2 Liberals vs. 1 Conservative: BAR FIGHT | Michael Knowles, Brian Recker, & Ryan Basham
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 16 minutes
Words per minute
208.46513
Harmful content
Misogyny
41
sentences flagged
Hate speech
78
sentences flagged
Summary
On this episode of Bar Fight, Ben and Michael debate whether or not political violence is a left-wing problem, and whether it can be stopped. Plus, a new segment called Bar Fight Live, where the audience picks the topics and the barflies debate them.
Transcript
00:00:06.020
We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets.
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And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes.
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Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do.
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00:00:34.260
With a towing capacity of 3,500 kilograms and a weighting depth of 900 millimeters,
00:00:48.380
It's up to you. Good luck. Have fun. Don't f*** it up.
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I'm not controlling anyone. I'm just describing marriage.
00:00:56.380
Whatever you do in your marriage is your f***ing business.
00:00:58.260
Okay, and we have no from the libs and we have yes from a married man who has a good time.
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Is splitting a family apart political violence?
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I know you've decided that all comments that paint white man in a bad light is bad.
00:01:25.660
An advisor to Joe Biden's totally legitimate 2020 campaign, Ryan Basham.
00:01:30.860
Nashville's premier beverage-fueled brawl live at John Rich's Redneck Riviera.
00:01:43.820
The show where I, Michael Knowles, go head-to-head with two esteemed interlocutors on topics chosen by you, our most esteemed barflies.
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I've never debated an advisor to an auto pen before. This should be fun.
00:02:00.780
We have each brought three topics to the table.
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The audience chooses the topics. We will duke it out.
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And then our eminently sober patrons can come up to the microphones to pick a fight with any of us.
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If you want to fight me, you go to the blue microphone.
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If you want to fight either of my wonderful guests, you go to the red microphone.
00:02:33.800
You know, Christian nationalists accuse Zoran Mandani of wanting to institute Islamic Sharia law
00:02:39.660
because they are projecting their own desires for dominance onto him.
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I didn't actually want that one, if I'm honest. That was a producer pick.
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My first claim is the people who are most confident about gender affirming care are the mainstream medical community.
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It's not fun for some people, but it is true.
0.53
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Mine is that political violence is a distinctly left-wing problem.
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Start with something that's just blatantly not true.
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Do we, I know, we have a decibel counter here to figure out which topic you all picked.
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It was hard to pick because I thought it broke because it read nothing on the first two.
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I'm actually a little upset about that. I wanted to do the transgender one.
1.00
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I hate that things are turning out well for you.
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Maybe at the end. Maybe at the end we'll get it in.
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Okay. Political violence is a distinctly left-wing phenomenon.
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The Center for Strategic and International Studies just came out and admitted this,
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No less a liberal outlet than the Atlantic admitted it.
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And this is based on data that systematically exclude left-wing violence.
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It's not counting clear left-wing ideological violence
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like the Covenant School shooting that happened here in Nashville.
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Transgender shooter targeted Christian children.
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It's not even counting an experience that I had.
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I was at the University of Pittsburgh two years ago.
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who are members of a formal Antifa cell, the Torch Antifa Network.
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They throw an explosive at the building when I walk on stage.
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Not counted on any register as left-wing violence.
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So even excluding all the big left-wing violence,
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terrorism today in America is a left-wing problem.
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But what you're actually lying about from that study,
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the study actually says that this year is the first time in 30 years
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that left-wing violence has outpaced right-wing violence
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because historically it has always been white nationalist right-wing militant violence
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that has by far been the greater historic problem.
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Only right now, in a moment where authoritarian fascism
00:05:06.820
is creating police states throughout the country
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and Trump's secret police is going around brutalizing and kidnapping people,
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are we seeing people respond with violence, which is understandable
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When you create a violent society, no wonder there are resistance.
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Is splitting a family apart political violence?
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Or is it only political violence when it's not masked thugs doing it?
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It seems like political violence when a masked thug tears a family apart, Michael.
