The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.000 Folks, very excited to say I will be at the Zeal for America 250 rally this June 13th.

00:00:05.040 I will be there with His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke for a powerful day of prayer

00:00:10.820 and conversation as we mark America's 250th birthday.

00:00:14.340 If you are within driving distance of La Crosse, Wisconsin, I strongly encourage you to be

00:00:19.140 there in person.

00:00:20.420 If you can't make it, we will also be offering a live stream so you can still take part.

00:00:24.340 Go to catholicvote.org slash america250 to get your tickets or to sign up to watch.

00:00:31.920 When you travel well, your KLM Royal Dutch Airlines ticket takes you to more than just your destination.

00:00:38.640 It takes you to front row views, voices lost in the music, and new shared memories.

00:00:44.640 And when the last song fades, the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines crew is here to ensure your journey home hits all the right notes.

00:00:57.300 KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. When you travel, travel well.

00:01:02.100 Is there a bespoke GLP-1 that primarily deals with melting the fat in your brain?

00:01:08.400 because that's basically the only explanation i can have for it truly does look like this is this

00:01:16.500 is this is mental illness like this is not it is you know what if you're gonna surf those waves

00:01:23.800 you gotta surf hard man you gotta you gotta surf those waves all right so um okay we can sit here 0.52

00:01:28.660 and we can make fun of our competitors or we can start friendly fire so here we go already folks

00:01:34.480 Welcome to Friendly Fire.

00:01:35.880 As you can see, we've murdered my usual compatriots 0.99

00:01:38.160 and we've replaced them with replicants. 1.00

00:01:40.540 We have Ben Dominich and obviously Isabel Brown is here as well.

00:01:45.340 And, you know, it'll be fun.

00:01:46.940 It'll be fun, guys, because I have no idea what we're talking about,

00:01:49.240 but we'll make something up as we go along.

00:01:55.400 And again, don't panic.

00:01:58.700 Our friends Michael, Matt, and Andrew are all dead.

00:02:01.280 No, they all had conflicts today.

00:02:02.400 actually michael is traveling to the uk he was not banned from the uk we think i mean at least

00:02:07.980 as long as they didn't pick up my phone call so first of all welcome to both of you

00:02:11.520 thank you so much it's good to be with you and i think isabel i think we have to start off with

00:02:16.580 our tribute to scott pelly by just you know chewing the edge of our our glasses very very

00:02:22.640 pensively pour one out pour one out for the end of the pompous uh democrat uh would-be anchor

00:02:31.560 newsman who has apparently been

00:02:33.680 in combat. Who knew?

00:02:35.680 That was great. Did you see

00:02:37.680 that? Isabel, did you see that he actually

00:02:39.500 in his letter, he was like, I've been in

00:02:41.760 combat. He literally said he was in combat, which is like

00:02:43.740 firing a weapon in anger, or you mean

00:02:45.580 that you were just a war correspondent?

00:02:47.500 Shades of Hillary Clinton

00:02:49.500 saying that they fired at her plane in Bosnia or whatever

00:02:51.700 that was. And Brian Williams.

00:02:53.660 Literally.

00:02:55.200 The only thing I can think of when it

00:02:57.640 comes to Pelley, and I've thought this for years,

00:02:59.580 and I should preface this by saying,

00:03:01.560 I did work for my sins for CBS News way back in the day.

00:03:06.000 It was a very fun night in 2016, very memorable.

00:03:09.260 I had an argument with Jamel Bowie that made him leave the bureau, and he had to walk around

00:03:13.640 the city, and then he wrote about it for Slate.

00:03:15.720 The thing that I remember the most from the time there is that every time I talked to

00:03:20.500 Scott Pelley, he reminded me of the doofy anchor from Die Hard, who, you know, they

00:03:26.280 had that scene where the psychologist is talking about Helsinki syndrome. And he says, Helsinki,

00:03:32.600 Sweden. And he says, Finland. And it's just like, that is who he is. It's pompous, but with

00:03:41.100 confidence. The confidence is the thing that matters the most, not actually getting the news

00:03:45.960 right. And I just find this whole thing very hilarious that people are now saying,

00:03:49.440 this is such a loss to the industry. 60 Minutes is dead. The ghost of Andy Rooney is rolling in

00:03:54.900 it's grave. It's terrible. Isabel, I have a question for you because you're now a member

00:03:59.760 of the younger generation. The two Bens are old people now. And so I did want to ask Isabel about 1.00

00:04:05.680 whether she's heard of a show called 60 Minutes, whether it exists in her opinion, and if so,

00:04:10.500 whether it is indeed relevant to you that Scott Pelley has been defenestrated as the anchor of

00:04:15.360 60 Minutes or whether you're like, why is this old man jabbering at me? And I don't mean me,

00:04:18.280 I mean Scott Pelley. Hey, Ben. Yeah, I can hear you. Sorry, my camera's having some issues. So

00:04:22.100 we're working through that. Gotta love real-time TV for the internet here. Is 60 Minutes remotely

00:04:28.180 relevant to me in any way? No, except for maybe the butt of a few great jokes on hit sitcom TV

00:04:34.060 shows. I have zero opinion whatsoever about who hosts it because turns out no one under the age

00:04:39.400 of like 67 watches 60 Minutes, but little do people remember in the realm of integrity journalism

00:04:47.100 who are so outraged by all of this that it was literally just a few months ago that 60 Minutes

00:04:51.420 deceptively edited the entire interview with Kamala Harris right before the election.

00:04:55.760 Like our standards for journalistic integrity are in the frigging toilet, probably is why

00:05:00.400 the Daily Wire is so important and so necessary in our culture today.

00:05:04.140 But I'm really excited to see Barry Weiss clean house and bring in a new standard of

00:05:07.680 journalistic integrity again.

00:05:09.680 Yeah, so other than I do have to I do have to ask you about it's very sad.

00:05:12.760 It's very sad that Isabel Brown is not familiar with the great works of Morley Safer.

00:05:16.500 I mean in the in the ranks I mean if we have to do like top five douchey anchors um and we have

00:05:24.660 to exempt present company uh then who exactly would we put on that list of douchey I mean Scott

00:05:30.160 Pelley ranks really high like the swarm factor on Scott Pelley was really really really high

00:05:35.680 uh and so him going he may be apex predator you know in terms of the ones that that got that have

00:05:41.600 gotten taken out. I mean, I still think it's hard to beat Dan Rather. I mean, just the entire

00:05:47.600 experience. We're old enough. We lived through that. The pompousness around Rathergate, having

00:05:52.460 a movie come out about it that entirely, it's tried to spin what happened there with a scandal

00:05:59.240 that I'm sure happened probably when Isabel wasn't even alive. But one of the things that I think we

00:06:04.600 can take away from this, I don't know if what Barry is doing will work. I don't know if it'll

00:06:09.400 work as TV. But the truth is that these properties have all been so defunct for so long. And the only

00:06:15.300 reason that people watch 60 Minutes in this day and age is that they fell asleep during a

00:06:20.820 particularly bad NFL game on CBS and then just left their TV on. So that's the only reason we

00:06:27.840 got that kind of lead in. I mean, I think that's true. I also think that this bizarre kind of

00:06:33.160 false narrative that 60 Minutes was somehow objective journalism center, obviously not true.

00:06:37.620 And I said right at the beginning when Barry took over CBS News that were it I, I would have just canned everyone who is the deep state CBS News because those people were definitely there.

00:06:46.640 And I'm glad that I think retroactively she's having to clean house and I'm glad that she's doing it.

00:06:51.380 OK, so I want to move on from a person who is not relevant to most of our lives, Scott Pelley, to the situation over in Iran.

00:06:58.760 So obviously a lot of heartburn on, I think, all sides over what exactly the US strategy is over in Iran right now.

00:07:06.040 Do we have a strategy?

