right they they're their neighbors probably
01:19:44.040loved what they wrote because you did you saw the katie porter debate right with with um steve
01:19:48.940helton and others that was the gubernatorial debate you saw it was like is it true that you
01:19:54.980want to continue using taxpayer money to fund health care for illegals and she's like absolutely
01:19:59.380of course that's what's humane it was like oh my gosh wow she's saying it out loud okay wait let
01:20:04.680me keep going with spencer because back to cbs um they did a 28 interview with the guy 28 minute
01:20:12.360interview. And it wound up in a three minute hit piece, he said. And we looked at it. It really was
01:20:19.800slanted. They only included, like they highlighted his time on reality TV, including a soundbite from
01:20:26.240it. They had a soundbite from a detractor rolling her eyes at him. And of all the great points he
01:20:32.980made, they used one 40 second soundbite. He spoke to them for a half an hour, but they had plenty
01:20:40.480of time for the Hills clips, uh, for his detractors clips. It's like, okay, what are we doing here?
01:20:46.540Um, here is a little bit from the interview and this is, uh, 15.
01:20:53.580Are you being strategic now or is this, is this the authentic Spencer Pratt?
01:20:57.420I'm standing in my airstream of my burned down house. So I'm being strategic to fight
01:21:01.760these people that have destroyed my life, my neighbor's life, all of Angelino's life. So yes,
01:21:07.040I'm being very strategic to win and save LA, but no, there's no strategy when you're standing in
01:21:13.080an airstream on your burnout town. You can't fake that. There's no bit to that. I would much rather
01:21:18.080be in my house feeding my hummingbirds and have my life back, but that wasn't God's path for me.
01:21:23.860And so now I'm going to undo the harm. These people are doing to a lot of people in the city
01:21:29.280of LA and back to this thing. For instance, they say, Oh, he seems so angry. Everyone I talked to
01:21:34.560in LA is angry. They're actually angrier than me because I have a beautiful two kids, a beautiful
01:21:38.940wife. Some people are alone and they're dealing with the destruction of their city, not feeling
01:21:44.320safe on the streets, all the disasters in this city. They're alone. At least I have my family.
01:21:50.100I was a professional villain. I was a TV character personally. And I don't regret one of those things
01:21:56.060because it was a show. I worked with the producers. I worked with the story writers and everything was
01:22:01.000fake. Everybody thought I was this bad boyfriend. 20 years later, I'm still with my wife. We have
01:22:05.400two beautiful kids. Okay. So that was a long clip from the outtakes, Michael. A small portion of
01:22:11.240that made it into the three-minute piece. But the three-minute and 30-second tape spot, which had
01:22:16.780just 40 seconds, 46 seconds of Pratt's interview, also included, let's see, this line about him.
01:22:26.720the 42-year-old former reality star who has no political experience is now a main character in
01:22:31.700the Los Angeles mayoral race. They featured debate clips with Karen Bass, including Karen Bass saying,
01:22:37.980for the first time, we've had a reduction of homelessness two years in a row because of
01:22:42.360policies that I have put in place. That's kind of favorable toward Karen Bass, don't you think?
01:22:46.620You really could have highlighted some other portions of that debate. And then they've got
01:22:50.360a political pundit in there who says it would be a hard road to convince a blue city like LA to vote
01:22:56.700for a candidate like Pratt, identifying him, quote, as not only a novice politician, but somebody who
01:23:02.220has pretty much aligned himself with Trump and Republicans. So he's now saying he's never going
01:23:09.280to give CBS an interview again, and that if he becomes mayor and gets reelected one time, that
01:23:15.140for the entire eight years, he will not be speaking to them. That's how mad he is about what
01:23:19.220they did. It does make you wonder whether it's even worth it, you know, to sit down with these
01:23:23.940outlets that are just going to do a piece like that about you. Yeah, it's very tempting because
01:23:28.860network news still has decent penetration, especially, you know, it doesn't play as much
01:23:34.880online. But among ordinary people who go out and vote, it is important to reach them. What's
01:23:40.960confounding about the CBS interview, the hit job on Pratt, is that CBS is supposed to be the most
01:23:47.540moderate of the three. And when Barry Weiss took over there, the promise was that it was going to
01:23:52.460be, look, she's not a conservative, but it was going to be at least a little more centrist,
01:23:56.760a little more fair. I myself, I've done interviews with CBS, and I thought they were
01:24:00.620actually more than fair to me. So the question is, why Pratt? Why are they going after Pratt?