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Okay, we can establish our terms, so political violence, as it's counted by even the left-wing groups,
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is when the violence is conducted in furtherance of an ideological motive,
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Like tearing people apart and sending them to deportation centers surrounded by alligators?
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No, enforcing immigration law is not ideological violence.
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Sending people back to countries they're not even born in?
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Well, they weren't born in this country and they don't belong here either,
1.00
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You just clap for people to be sent back to countries that they weren't even born in?
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Do you know those are real people you're talking about?
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I said that the study came out and it said that right now in America, left terrorism is on the left.
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Well, you left out, but it's the first time in history that it's been hired, this year specifically.
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But then I think the thing you have to answer, to my point, is that the CSIS study, CSIS is a left-wing organization, even they're admitting the problems on the left now.
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The federal data, all of the other studies that we have exclude most of the left-wing violence, including BLM, which left dozens of people dead, a billion dollars in property damage, including the two transgender shootings, and including the Antifa attack on me.
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You're more worried about dented cop cars than families being torn apart.
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I'm just saying that it's violence, and you're changing the subject to immigration because you know that left-wing violence is the chief problem.
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What I would say is that when you are militarizing cities, that the governors are saying, we actually don't need you here.
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You are actually instigating violence, and Trump wants that violence.
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So that you don't pay attention to the Epstein files.
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So as I understand it, my friend and interlocutor here has no answer on the left-wing terrorism problem.
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So he wants to talk about immigration, he wants to talk about Jeffrey Epstein, he wants to talk about any other topic.
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Well, that's good because many left-wingers do not.
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Well, actually, so there was a study came out, YouGov, after Charlie was assassinated,
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that showed that very liberal people are eight times as likely to justify political violence as very conservative people,
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and 26% of young liberals are likely to justify political violence, many multiples that of young conservatives.
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I think you have to take that in the context of what else is happening, though.
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A couple years ago, those numbers were flipped.
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I think we're in a situation right now where the outsiders are the liberals and raging against the machine.
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Yeah, I mean, the vast majority of credible studies on political violence from the last 30 years have found that it's like an 85 to whatever split.
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But can you address the point that I raised answering that?
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The fact that the BLM violence was not counted as ideological in virtually any of the registers,
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the fact that an Antifa attack on me that resulted in federal prosecution and a guy in federal prison was not counted as left-wing political violence,
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the fact that the transgender shootings are not counted as political violence, can you address that?
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Because if you can, then what you're saying is the numbers were cooked for years.
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First of all, I haven't read those studies to know the detailed definition.
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But also, we already have a data collection problem when it comes to crime anyway.
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All violence is bad, but we, and by the way, some of this is enforced by federal law,
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have a horrible time trying to track violence in this country.
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And you know what's making it harder to track is that the department,
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Trump's Department of Justice, actually removed a study following Charlie Kirk's very, very reprehensible assassination.
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After that happened, they removed a study that says that right-wing violence has led to 520 deaths since 1990,
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They didn't remove the study in the sense that the study still exists.
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They're just pointing out, as governments are wont to do,
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that new data and better data should be preferred to old data that are inaccurate and that exclude left-wing violence.
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But I do think we should look at why it's happening and who's instigating it.
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If the violence is coming from the left, my question is not,
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well, let's figure out why they're committing all that violence.
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Trump is militarizing cities and picking fights.
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Yes, he wants a violent society to justify all the other things it's doing.
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So you're saying the right-wingers are asking for it.
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You're saying Trump is enforcing immigration law and therefore the left is becoming violent.
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No, I'm saying that when the right uses fascist authoritarian tactics,
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People will- yeah, they're literally putting pressure on people.
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If my home was invaded, something bad would happen.
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So the left is committing violence at higher rates than the right,
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and they're justifying it at much higher rates than the right because of Trump.
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Do you think that Trump should just militarize cities
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when the governors are saying we're actually totally safe here
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Well, we've had federal law for well over a century
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that says that when cities fail to enforce order
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every single one of these are instances of situations
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that the local police were already trained and prepared to handle.
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that has been affected by this has tried to find a polite way to say,
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no, we had it, but we're going to work with you because you're here.