00:07:06.860 What the hell is going on? I have to admit that I'm a little bit bewildered by the Trump

00:07:12.800 administration strategy right now. I'm not sure exactly what they are trying to do. It seems like

00:07:17.220 there are a few outcomes here. There could be a really bad outcome. To me, the worst outcome,

00:07:21.260 what an L actually looks like is we relieve all the sanctions. We don't get the nuclear dust. We

00:07:25.500 don't get an end to the nuclear program. They use all that money to rebuild their ballistic missiles

00:07:29.960 and their terror apparatus. And we link a stop to Israel's actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon

00:07:35.880 to the reopening of the strait because that would basically put Iran in a better position

00:07:39.500 than they started the war if that were to happen, if the sanctions get released. 0.51

00:07:42.900 That is the worst case scenario.

00:07:44.700 And then there, to me, is like the best case scenario, which I don't think that we're going

00:07:47.740 to get, which would be the United States bombing Harg Island and the oil facilities and basically

00:07:52.380 putting the regime on its last legs and then basically saying, OK, we'll call it a day.

00:07:57.500 We're done here.

00:07:58.300 You want to handle the Strait of Hormuz, UAE, Qatar, Saudi, go for it.

00:08:01.400 I don't think that's what's going to happen.

00:08:02.560 And then there's sort of the third case scenario, which is we do that stuff, but we don't bomb the oil fields, which I think is probably the most plausible at this point.

00:08:10.940 Let's be clear. Every time the Trump administration says a deal is forthcoming, the Iranians try to dunk on him. 0.97

00:08:16.680 And so there is no deal that is forthcoming that will be anything good. 1.00

00:08:19.580 And I think that when people say, was this a good idea, was it a bad idea?

00:08:22.560 Like every other war, you only know whether it was a good idea or a bad idea in retrospect.

00:08:27.140 Some wars that start off bad and well, some wars that start off well and poorly.

00:08:31.520 But we're not going to know until we hit the endgame here.

00:08:33.820 But I don't know where you're at on this, man.

00:08:37.020 So in the interest of adding some fire to the friendly fire, let me give the case from

00:08:42.020 kind of the other side, even though I don't agree with it.

00:08:43.960 The case from basically Republicans on Capitol Hill is that the Trump administration kind

00:08:49.300 of went into this believing that they had plans that could deal with with Iran doing

00:08:55.140 basically playing the cards that it's played with mining the straight, that they expected

00:09:00.040 more help from the Europeans who obviously, you know, the ballistic missile program that the 0.53

00:09:05.980 Iranians have can reach into basically every, you know, major city in Europe, particularly in 0.94

00:09:12.000 Western Europe, which I think was a shock to people when they saw those concentric circles

00:09:15.720 and the like, and that they, for some reason, you know, have been surprised by the way that 1.00

00:09:21.520 the Iranians have approached this in a way that they shouldn't have been. I don't know that that's

00:09:25.560 true or not, but that's basically the message that you hear when you talk to Republicans on

00:09:29.220 Capitol Hill. And so they're just trying to save their asses. They're trying to basically say, 0.99

00:09:33.540 you know, if we lose in November, then it's just going to be another impeachment and more

00:09:38.480 investigations and all these other things. And so the president needs to wrap this up as quickly

00:09:43.360 as possible so that we're going to have cheap gas prices in the summer. I don't think the president

00:09:47.620 buys that at all. I think the president is basically saying, no, as he explicitly said

00:09:52.940 this past week, you know, he doesn't care. He's not thinking about the midterms. He's thinking

00:09:56.600 about the long term. He's thinking about Iran with a nuclear weapon. He's thinking about,

00:10:01.900 you know, the future essentially and his legacy. And that does not necessarily matter when it

00:10:07.580 comes to the plight of Republicans in the House of Representatives who spend more time just kind

00:10:13.340 of picking at each other and fighting than they do actually doing anything functional.

00:10:17.200 So from my perspective, that's basically what this tug of war has been. And Republicans on Capitol

00:10:22.080 Hill are ticked off at him anyway because of the things that he's done when it came to Senate

00:10:26.200 endorsements, the Cassidy thing, the Cornyn thing, you know, all this other stuff. And so I think

00:10:31.460 they're just looking out for their, you know, they're just engaged in CYA and the administration

00:10:36.540 is being affected by that. And that's why I think that they're kind of playing this in the way that,

00:10:41.500 as you say, and I agree, doesn't make a lot of sense and doesn't really deal with the problem

00:10:46.780 as it stands and could ultimately end up being just a bad deal. I think the one thing that we

00:10:52.260 can have in terms of some confidence, though, is that the president doesn't want to be remembered

00:10:56.500 for making a bad deal. He hated the Iran deal. He hated Barack Obama over it. And so the degree

00:11:02.960 of confidence that you have in Donald Trump to kind of cut a good deal on this is basically the

00:11:08.420 test here. Yeah. So, Isabel, where are you at on all this? Obviously, it didn't go, I think,

00:11:14.380 so far as well as I would have wanted it to go, because I think, frankly, the president shouldn't

00:11:19.460 cease-fired in late April, early May. I think that it hasn't gone nearly as poorly as critics

00:11:24.380 of the war are suggesting, where they say it's a catastrophic failure for the United States. I

00:11:27.520 just don't see any evidence at all that this is a quote-unquote catastrophic failure. But that

00:11:31.140 in-between space is definitely an awkward space. Yeah, I don't think it's a secret that people are

00:11:36.320 upset over this, Ben. In particular, people under the age of 40 or 35, this core young conservative

00:11:42.000 voter base that did decisively deliver a victory to the Trump administration in November of 2024

00:11:47.380 and cited no more involvement in foreign wars as one of the primary reasons for electing

00:11:52.760 Donald Trump and J.D. Vance at the time.

00:11:54.860 A lot of that came from people like Charlie Kirk, who regularly spoke out about this on

00:11:59.000 his show leading up to the 2024 election and certainly was a key advisor to the Trump

00:12:03.160 administration in those early months before his assassination last year.

00:12:06.860 This seems to me to be one of the primary things that voters are paying attention to

00:12:11.320 going into the midterm elections and certainly in deciding who the heir apparent and the

00:12:15.880 next king will be going into 2028, although no kings. I got to be careful. No kings, no kings

00:12:20.920 in America. That said, I wonder even if everything were to come to an end tomorrow, if that really

00:12:26.760 would help the Republican Party going into the midterm elections. I don't know. And if I'm

00:12:31.140 putting my Trump administration hat on, I'm probably betting on the fact that only once,

00:12:35.480 I believe, in American history has the party that won the White House and a full sweep of Congress

00:12:40.200 held on to that majority during the midterm elections. The status quo has always been that

00:12:44.640 you can pretty much expect to lose at least the House, if not the House and Senate together

00:12:48.860 come midterms. And it's a totally different realm of the presidency in those last two years in

00:12:53.160 office. So I'm guessing he's probably thinking a lot more legacy rather than chances for the

00:12:57.900 Republican Party at the midterms. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the midterms right now, I will say

00:13:02.760 that obviously the polls are not good for Republicans. They weren't good before. As you

00:13:06.340 say, it's kind of a normal pattern for the party in power to lose seats in the midterm election.

00:13:11.080 And I think that people pre-gaming that if the Republicans lose, it's because of Iran as opposed to because of, say, the tariffs or because of the bad staffing decisions or because of these sort of bizarre slush funds or because of the corruption stories.

00:13:26.340 There are a lot of factors that go into a bad election cycle, for sure.

00:13:29.780 The biggest one being just sort of the systemic way that our elections work off your elections, don't go for the party in power.

00:13:34.340 I will say that to me, the points of vulnerability for the Republicans in 2026 have very little to do with foreign policy and have a lot more to do with some of the candidates that are getting picked.

00:13:44.360 So I think that if the Republicans were to lose the Senate, they're almost certainly going to lose North Carolina.

00:13:49.560 One of the reasons they're going to lose North Carolina is because the president decided to go to war with Tom Tillis.

00:13:53.440 The Republicans could win in Michigan where they normally would lose because the Democrats have picked a psycho over there. 0.94

00:13:59.660 Susan Collins is suddenly looking like a more robust candidate in Maine than she would have probably in this particular election cycle because the Democrats picked a psycho.