01:24:06.740And I wonder if there's a pragmatic decision here, which is they don't think he's going to
01:24:12.200win, and so they're willing to kind of write him off and cast him to the side. This is all
01:24:17.000psychobabble. It's pure speculation. But it is a strange zag. After CBS had been positioning
01:24:24.000itself as being the network most fair and favorable to conservatives, why would they go
01:24:30.000out and really smack down the most exciting local candidate? That's such a joke. You know,
01:24:35.080that hasn't happened at all. You know, it's like, yes, they stated that because the Ellisons have
01:24:39.780some affinity for Trump. But Barry Weiss doesn't. If you ever read the free press, and I did all the
01:24:44.660time. It's not woke, but it's not pro-Trump. They don't like Trump. And that's her. She's not woke,
01:24:51.880except on the issue of Israel and anti-Semitism. She's very woke, as woke as they come on that.
01:24:56.260She's as identity politics favorable as BLM is to its issues. But she doesn't like Trump.
01:25:03.060So this line about him being, you know, he aligned himself with the maggot. Yeah. I mean,
01:25:08.020I'm sure she's not monitoring every piece that they do, but that line would not be a problem
01:25:13.980with the Barry Weiss. I know she'd be fine with that. We'll see. I'm rooting for him. I love what
01:25:20.480he's doing. And I think even if he loses this race, Michael, he may have a future in politics,
01:25:26.840notwithstanding. I don't know whether he'll throw his hat into a national race of some sort,
01:25:31.180But I think he's helping redefine who can run for office and how it can be done.
01:25:38.900You know, he's it's very that is very Trump like if you think about it, the way he's going about it.
01:25:44.220He just doesn't care. The mocking face when the other candidate was like making fun of me.
01:25:49.840He's like, that's great stuff. He's fearless.
01:25:54.120And Trump Trump himself is literally a reality TV star.
01:25:57.020So the parallels are pretty close. I thought Pratt's great response to this question of, you know, you don't have any experience in politics.
01:26:05.740What makes you think you could be a mayor is, well, it was actually Trump's response when he became the Republican nominee without ever having held public office.
01:26:13.180He says, look at what experience got us. Yeah, OK.
01:26:16.020Well, if experience in L.A. is burning down the Palisades while you're on another continent and the fire is being caused by one of your own, one of your own ideological comrades, this left wing arsonist, allegedly, then if that's experience, I want the opposite.
01:26:33.400I'd trust him a lot more with my home.
01:26:36.380What good has her experience done L.A.?
01:26:38.780I mean, it's just, look, if they continue to put Democrats in power after Gavin Newsom ruined their state and Karen Bass let it burn, they deserve what's coming their way.
01:26:50.280I love you Californians, but you deserve it because you can't just keep electing the same kinds of people and expecting different results.
01:26:57.760It's just that's not the way the world works.
01:32:12.660um colleagues uh kids who went to school with him in college he went to rutgers
01:32:18.380remember him as driven and ambitious um others recall him as socially awkward
01:32:24.820uh some say he could be aggressive while playing sports at rutgers he's from vienna virginia a
01:32:32.780wealthy suburb uh the first of nepalese immigrants firstborn i should say and that's about it so he
01:32:41.180He cycled through prestigious financial firms, including Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Carlyle Group, and an affiliate of Apollo Global Management, and so on, but never stayed at any one for a particularly long time and didn't make it at J.P. Morgan for a particularly long time.
01:32:56.080And then when he left J.P. Morgan, didn't make it at the next firm that he was with right before he filed this lawsuit for a particularly long time, all of which leaves us where, Michael Knowles?
01:33:04.960Well, look, maybe it's all a big misunderstanding, because if he initially claimed that his father had died, and then it turns out his father didn't die, but it was someone who was like a father to him, maybe there was someone at J.P. Morgan who was like a dominatrix to him.
01:33:21.200You know, it wasn't this girl, you know, sort of straddling him throughout the day at his cubicle.
01:33:26.640But maybe there was someone who was kind of like his, I don't know, sexual harasser.
01:33:33.100It's also very confusing because we were told initially that Mr. Chirayu, whatever, he had a wife whom he called a, pardon the phrase, it's from the reporting, who was a fish head, he said.
01:36:24.200and in that time found a new job and left it already.
01:36:28.480Okay, when someone wants to come work for Michael Knowles,
01:36:32.080You look at the resume and one of the first things you look for is, okay, what other jobs have they had and how long did they hold them?
01:36:39.680Because if it's little short, less than one year stints, this person is the problem, not the job.
01:36:47.420Yeah, it's all sorts of red flags here.
01:36:49.520And then even just the specificity of the supposed episodes, like the one you referenced it earlier.
01:36:55.740So I'm not, you know, I'm not telling tales at a school where he says that she came up to him, gave him multiple drugs, supposedly pleasured him, and he cried tears, not of joy, tears of joy maybe you could understand from this guy, but tears, I just, nothing, like every single red flag for scammer is going off here.
01:37:20.400And I do feel for this woman, assuming that this is all bogus, which I think we mostly do.