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People like to do that, but every place in America-
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and we like to blame big cities as violent places,
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If you're in a rural place, people still get murdered
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just less often because there are fewer people.
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I was just at Raising Cane's with some friends,
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that probably, like, aren't Republicans in here.
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Like, that's not, that's probably not going to foster,
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it, there is a real white male violence problem.
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It's another white guy who got radicalized online.
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we have a radicalization problem with white men.
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And it seems to me that if you want to fix a problem,
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you have to first identify what the problem is.
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you said if someone came into your house uninvited,
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for the people who are here illegally and uninvited?
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the less crime there is in that community per capita.
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Most people who are here illegally did not.
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I have a whole sentence that you're interrupting.
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if all you've done is been in this country without papers,
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Well, I'm terribly sorry to hear of your experience.
00:34:17.360
if there's a night I don't want to have sex
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01:01:00.400
We already have government-provided health care.
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because what is happening in Canada right now...
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and other countries is that in our country, there's a middleman called health insurance
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companies that rake in $71 billion in profits. And all they do, they don't provide health care.
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They deny health care. They are a middleman that extracts, making it more complicated.
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They stand between us and the doctors. No other country deals with that. That's our broken system.
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I feel like I'm back in 2009 before we were supposed to have fixed all of that.
01:07:04.320
Okay. No, you didn't let the conservatives stop that. The only thing that would fix this
01:07:08.560
is Medicare for all. That's fine. Yes. Hey there. Brian, super happy to have this debate with you
01:07:15.880
guys. I actually missed this about our country. Just having spirited debate. We can disagree and
01:07:20.260
have fun. I found myself. I'm wasted. I'm a Republican. I found myself agreeing with some
01:07:25.600
of the points you guys made. So thank you for being here. My question is around raising the
01:07:29.360
corporate tax rate. That's a common Democrat talking point. When we look at the Kamala campaign,
01:07:35.720
a microcosmic example of government overspending, right? You give her a billion dollars. She goes
1.00
01:07:41.200
$20 million in debt. How can you defend the idea of giving politicians, non-business operators more
01:07:47.160
and more money and somehow that'll solve the government's problems? Well, I'm not saying
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that the government is perfect at money spending. I think what we're talking about here is that every
01:07:57.100
other first world nation gets more tax out of their corporations than we do. So all I'm saying,
01:08:01.920
all I'm saying is the revenues are higher here and we somehow get less of it. That's all.
01:08:07.700
That's all. Next question. And if we weren't, and if we were getting as much out of our corporations
01:08:12.360
here as they are in Ireland, we would have a better funded government. I always, I turn to our
01:08:17.160
friend at the VIP table. To me, he is more reliable than the bell. I would love for you to interject
01:08:21.480
with a non sequitur. All right. That's the end of round three. Now, folks, we need to know who won.
01:08:26.320
I don't even know what that round was about. I don't. Mr. Davies picked some stupid topic. And then
01:08:31.900
we ended up talking about health care, Jeffrey Epstein. I just want to agree that we haven't
01:08:36.200
talked about Epstein enough, in my opinion. And we haven't talked about him nearly enough.
01:08:40.300
Who wants us to talk about Epstein more? Maybe the next round. Everybody line up who has a thought
01:08:45.440
about Epstein. Okay. Now there's a question. Who won that round? Whatever that round was. Was it
01:08:52.900
Ryan? This guy. Was it, it was, technically it was Ryan's topic. It was it Ryan?
01:09:03.340
Was it me? It's about, it's like 30, 33, 33, 34. What do we, what do we think?
01:09:11.580
I think you got the round. Thank you, everybody. I think Michael Knowles got the round.