00:14:07.920 It's possible that the Republicans lose Iowa because it turns out that Republicans in Iowa in the primaries are selecting some candidates who are sort of not the Joni Ernst traditionalist Republicans of Iowa.

00:14:19.400 They're a little more out of the box and they could lose that.

00:14:21.520 So in the end, all these elections come down to sort of the sort of secular spirit of the election, the broad spirit of the election, and then they come down to candidate quality always.

00:14:31.240 And I will say that there's some pretty differential candidate quality across the board here.

00:14:34.680 If Republicans somehow lose the seat in Texas, for example, that will be both of those factors coming into play.

00:14:41.020 I think that the Iran war, let's put it this way, if the Iran war were happening and the oil prices were not up, it wouldn't be about the Iran war.

00:14:46.600 It's really about the oil prices.

00:14:47.640 And so if the oil prices are down by the time of the election, then I think everybody basically is going to attribute the loss to other factors, if indeed there is an L for the Republicans.

00:14:56.200 Well, and I also don't think we can discount the bad policy happening in Congress right now, too.

00:15:01.000 I'm hearing more and more, especially in the social media realm from young voters, how disillusioned they are with Republican leadership in Congress, which often gets lumped in with this larger anger toward the Trump administration or falling approval rates toward the right at large. 0.85

00:15:14.820 But make no mistake about it, one of the biggest things young voters are angry about right now is a bill introduced by a Republican in the House of Representatives from your home state of Florida, Ben, that's offering mass amnesty to 10 million illegal immigrants, including some who have already been deported from the United States under this dignidad status when there are 10 million unemployed Gen Zers living in America right now.

00:15:37.500 So I think you're seeing a lot of this by the mainstream media and the 60 Minutes and CNNs of the world being conflated with failures of the Trump administration, when in reality, the Trump administration is really putting the gas to Congress here in Washington, D.C., but Congress is failing to act or acting completely not in their own self-interest, really losing the election for themselves up front.

00:15:58.740 I just don't know why you would vote for a Republican.

00:16:01.460 Like, I just, I don't hear their vocalization of like what they would actually offer us,

00:16:07.680 what they would do.

00:16:08.880 They don't seem to be doing much with the power that they do have other than basically

00:16:12.460 being a block for the Democrats.

00:16:14.780 And, you know, the fact that the Senate can't get its act together on so many different

00:16:18.500 things, the fact that, you know, you've got this Republican leadership that just sort

00:16:21.780 of seems like they're asleep at the wheel.

00:16:24.380 I don't think they're doing themselves any favors either.

00:16:26.320 So, you know, a lot of this, everybody says that all of this revolves around Trump, but like the anti-Trump base of the Democratic Party is going to be activated anyway.

00:16:33.640 They're going to be completely, you know, dedicated to this.

00:16:35.860 And we've seen that, you know, ever since this era began.

00:16:39.180 But I just don't see a lot of Republican arguments for why they should keep their jobs, why they should be sent back that are really taking hold.

00:16:47.500 And, you know, as Isabel said, the concerns about the the economy and energy prices are the driving actual issue here.

00:16:57.140 There are fewer people who are complaining about the Iran war, even, you know, whatever the polls sort of say.

00:17:01.560 It's more about how is this affecting me?

00:17:04.240 And I don't see or hear Republicans talking about that at all in many cases, I think, because they don't know how to talk about it.

00:17:11.960 And they've become so devoted to the Trump approach to politics that they're just kind of standing around waiting for him to say something so that they can all agree, which is not a way to win elections.

00:17:22.740 I also think that when it comes to the Iran war, particularly the president keeps saying that basically don't you're not going to experience pain.

00:17:29.060 Right. He's saying that with regard to the oil prices. Right. He's trying to talk the oil markets down.

00:17:32.960 And the reality is that if you want to actually get the outcome that is the best outcome here, you will need to see a temporary price spike in oil.

00:17:39.240 If he hits the oil facilities in Iran because he wants to get out and make it faster, then you will see a temporary spike and then it will come down.

00:17:45.220 And that was sort of the original promise here was that this thing would be quick.

00:17:48.240 It would be fast. It would be over.

00:17:49.680 And instead, if it seems to drag out, then even if the price spike is only moderate, like from $70 a barrel to $98 a barrel and not to $150 a barrel, people don't like slow moving disasters.

00:18:01.120 actually the american people can take a fast-moving problem that solves itself fairly quickly a lot

00:18:06.480 easier than they can take this kind of slow feeling of stagnation which is what you got under joe

00:18:10.740 biden and i think that's the thing that trump is running up against by the way speaking of susan

00:18:14.140 collins in maine running against an actual nazi you know the guy with the nazi i don't know i feel

00:18:18.560 like it's fair john fetterman said it he's right if you have a nazi tattoo i feel like i can call

00:18:21.780 you a nazi i feel like that's like fair enough what are our standards at this point in any case

00:18:26.020 can i suggest something but but wait ben isn't now like particularly after what we've seen in

00:18:33.620 the last couple weeks isn't the nazi tattoo kind of like not even in the top five things to be

00:18:37.900 worried about with this guy like he had a kick account you know that he signed up for and took

00:18:42.600 a picture of himself shirtless with an open toilet behind him like in a towel like it's it's

00:18:46.860 like this guy seems like i'm not i'm i'm gonna put myself in a position of defending a totem

00:18:53.500 i can't believe it i'm saying it's like i knew it ben i knew i knew it was just waiting here

00:18:59.360 we're waiting to see who's gonna be the crypto nazi on the show the real question is the real

00:19:03.420 question is did he just get the tattoo so that tucker would endorse him no to main voter tucker

00:19:08.500 carlson yeah i can't imagine that he will not end up as a guest on that on that program at some

00:19:12.320 point but calci markets by the way suggests that susan collins calci is one of our sponsors that

00:19:17.340 Susan Collins, I believe, is at 46 percent to to win that seat.

00:19:22.220 But you can see the massive drop there from just a couple of weeks ago, just a couple

00:19:26.960 of weeks ago, the Democrats were up near like 70 percent.

00:19:30.200 And now the Democrats are down in the in the 54 percent range and dropping quickly because

00:19:34.920 it turns out that Susan Collins, by the way, is a survivor and she survived a thousand

00:19:38.300 elections at this point.

00:19:39.540 So, I mean, if you had if you had to game out the Senate right now, I would say that

00:19:42.120 the Republicans win Maine.

00:19:43.760 I think that the Republicans win Texas because it's very difficult to win Texas if you're

00:19:46.980 Democrat, even if you are a bizarre pretend Bible teacher like James Tallarico. I think the

00:19:53.220 Republicans are, I think they'll win Michigan because I think that the people of Michigan are

00:19:56.240 not super hot on terrorism, but we'll find out. We might have our first actual full-on terror

00:20:00.280 supporter in the actual Senate, which would be surprising, but that'll make up for some losses

00:20:05.040 in some of the other areas. Well, you know, all of this, listen, I think that the big thing for

00:20:10.920 Republicans is that they should not sleep on the possibility that things could get even worse

00:20:15.680 because things can always get worse,

00:20:16.940 but you should sleep on your Helix Sleep Mattress.

00:20:20.320 That's the reality.

00:20:21.720 Your Helix Sleep Mattress is the thing

00:20:23.900 that will allow you to sleep better at night.

00:20:26.500 And that Helix Sleep Mattress allows me to sleep

00:20:29.120 through all of the chaos and all of the insanity.

00:20:33.180 Helix, of course, is the mattress sponsor

00:20:35.260 that allows you to take a sleep quiz.

00:20:37.140 And that personalized sleep quiz allows you

00:20:38.760 to pick your actual best mattress.

00:20:40.880 I did this.

00:20:41.440 I've done this with my wife.

00:20:42.320 It is great.

00:20:43.120 It allows me to rest comfortably

00:20:44.380 even when the world is an uncomfortable place.

00:20:46.240 Helix has over 20 mattress models.

00:20:47.900 So whether you run hot, sleep on your side,

00:20:49.500 or need extra support, there's one built for you.