01:09:14.320
What a shock. Hold on. I want a recount. I don't want it to seem like it was the 2020 election
01:09:20.520
and completely rigged. I want to know, what is, it was, who here, who here thinks it was
01:09:25.540
Brian? See, that's, well, who here thinks it was Ryan? Oh, you guys go on. Who here thinks
01:09:38.400
it was me? I kind of want to give it to Ryan just cause, but what do you think? Let's do it
01:09:44.860
just cause. All right. Ryan's got it. Ryan got it. Hey. I've always wanted to win on a
01:09:50.480
technicality. Okay. That's great. Okay. Now a much more important decision. Who won the
01:09:55.760
VIP? There was no one. Oh, there are wrong answers. I don't know. That was, there's no
01:09:58.960
clear winner to me. They were all interesting. I like the guy with the beard. The guy with
01:10:02.360
the beard. He had a lot of, the older men, the older gentleman. You think it was, oh, the
01:10:05.360
older gentleman. Yes. Where was the, from Minnesota? Oh, the Minnesota guy. Wait, no, hold on.
01:10:11.040
Wait, where was the older? All right. That's fine. I think, I feel like he should get it
01:10:14.100
just cause of his accent. Yeah, it was good. How about with that? Oh, yeah. How about
01:10:17.500
with that? Okay. Well, he won there. Yeah, yeah. You are going to the VIP table. Thank
01:10:22.800
you. Copy and Bars over there in the VIP for you there. Hey, yeah, of course. Thanks,
01:10:25.480
man. What's up, bro? Okay. I hope it's okay that I'm standing now. This chair and I don't
01:10:29.560
get along. Yeah, I know. Hold on. Wait, wait, wait, did you start standing? I feel
01:10:31.560
unsafe. It was already weird and then somehow it just got lower. I feel like it's my last
01:10:35.600
relationship. Now, since you're at the VIP table, my dear friends who are
01:10:41.020
over there, did we solve the world's problems or is there something else that we need to
01:10:45.900
hash out before we turn the music back on and all go get another drink? You know, I'm hesitant
01:10:51.820
to say this because I feel that it's going to elicit a big bellow of booze. A bellow of
01:10:57.160
booze. I, in fact, do want a big bellow of booze. I am astonished. I don't want to, I don't
01:11:03.520
want to be like clipped into whatever. So honestly, I don't really want to sit against
01:11:07.060
people. Too late. Too late. It's too late. This is the wrong show. But I am astonished
01:11:11.940
at the amount of booze around or considering the Epstein thing being considered a deflection
01:11:18.240
point when I think that, like, even in my walk over here, so many of you who have been
01:11:23.220
booing at the Epstein things also shook my hand and thanked me for sharing my story of
01:11:27.120
surviving trafficking. And I also feel that the, that this current administration and the
01:11:31.860
platform ran so much on exposing the Epstein files and saying that really anybody that was
01:11:37.160
suppressing the files probably had something to gain from suppressing them. So my thought
01:11:41.340
is, I don't feel that it's been fully addressed. I feel that it's like a lot of this is a lot
01:11:45.960
of deflection from the Epstein files. Let's just ask Michael, Michael, do you think Trump
01:11:49.680
should release the Epstein files? And do you think that everybody exposed as a pedophile in
01:11:53.440
those files should be imprisoned, potentially impeached? Yes. Democrat or Republican?
01:11:57.860
Yeah, I think, look, I'm obviously, I'm all for maximal transparency that doesn't like,
01:12:03.700
you know, compromise national security or whatever. Hedging coming in three, two.
01:12:05.860
No, obviously, you can't like, you can't just release it. No, I'm so I'm all for a lot of
01:12:09.580
transparency, especially on that issue. We always say national security though, right? Like
01:12:13.020
every time it's like, let's get transparency, then it's like national security. And so you know
01:12:17.260
that that's always the card. Every single time the military industrial plays every time. National
01:12:21.800
security. So it's a great point because I'm all for, you know, releasing, especially because
01:12:27.340
it's an issue of public interest. We have already released like a ton of the Epstein files, but I'm
01:12:32.460
all for getting more so long as it doesn't incriminate innocent people, which, you know,
01:12:36.940
can be unfortunate. Like there were, there were accusations that were made by some of the supposed
01:12:40.920
Epstein victims that were later retracted by those supposed victims. So you can't, you know,
01:12:44.700
you can't have the government defaming people. It's a dicey topic to go over victim claims though.