00:20:51.980 They even have cooling upgrades,

00:20:53.120 which are great for those summer nights.

00:20:54.340 Helix is the most awarded mattress brand

00:20:56.140 tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired.

00:20:58.760 Free shipping right to your door in the US,

00:21:00.680 a 120-night sleep trial,

00:21:02.060 and a limited lifetime warranty.

00:21:03.380 So you can try it completely risk-free.

00:21:04.820 They call it the Happy with Helix Guarantee.

00:21:07.940 Again, summer, it's very easy during the summer

00:21:10.380 to get on one of those mattresses

00:21:11.800 that like it just retains heat.

00:21:13.620 It's just terrible.

00:21:14.040 that's not going to happen with Helix because you're going to get a mattress that is great for

00:21:17.540 you because it's made for you. Go to helixsleep.com slash dailywire for 20% off site-wide. That's

00:21:22.160 helixsleep.com slash dailywire for 20% off site-wide. Make sure you enter our show name

00:21:26.380 after checkout so they know we sent you. That's helixsleep.com slash dailywire. Alrighty. So

00:21:32.700 I believe any moment here, we are going to have Jesse Arm from Manhattan Institute to discuss

00:21:37.800 the situation just more broadly with it. We have a bunch of election results that are coming out.

00:21:42.220 And later on in the program, Steve Hilton is going to be stopping by as well.

00:21:46.080 But Jesse is here at the moment.

00:21:47.720 Jesse, you've been hearing us discuss the prospects for the Republicans in the midterm elections.

00:21:51.320 So on a scale of one to 10, 10 being we lose and one being we lose like really, really badly.

00:21:58.420 How badly are these election cycles going to go for Republicans in 2026?

00:22:02.580 That's a little bit of a complicated scale.

00:22:05.140 What if I think we're going to win?

00:22:06.600 Is that not available to me?

00:22:08.620 That's an unavailable answer.

00:22:10.040 I mean, if you believe we're going to win, then I want I want some of what you're having, because, you know, again, I don't think 2026 is prime for but make us the optimistic case.

00:22:19.980 No, I mean, I'll be frank with you, Ben. I do think that the Republican chances of controlling the Senate and possibly even maintaining control over the House are somewhat underrated.

00:22:32.360 There's been a lot of redistricting that has happened at the House level, and that has not gone the way that Democrats anticipated the gerrymandering wars would go for them.

00:22:42.780 And time remains on the clock.

00:22:46.620 We still could have a significant amount of action in Iran, in the Middle East.

00:22:50.420 The situation is very fluid.

00:22:52.700 None of these ceasefires seem to be sticking to a particularly long amount of time.

00:22:57.460 It may be the case that the president dropped some big bombs between now and November.

00:23:01.620 there's still a fair bit of time to go. I agree with your assessment that the situation in Maine

00:23:07.240 and Texas looks pretty good for the Republicans as of today. Where I would push back a little bit

00:23:12.640 is that in Michigan, I think it is dangerously close. That is my home state. And I am less

00:23:18.860 convinced perhaps than you are that my home state could possibly send a terrorist to the United

00:23:24.100 States Senate. And that's why I'm actually holding out some hope that this Democratic primary goes

00:23:29.200 in such a way where we don't send a terrorist sympathizer in my home state to be the Democratic

00:23:34.520 nominee for Senate. I don't care if it marginally improves Mike Rogers' chances of making his way

00:23:40.300 to the United States Senate. That's the Republican running in Michigan. I'm deeply worried about that

00:23:45.260 seat, and I'm hoping that there's enough sanity left together among Michigan Democrats that we

00:23:50.560 can prevent that outcome. And Jesse, I want to ask you about Iowa, because there was a big race

00:23:56.100 in Iowa last night that a lot of people are using as a bellwether for the possibility that

00:24:00.200 Republicans could unexpectedly lose a Senate seat in Iowa in this in this election cycle because

00:24:04.800 Joni Ernst stepped out. So, you know, that that election seat was a it was a GOP primary for

00:24:10.320 governor in which President Trump had endorsed Randy Feenstra, who was, I believe, originally

00:24:14.800 he had replaced. Who was it? Steve. I forget the name of the very controversial Republican.

00:24:22.000 Steve King. Steve King had been replaced by Randy Feenstra. Feenstra was then running for

00:24:25.680 governor. He had been endorsed by a lot of sort of the more establishment and President Trump

00:24:29.640 figures. He was defeated by a sort of Maha Republican who is friendly with kind of the

00:24:35.720 kooky wing of the Republican Party, shall we say. And there are some indicators that right now, 0.99

00:24:41.960 for example, Cook Political just moved that gubernatorial race into toss up area.

00:24:45.780 And the Cal Street markets are suggesting that the Republicans could lose the Ohio

00:24:49.100 governorship or the Iowa governorship, rather. It looks right now like there's a real possibility

00:24:54.440 that Republicans get clocked in Iowa.

00:24:56.220 If that happens, the map is opening pretty wide

00:24:58.600 for Democrats in the Senate

00:24:59.560 because again, North Carolina looks not great.

00:25:01.840 If you, as you say, Michigan looks not great,

00:25:03.680 Iowa looks not great.

00:25:04.600 They got to pick off one more

00:25:05.580 and they're in control of the Senate.

00:25:06.660 What do you make of what's going on in Iowa?

00:25:09.320 Well, Michigan wouldn't be a pickoff, right?

00:25:11.960 That's one where Republicans actually have the opportunity

00:25:15.000 to have the pickup, but I'm concerned about Iowa.

00:25:17.820 I'm really concerned that President Trump's

00:25:20.000 and Dorsey did not win that race.

00:25:22.180 I think if the president's pick

00:25:23.540 had gotten across the finish line in Iowa, Republicans would be in a much stronger position

00:25:28.200 right now. So that's not great. And we also have to look at the Senate election in that state where

00:25:34.840 Democrats nominated the better option from their standpoint, Josh Turek, and not the other

00:25:40.960 candidate who was the Elizabeth Warren endorsed kooky leftist. So yeah, Iowa Democrats have the

00:25:48.360 right candidates in the right position, and they may break through. Iowa is not as red a state as

00:25:53.720 some of these other places that we've been talking about. But I do think some of these other red 0.98

00:25:57.560 states where Democrats think they can have a shot at making some ground, I don't really buy it.

00:26:02.840 Ohio is one example. I think Vivek Ramaswamy is going to come through and secure the gubernatorial

00:26:07.380 election there. John Husted, who's the Republican nominee for Senate, is a very solid guy,

00:26:13.320 inoffensive by to pretty much everybody. And the Democratic candidate, Jared Brown, I mean,

00:26:19.060 at one point would have been a pretty strong candidate when he was an incumbent. But it's a

00:26:22.660 lot harder to pick yourself up off the mat once you've already lost and you're running from

00:26:26.460 the outside. And then there's Nebraska, where Democrats seem to think they have a chance

00:26:31.020 because they've nominated. Well, they haven't actually nominated him. They're throwing their

00:26:34.960 support behind an independent named Dan Osborne, who is part and parcel with the Democratic Party.

00:26:42.760 Everything you look down his issue priority list, he is a progressive far left Democrat.

00:26:49.900 He's got the, you know, Israel obsessive gene.

00:26:52.600 And they think this is what Democrats are deluding themselves into thinking.

00:26:56.320 They think that Graham Plattner and and this guy in Nebraska, that they can fool white male voters into thinking that there's something different about them without any kind of ideological moderation.

00:27:10.300 Republicans are actually doing the opposite.

00:27:11.860 The president is allowing Susan Collins a little bit of wiggle room to to maneuver politically and buck the party when necessary. 0.95

00:27:19.660 And I think that's a good thing. And it says good things about Donald Trump's political instincts.

00:27:26.440 I wanted to follow up on one of the things that you mentioned.

00:27:29.480 So you sorry, you've been paying attention to and concerned about your home state of Michigan nominating somebody who's pro-terrorist.