01:12:48.420
That's, that's dangerous. No, but in the case of like Virginia Giuffre, she personally retracted some
01:12:52.600
of her claims against people. So in that case, you wouldn't want people to be defamed when even
01:12:57.000
the, the, uh, uh, you know, accuser is retracted. When people are getting killed and death threats
01:13:03.220
are going out. That makes sense. But multiple victims have accused Trump there. And I just think
01:13:09.800
the Trump thing is ridiculous. The Trump thing is ridiculous. If you hadn't campaigned on it,
01:13:12.400
like it wasn't a problem for him. That's the, he invited that attention. The Trump thing is ridiculous.
01:13:16.200
If, if Trump were seriously implicated in the Epstein files, I promise you the party that was in power
01:13:21.160
that tried to prosecute him four times, that tried to kick him off the ballot, that raided his home
01:13:25.400
and that justified killing him would have released the information. I promise you that.
01:13:28.840
You don't think he knew what was going on? You promise? I promise. Okay. I can't wait for the,
01:13:33.620
they tried, they justified killing him. Have you read what came out today?
01:13:37.480
Have you read what came out today? I haven't read all of the, you know, dossiers. I feel like
01:13:41.780
just as a political analyst, like it looks bad to be hiding it now. I'm not saying he's guilty of
01:13:47.380
anything. I'm just saying it's a party foul politically to like have this thing. I'm not
01:13:51.700
giving you all the information. It looks bad. The whole admin campaigned on releasing all the files
01:13:55.940
and they did release a ton of files. And we haven't, as we mentioned, some are released today. So
01:14:00.740
obviously they did do that. I guess my, obviously they did do what? Released a ton of files. Okay.
01:14:05.220
That's the same as releasing all the files. Literally the, literally the slogan is release all the files
01:14:10.020
and he has not done that. They've released some emails today. Right. But I guess, I guess the emails,
01:14:14.180
by the way, said that Trump knew about the girl. I guess then my question though, is if you were
01:14:18.180
to release accusations that are unsubstantiated, that haven't been followed up with prosecutions,
01:14:23.060
some of which have been retracted, certainly that would be massive prosecutorial misconduct.
01:14:26.820
Oh yeah, I agree. No party would do that. Yeah. I agree with that generally,
01:14:29.780
but I think if you're the president, if you're the leader of the free world and you've made a thing
01:14:32.660
about it and then, then you defame innocent people. I don't know. That's crazy.
01:14:37.140
I feel like I'm all for more transparency if you can get it.
01:14:39.860
Stacey Williams said that Trump and Epstein gripped her while smiling at each other like
01:14:44.100
a twisted game. Okay. All right. This over here with the bell. Okay.
01:14:49.060
Shut up. Time to go now. It's okay. Do we do a, I don't even, do we do a, who won that round?
01:14:55.220
I don't even know. Was that a round? No, no, no. Does that count? I don't know if that counts.
01:14:58.180
All right. Where are we? But he's voting for me anyway. Thank you. I appreciate that.
01:15:01.540
This guy right here is having a great time. I appreciate that. And so is the guy behind him.
01:15:03.860
Now, folks, in my opinion, nobody wins a bar fight. There are only losers. So we're not going
01:15:10.020
to vote for the winner. Okay. We're going to vote for who lost. Wow. This is going to feel great.
01:15:16.980
This is an audience vote. Not before the vote. First up, who here thinks that Brian lost?
01:15:29.620
Yeah. An antipathy vote. Who here thinks that Ryan lost?
01:15:37.860
I don't think yet. You think he lost more than Brian? Maybe.
01:15:40.500
Who are you, my ex? Who here thinks that I lost?
01:15:45.860
That was kind of even. I don't know. I don't know. Who do we think it was?
01:15:49.380
Should we try it again? Who here thinks that our hippie friend won?
01:15:57.620
Yeah. Nobody knows what happened, but you talked.
01:15:59.860
All right. Thank you so much for being here. It's absolutely wonderful.
01:16:03.300
And I say that our hippie friend buys the next round. Thank you very much for being here. See you next time.