00:27:38.300 that's not the only pro-terrorist person that we saw having some success lately. You know,

00:27:44.000 you saw this situation in New Jersey. You saw, you know, some of these candidates who've percolated

00:27:49.100 up. You know, one of the things that we talk about on this show and what we talk about at

00:27:53.180 The Daily Wire regularly is how much the Democrats versus the Republicans is a fight between

00:27:58.580 podcasters on the right of center side and actual candidates and politicians on the left.

00:28:06.720 Talk to me about why these people are passing muster with even the likes of Chuck Schumer coming out and saying, you know, Plattner's going to win and we're going to beat Susan Collins as if, you know, depicting Susan Collins as if she's some kind of far right wing, you know, figure as opposed to somebody who crosses the party aisle, you know, constantly to work with Democrats.

00:28:28.500 Why do you think that these candidates who are not just anti, you know, sending money

00:28:33.400 to Israel, which is something that we've seen happen, you know, on both the right and the

00:28:37.120 left as being something that percolates up, but they're, they go far beyond that. 0.64

00:28:40.680 They're actually friends with terrorists.

00:28:42.320 They embrace that side of things.

00:28:44.560 And then if you come after them, they say you're being Islamophobic or something along

00:28:48.220 those lines.

00:28:48.640 Why is that success being found?

00:28:50.420 What do you see in your polling data?

00:28:52.620 Well, I think it's deeply disturbing and I'm going to do something that maybe cuts against

00:28:56.980 the grain of what those podcasters have to say about the Daily Wire. And I'm going to say some

00:29:01.080 pretty choice, critical words for AIPAC. AIPAC spent a lot of money in New Jersey congressional

00:29:06.800 elections this cycle, but they spent it in the wrong one. They were spending big in the New Jersey

00:29:12.200 11 special election earlier this year on behalf of, it's very complicated. They had a pro-Israel

00:29:20.600 sort of Democrat who they didn't like so much, who they were spending against, but they ended

00:29:25.940 up benefiting and building up the hardcore, viciously anti-Israel far left candidate instead.

00:29:32.520 And it was sort of a cluster F. OK. And then there's this New Jersey 12 congressional primary

00:29:39.700 that happens yesterday where we've got Adam Hamawe. Pardon me if I'm not pronouncing his name

00:29:45.860 correctly. But this is somebody who volunteered for an Al Qaeda front group, lied under oath in

00:29:53.320 court and defended the blind sheikh, who was a terrorist involved in the first World Trade Center 0.80

00:30:00.140 bombing. And AIPAC didn't spend a nickel against that candidate. The transcript is pretty hilarious 0.97

00:30:07.540 too. He's basically like, yeah, he's like a friendly guy from the neighborhood. It's the

00:30:11.920 most hilarious. So I'm totally befuddled by that. I'm totally confused by that. And this notion that

00:30:20.540 AIPAC is this all powerful, all knowing super force in American politics that can take out

00:30:26.800 anybody they want. It's like, no, they're one pack among many operating within our political

00:30:33.200 environment. OK, there are a lot of moneyed interests. There are a lot of Americans who

00:30:36.880 hate Israel. There are a lot of Americans who like Israel. There are a lot of Americans who

00:30:40.080 hate guns, who love guns, who hate abortion, who love abortion. And they're all spending big money

00:30:45.500 to try and affect these races, okay?

00:30:48.380 And this is a pretty clear indication.

00:30:50.700 I saw Ilhan Omar tweeted just before I got on this podcast

00:30:53.920 that last night, Adam Hamawe winning

00:30:57.700 in this New Jersey 12th congressional district

00:31:00.020 is an indication that the special interest groups lost.

00:31:03.340 No, quite the opposite.

00:31:04.980 There were a lot of special interest groups

00:31:07.020 that spent really big on trying to get that candidate

00:31:10.280 over the finish line.

00:31:11.460 There's now anti-APAC money that is coming together.

00:31:14.080 millions of dollars are being spent to propel candidates who adopt this pseudo pro-terrorist

00:31:20.240 line. And that is a disturbing phenomenon in our politics. It's a lot more disturbing

00:31:24.920 than a bunch of people spending money who think we should, you know, have a positive 0.94

00:31:28.660 relationship with Jewish Wakanda over in the Middle East and vending super weapons for us. 0.66

00:31:35.160 Outside of all these special interest groups, I'm curious to get your take on these redistricting 0.86

00:31:39.260 efforts that are happening across the country. Right now, it looks like that probably will tip

00:31:43.040 favor in the side of the Republicans, but there's a lot that could change between now and then.

00:31:47.400 What can we expect from that? Well, I think the big story with redistricting is that both sides

00:31:53.700 have kind of fought this to a draw. It's not clear that either one is going to come out the big

00:31:58.660 winner, but Democrats really screwed up by kind of upping the ante at every opportunity that they

00:32:04.740 got. Why is that? Because if there's no clear winner from the gerrymandering wars in this

00:32:09.880 election, then we have to look a little bit further out to like 2030 or 2040. What happens

00:32:16.100 in those years? Reapportionment. We have we have a census and all of the states get their

00:32:22.620 congressional seats. OK. And what's happening more macro nationwide right now? People are moving

00:32:28.540 out of blue America and into red America where Ben lives. OK. And where the Daily Wire is based.

00:32:34.480 Daily Wire is an example of this. And Americans are voting with their feet, moving into these

00:32:39.700 red states. So what's going to happen when that census rolls around? All of the Republican states 0.54

00:32:44.560 are going to have more people living then, which means they're going to have more congressional

00:32:48.220 seats. And if everybody is gerrymandering all day long until the crows come home, that's going to

00:32:53.700 mean there's going to be more Republicans in Congress moving forward. And that is not so good

00:33:00.920 for the Democrats. So they are really the ones incentivized to be coming to the table, calling

00:33:05.640 for a truce, taking whatever they can get, because at the end of the day, Americans, again, are voting 0.80

00:33:10.800 with their feet and going to Red America. And that is bad news for them in the context of these 0.69

00:33:15.380 gerrymandering wars. Well, Jesse Arm, I know that you have to run to really appreciate the time and

00:33:20.680 all of the insight. Can I ask him one quick question before he goes? Sure, go for it.

00:33:24.700 Should we root for the Knicks because President Trump likes the Knicks or against the Knicks

00:33:29.960 because Timothee Chalamet hasn't done enough in life to deserve a life this charmed?

00:33:35.640 I'm a pretty hardcore Detroit Pistons fan,

00:33:38.460 so I'm still holding a bit of a grudge

00:33:41.100 for the Knicks beating us last year

00:33:42.940 in a pretty fair series.

00:33:43.280 Betraying his employer.

00:33:47.320 Get a Manhattan guest on, you got to ask him.

00:33:49.240 I don't like seeing all those celebrities

00:33:51.640 in the front row happy.

00:33:52.840 Root against the Knicks. 1.00

00:33:53.280 Well, we can't have Mom Donnie be happy. 0.97

00:33:55.640 We get the Wendy year out. 1.00

00:33:58.180 We get the Wendy year out,

00:33:59.620 and we don't have to pay much attention

00:34:01.080 to LeBron anymore,

00:34:02.100 so that's why I'm rooting for the Spurs.

00:34:03.480 Yes, that is the argument.

00:34:05.160 that's the actual we actually we actually have i think unanimous support unless isabelle is a

00:34:08.840 nicks fan i think we actually have unanimous support for the san antonio spurs so yeah by

00:34:15.980 the way like that's that's what that's i'll be watching that with my son tonight but speaking

00:34:19.660 of my children i have to make sure that they are taken care of in case god forbid something should

00:34:23.280 happen to me and you have to do the same thing for your family and this is why you need to go

00:34:27.760 to policy genius june marks the first days of summer and somehow all of us are still here which

00:34:32.700 seems like a miracle given how these conversations sometimes go and we have big plans this summer i

00:34:37.560 don't know uh ben you doing anything fun this summer yes we uh do our our annual trip to um

00:34:44.380 uh we celebrate the 4th of july by uh uh you know celebrate our nation by blowing up a small part of

00:34:49.940 it uh in rural arizona uh and uh and looking forward to it because it'll be my my uh new

00:34:56.240 son's first sojourn into the desert uh and it'll be nice isabel you doing anything fun this summer

00:35:01.540 at all lots of fun things my sister's getting married in alaska in three weeks so we're taking

00:35:06.780 a big family vacation up there and then spending a 250 here in our nation's capital i'm so excited

00:35:12.180 yeah uh we're having a baby because i don't have enough stress in my life so we're having another

00:35:17.040 baby in about a month and a half here as you're having a baby in the 250th anniversary that's

00:35:24.480 awesome yeah that's very cool there's a there's a there's a not insignificant shot that this is a

00:35:28.560 July 4th baby, which would be awesome because I've made a deal with my wife, which is that if the

00:35:32.600 baby is born on July 4th, I get to name the baby John Adam. That is the thing that I made that deal

00:35:38.900 with her. But listen, we're all going to be busy this summer. What none of us have the time for

00:35:43.000 is wading through confusing insurance websites, trying to figure out if we're getting a good deal.

00:35:46.740 And that's where Policy Genius comes in. Most people know they need life insurance. They just

00:35:51.180 keep putting it off because it feels complicated. Policy Genius makes it simple. It's an online

00:35:54.780 marketplace where you compare quotes from America's top insurers side-by-side for free,

00:35:58.520 coverage amounts, prices, terms all laid out. Clearly, no guesswork. Their licensed team

00:36:01.680 handles the paperwork, answers your questions, and advocates for you throughout the entire

00:36:05.160 process. They're not trying to upsell you. They're working to get you the right policy

00:36:08.340 at the most affordable price. Protecting your family financially is not a someday task. It's

00:36:12.380 a priority. With thousands of five-star views on Google and Trustpilot, people are finding great

00:36:16.300 policies and checking this off their list for good. So just get it done in minutes and then

00:36:19.880 get on with your summer. Protect your family with a policy that grows with your life. With Policy

00:36:23.580 Genius. You can see if you can find a 20 year life insurance policy starting at just 276 bucks

00:36:28.240 a year for a million dollars in coverage. Head on over to policygenius.com slash fire to compare

00:36:32.380 life insurance quotes from top companies. See how much you could save. That's policygenius.com

00:36:37.040 slash fire. OK, so speaking of our great country's birth and breaking away from the British,

00:36:43.080 the UK is in the news because they decided they were going to ban a couple of American

00:36:46.760 terror supporters from their shores. And so they put out some sort of statement and they said that

00:36:51.660 Shank Uyghur and Hassan Piker, who are their family. Hassan's an EPO baby. They said,

00:36:56.760 you're not allowed to come to the UK and go to Oxford Union because you guys are a, essentially,

00:37:01.740 you create the conditions for the possibility of violence, which I think is a terrible excuse,

00:37:05.700 by the way. I don't like the heckler's veto because that basically says that, you know,

00:37:09.280 Ben or Isabel, if any of us decided to go to Britain and people decided to protest us and

00:37:13.480 create violence, then they could just ban us from Britain. So I don't like the excuse.

00:37:16.700 I do, however, like them banning Hassan and Shank. And the reason is I do not think that

00:37:21.280 any country has the obligation to bring into its country people who love terrorism or china or 1.00

00:37:26.440 cuba i think that we should apply that same rule in america i think that people who come here 0.98

00:37:30.280 it's about a bunch of anti-american bullshit those people should not be allowed in our country 0.95

00:37:34.420 and uh and and frankly if people came here and they immigrated and they lied on their 0.99

00:37:39.380 immigration forms i think they should be booted out so i know this this some and there's kind of

00:37:43.520 a weird thing that's broken out on the right where some people like no libertarian free speech

00:37:47.620 concerns for the UK, which is a foreign country. But I'm not sure where you guys are on this.

00:37:51.760 Isabel, where are you on it? Yeah, you know, Ben, I was really surprised to see this story

00:37:56.020 break through the headlines the other day because just a few weeks before all of this, the UK banned

00:38:00.480 my friend Ava Vlardingerbrook from coming into the UK to give a speech for a more conservative

00:38:06.020 wing of British politics. And their reasoning for that is because she directly inspires violence

00:38:12.380 all over Europe by promoting this re-migration movement of Europeans having more babies to 0.86

00:38:17.800 counteract the crazy, horrifying, devastating effects of mass migration. And honestly, 0.82

00:38:23.560 I'm interested a little bit to see the UK applying this across the board to people on the left and

00:38:29.140 the right. But I just find it rich that all of a sudden the UK government and Keir Starmer seem

00:38:33.500 so excited about stopping the proliferation of violence in the United Kingdom, when in reality,

00:38:39.420 they themselves are directly responsible for mass importing millions upon millions of people

00:38:44.500 who are literally raping teenage girls in broad daylight on the street, who are normalizing 1.00

00:38:49.880 mass violence in the name of eradicating British culture for this Islamic takeover of their 0.99

00:38:55.000 society. And you're not allowed to talk about that. In fact, if you're a British citizen and 1.00

00:38:58.760 you tweet about that, they'll throw you in prison for 20 years, but they won't actually stop violence.

00:39:03.860 So I don't really know where this is coming from. It certainly isn't in line with their political

00:39:08.080 agenda that they've been enacting domestically. But I am curious to see how they keep applying

00:39:12.560 it. And I'm supposed to go to the UK in August. So we'll see if they let me know.

00:39:16.420 We'll see if that works or not.

00:39:18.720 I think that Britain just loves banning things in this kind of nation of decline that they

00:39:26.640 represent now. They just they're banning things willy nilly. You know, you can't have a cigarette

00:39:31.440 if you're under a certain age. I mean, this is where Dunhill is from, which is what I smoke.

00:39:35.440 But that just that it's the kind of thing that is so infuriating to me.

00:39:40.000 It's like, can't you like, I don't know, rebuild your Navy?

00:39:43.640 It used to run the world.

00:39:45.280 Couldn't you have like a functional, you know, number of ships that we could depend on?

00:39:50.060 Maybe ask you to help with some things like the Strait of Hormuz?

00:39:53.100 No, we can't.

00:39:53.940 That's the kind of thing that I think a nation does when it just kind of spirals into itself

00:39:58.720 and becomes this this this nation that basically just says, you know, we have to ban tweets.

00:40:03.880 We have to ban people. We have to ban messages. We have to, because all of these things, they just accept that leftist idea that words are violence at the same time. Does it have to, do I have to have sympathies for Hassan Piker in this moment? I feel bad just to taking this position.

00:40:18.360 No, you don't. I'll tell you why you don't.

00:40:20.520 You are right about one. You are right about one thing, Ben, which is that this actually brings to mind Cheeky Chesterton's long essay about he doesn't have short ones about what he saw in America a little over 100 years ago when he came here.

00:40:34.660 And he and he talked about that's where the line comes from of America being the only nation founded in a creed.

00:40:39.580 He talked about the the the sort of optimistic, hopeful idea that one of the questions he had to ask on his immigration form was, are you an anarchist?

00:40:50.060 Question mark. And like you have to the nation that believes that you should ask that question, believing you're going to get an honest answer, that there's something charming about that.

00:41:00.340 We should be able to keep people out of this country who hate our country and mean it ill and want to support terrorism.

00:41:06.400 and that should extend by the way to candidates for the u.s congress yeah you know one of the

00:41:11.920 things there's this tweet so people we've all been on twitter for a long time for no good mental

00:41:16.220 health reason and every so often somebody will bring up a tweet that's like 15 20 years old

00:41:20.340 at this point and and one of the tweets that i get thrown back in my face a lot is a tweet that

00:41:24.300 i wrote i don't know it must have been 10 years ago or something where i say i don't care about

00:41:27.040 the browning of america i only care about the ideologies of the people in america and for some

00:41:31.600 reason this is used as some sort of a dunk which i really don't understand frankly because i don't

00:41:35.840 judge people on the basis of their skin color but i do judge them very harshly on the basis of

00:41:39.800 their ideology your dunk is so much less damaging than mine which is uh what does it take to go on

00:41:47.720 a date with megan mccain and me responding to it do not want

00:41:50.680 yeah that one aged like sour milk for ben but

00:41:59.180 i don't think you have a more owned tweet than there is nothing you have ever said

00:42:07.760 that is because my wife will occasionally my wife will bring it up and she says but it turned out

00:42:12.940 you did one oh my gosh i i have a similar thing not a public tweet like that but i remember i was

00:42:20.860 on my fourth date with my wife and i turned to her and i said i really like you and she said

00:42:24.820 she said to me i like things about you and i was like wow that's that's uh that i was like that

00:42:30.360 and so now that we have uh princess leia stuff right there i know exactly we were at disneyland

00:42:36.600 at the time we're actually at disneyland at the time and and i and i every so often we've been

00:42:40.920 married almost 20 years at this point i do turn to her every so often and i'll be like well

00:42:44.340 that's the fifth baby right there in your stomach so in your belly is our fifth child so i win you

00:42:49.460 lose like that's the way that this works anyway but that tweet the sort of browning of america

00:42:53.300 tweet, I will say it is kind of astonishing to me that that was ever a controversial tweet or

00:42:58.520 remains one because the merit, obviously, of human beings doesn't lie in their melanin level.

00:43:03.840 It lies in the ideas that they bring forth, which is why I'm very much of the view that if we were

00:43:08.940 legally capable, we should expel people who hate the country from the country. I understand that

00:43:14.040 we can't do that legally because, obviously, if you're born in America, you have legal rights to

00:43:17.980 say and do pretty much whatever you want. It's one of the great things about America. But that

00:43:21.080 does mean we have to be pretty selective about who we let into this place and one of the gigantic

00:43:24.840 mistakes made by europe and by the united states that we are not selective at all for the past

00:43:28.780 several decades no about who we let into our houses and now we turn around and everybody's

00:43:33.680 spray painting the walls and pissing in the corners and we're all supposed to be shocked by

00:43:38.140 this the other thing is the other thing is and this is what i mean this is kind of a key to

00:43:43.100 just quickly this is the key to kind of luke rosiac's reporting over the last several weeks

00:43:47.960 you know, and obviously over months that led up to it is this clash between low trust societies

00:43:54.120 and high trust societies, people who come here who want to be Americans and become Americans

00:43:59.620 and people who come here essentially as outposts within our society, trying to extract as much

00:44:05.560 money out of our government systems, use them to their benefit, calling people racist for

00:44:10.380 questioning it and then sending it back home. It's obscene. It's horrible. It damages the

00:44:15.900 the interests of Americans themselves, particularly working class Americans.

00:44:19.700 And the fact that the Republican Party was so unwilling, the coalition of the right was

00:44:24.140 so unwilling to embrace this or even depicting people who did talk about this as being racist

00:44:29.400 or on the outskirts or something like that, accepting this leftist argument for so many

00:44:32.600 years that laid the foundation for why Donald Trump won in the first place.

00:44:37.720 And it's still, I think, a lesson that these Republicans haven't learned.

00:44:41.220 they still talk about this stuff just naturally as if we're in like 2002 and it's George W. Bush

00:44:47.140 and we have to figure out things for guest workers and the like. This is a completely

00:44:51.040 different population that you've imported over the last 20 years. And it's very different from 1.00

00:44:54.640 the kind of people that you just talked about in the past who are workers who are going to come

00:44:58.140 here and then go back home. That does not happen. They extract as much as they can from our taxpayers

00:45:02.960 and they send it wherever they want. Well, and I'm just curious to throw out to the group here,

00:45:07.980 feel free to agree or disagree or take this any way you want. I generally agree with the sentiment

00:45:13.320 of that tweet, Ben, that anyone can make up their mind about anything. And certainly your skin color

00:45:18.040 is not indicative of your intelligence level or your ability to have your own opinion formed

00:45:22.960 independently from what you look like. That said, there is a really interesting and I think important

00:45:27.840 cultural conversation happening in America right now, led by mostly young people, about certain

00:45:32.620 cultures being incompatible with that of Western civilization. And largely, I'm thinking of Islam 0.99

00:45:37.700 and those imported from the Islamic world,

00:45:40.300 which does involve, to some degree,

00:45:42.360 ethnicity involved in there as well.

00:45:43.900 What's your take on that?

00:45:45.740 Well, I mean, I think that Thomas Sowell

00:45:47.280 does a really great job of breaking down.

00:45:48.940 He has a great book called Discrimination and Disparities.

00:45:51.040 And one of the things that he talks about in there

00:45:53.040 is sort of a typology of discrimination.

00:45:55.160 He says that there is normal discrimination

00:45:57.060 where we discriminate by making choices every single day.

00:45:59.340 When you go to a restaurant, if you pick one dish,

00:46:01.280 you are discriminating against the other dishes.

00:46:02.840 That's what it means to have, say, discriminating taste.

00:46:05.380 And then there is discrimination

00:46:06.520 in the sense that you look at a group of people

00:46:09.620 and based on the group data,

00:46:11.040 you make an informed sort of judgment

00:46:12.840 about the likelihood that a person

00:46:14.320 is going to act in a particular way.

00:46:16.180 And we do that all the time.

00:46:17.020 If we see a group of people

00:46:17.900 and they're wearing white coats in a hospital,

00:46:19.300 you're going to make the informed decision

00:46:20.720 that that person is likely to be a doctor.

00:46:22.600 You look at the outward indicators

00:46:23.840 that suggest behavior and you make that decision.

00:46:26.560 And then there's hard discrimination.

00:46:28.180 Hard discrimination,

00:46:29.080 the kind of discrimination that he says is wrong,

00:46:31.380 is the discrimination where

00:46:32.380 you actually know the individual in question

00:46:34.320 and you let the group data

00:46:35.320 trump the individual data.

00:46:36.340 So in the absence of individual data, making a group judgment is just a natural thing that we all do, because obviously, how else are you going to make judgments?

00:46:43.840 But when you have individual data, then you can allow that individual data and you should allow that individual data to trump the group data.

00:46:50.260 And so there are two separate questions, say, about Muslim immigration to the United States.

00:46:55.360 Some people will say, so you're saying that no Muslim can come to the United States and be a good citizen?

00:46:58.940 No, that's not what we're saying.

00:46:59.980 it is quite possible that there can be a muslim or some muslims or many muslims who could come

00:47:04.520 and be good citizens if they actually demonstrate specifically and individually that they're going

00:47:09.220 to be good citizens but if you look at islamic culture in say pakistan the idea that you could

00:47:13.380 mass migrate a million pakistanis to the united states and on average that is going to work out 0.78

00:47:18.180 well for the united states that is a really ridiculous proposition and the same thing

00:47:21.880 of course you can have cultural distinctions i think that what what you've seen from the the

00:47:25.880 some parts of the fringe right is the inability to distinguish between cultural differentiation

00:47:30.820 and racial differentiation, right? The idea will be, and that's where you get into actual

00:47:35.040 discrimination where it's like, okay, I know that guy. He lives next to me. I know him really,

00:47:39.160 really well. He's a good American citizen. And I wouldn't let him in even knowing him because

00:47:43.300 there's a group data that on average people are like this. And that is a bit of a different thing.

00:47:48.640 That's how I would kind of break down. I think Sowell does a really good job of breaking down

00:47:51.680 that typology. But again, I think that, you know, there's been a couple of false binaries that have

00:47:57.040 been injected into the right on these politics. You see it all the time where it's like, I get

00:48:01.160 the feeling these days that basically all politics has been depixelated, right? We've sort of made

00:48:05.540 everything very blunt and stupid and not nuanced. And so to take an example of sort of the free 0.99

00:48:10.080 speech debate, right? There's this idea that you see from somebody like Britain is not doing free

00:48:14.820 speech when they won't allow Chank or Hassan into their country. They're not doing free speech. 1.00

00:48:19.780 It's like free speech is not the proposition that you get to go to every foreign country that you want and spew whatever malignity that you want in a foreign country.

00:48:26.740 That is not the proposition. And free speech is not even the proposition that anything that you can say is morally equivalent to anything else that you can say.

00:48:33.620 I see that one pop up a lot where it's like, well, you question somebody's you and they say it's not even free speech is not even remotely a value of the United Kingdom.

00:48:41.280 So you're having a pointless argument at that point.

00:48:43.560 to at all. Exactly. But everything just gets depixelated all the time. And so I feel the

00:48:48.020 same thing about the sort of what is an American debate. The what is an American debate? The answer

00:48:51.180 is like all of the above, right? Yes, of course, we have a specific time involved in a particular

00:48:56.560 way. Yeah. Can I ask you a question prompted by the social media expressions that we've seen over

00:49:02.360 the past couple of weeks? Do you think that these people who rail about like how much this country

00:49:06.760 has changed and fallen away from from, you know, values that they only recently discovered, let's 0.86

00:49:12.960 say um do you think that they want to import all of moscow into america because it sure seems like

00:49:18.240 that over the past week the way that they've been talking about the glorious you know uh christianity

00:49:23.480 that they find uh on their paid trips to russia i mean it's it's just insane some of the stuff

00:49:29.840 that they've been saying oh that's an astonishing laughable i i find it laughable because i actually

00:49:35.580 so i love like one of the things that i uh you know uh have a disagreement about with with certain

00:49:42.300 people and certain family members

00:49:44.300 occasionally when there's an

00:49:46.220 anti-Russian thing. I just point out, they have 1.00

00:49:48.200 phenomenal literature. They have phenomenal music.

00:49:50.640 There's all this tragedy that has

00:49:52.280 birthed wonderful things that came out of Russia. 0.99

00:49:54.540 You know what hasn't come out of Russia? 0.92

00:49:56.240 Actual appreciation for Christianity 0.54

00:49:58.020 that is endorsed by the Kremlin.

00:50:00.680 It's absurd, the kind of things

00:50:02.360 that we're seeing, this op playing out in front of us.

00:50:04.080 But it's like, okay, so do you

00:50:06.040 want to import those people here? Is that 0.66

00:50:08.040 the way that this is supposed to work? Or are we supposed

00:50:10.000 to become more like them in some kind

00:50:12.100 of embrace of this KGB approach to governance way. None of this makes any sense to me on any

00:50:18.520 real level other than I'm just being paid to say this. Oh, man, I can't even speak to how stupid 1.00

00:50:25.240 I think you have to be to fall for the op that's currently taking place in Moscow. I mean, truly, 1.00

00:50:28.900 like if you don't understand that it's an op, I don't know. You're the mark. Like it is that

00:50:34.000 obvious. If you're literally going over to a country that is enemies with the United States

00:50:37.380 and make no mistake, I mean, Vladimir Putin is not oblique about this and neither is Alexander

00:50:41.660 Dugan, who's sort of his outreach master. They are not oblique about their intent for the United

00:50:45.400 States. And it is not good. If you're going over there and you're going to a country that has one

00:50:49.040 of the highest abortion rates on planet Earth, a country that has essentially no birth rate,

00:50:52.960 a country that has legitimately no religious observance for the vast majority of its population,

00:50:58.760 they have something like a 10% church attendance rate. And the only real legal church that is

00:51:03.180 promoted is just a propagandistic outlet for the Russian government, which is why it was banned in

00:51:07.840 Ukraine. It's not because they don't believe in Eastern Orthodoxy. It's because they said that

00:51:11.060 the Russian Orthodox Church is actually just a tool of the government in Russia.

00:51:14.300 That's the real thing that's happening.

00:51:15.580 And if the thing that's being promoted by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker and Candace 0.53

00:51:18.780 and Andrew Tate, first of all, if you're buying into the Andrew Tate is a good Christian thing,

00:51:22.680 Andrew Tate is somehow less Christian than I am.

00:51:24.900 Like, that's like, I actually believe people should go to church.

00:51:27.840 I also am not guilty or has it ever been alleged sexual harassment or sexual abuse of any kind.

00:51:32.920 So I'm fairly certain that even I have more credibility on this matter than Andrew Tate.

00:51:37.160 But if like you're trotting out these people as like Andrew Tate is desperate for you to

00:51:40.600 go back to church and be a good Christian. I, I don't know how dumb you have to be to believe 0.99

00:51:44.380 this. I like, I, I don't like to insult members of the audience who believe things, but I mean, 0.98

00:51:48.380 honestly, at a certain point, at a certain point, the word retarded was invented for this kind of 0.98

00:51:53.480 op. It really is insane. What a wild time we live in. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I look, 0.58

00:52:03.620 look, we're old Isabel. So we grew up injected with like anti-communism just like was part of

00:52:10.140 the deal you know like it's it just sort of was was there from from our inception you know and i

00:52:17.340 and i still i mean you know i'll i'll admit to getting teary-eyed every time i go back and just

00:52:22.860 randomly watch the miracle on ice again you know but it's one of these things i'm gonna say rocky

00:52:27.940 four i'm gonna say rocky four rocky four is every time you watch rocky four yeah yeah no uh uh the

00:52:36.340 The crack in Al Michaels' voice is always just what gets me.

00:52:38.920 Anyway, but the thing that is so infuriating about this is the op is so obvious.

00:52:44.860 It's just like, who wants you to see this?

00:52:47.600 Why are they putting this in front of you?

00:52:49.340 Why are they pretending like there isn't a hammer and sickle in the stained glass of 0.98

00:52:54.780 this church that they're describing as beautiful and wonderful and an indication of Christian

00:52:58.860 culture? 1.00

00:52:59.540 It is absolutely absurd. 1.00

00:53:01.580 Anyone who buys into it is an idiot. 1.00

00:53:03.340 And please, like, you know, go back and read some Turgenev, go back and read some, you know, Russian literature is great. 1.00

00:53:11.760 What it will teach you is to hate communism and hate everything that it produced within the Russian culture.

00:53:18.580 To put this into perspective for my generation and God forbid our children who are going to have a whole heck of a time growing up like this, 0.97

00:53:24.980 Even Russian oriented literature or warnings about, I don't know, the implications of Stalinism, like Animal Farm, are now being turned into cartoon movies for children that actually dunk on capitalism as the source of all evil in society now.

00:53:40.280 And somehow George Orwell is rolling over in his grave over all of this.

00:53:43.160 So I think it's really fashionable right now to just be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, even if it flies in the face of objective reality.

00:53:52.040 And that certainly generates a whole lot of clicks and engagement on social media.

00:53:55.460 But I am also starting to see young people realize that not everything is a conspiracy

00:54:01.140 just because a whole lot of big, important things happened to be a conspiracy in the

00:54:06.260 last several years.

00:54:07.040 And I found a really interesting corner of the Internet from so many young people who

00:54:11.120 are just tired of all the noise.

00:54:12.320 They're tired of the ops.

00:54:13.140 They're tired of the clickbait.

00:54:14.140 They're tired of the attack wars of the podcast realm.

00:54:17.140 And they want real solutions.

00:54:18.680 They want suggestions for what they can actually do to safeguard their culture from an individual decision-making perspective.

00:54:25.600 I think the answer is really easy in America for how you fight the demographic shift.

00:54:29.640 It's not to mass import people who hate your country and want to destroy it. 0.83

00:54:33.420 It certainly isn't to mass import people from other cultures that do not share our foundational values of Christianity, like the faux Christianity that we see in Russia. 0.83

00:54:42.620 I think it's really simple. Make more babies and go to church and exercise your civic duty and 0.98

00:54:47.660 voting and understand how our society works. When you can reframe all of this away from

00:54:52.560 the click engagement and the disgusting stuff that you see on X, and you actually can tell

00:54:56.940 young people you can be the solution to this, I think it's really meaningful. And there's not a

00:55:01.420 lot of people doing that. Well, on that positive note, once again, I just want to remind you

00:55:05.880 that you should support us here at Daily Wire Plus because we may be the last bastion of sanity

California Tea Party, America's Browning & Putin's Pilgrims

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript