Ep. 1262 - Ellen Page Hate Crime Hoax？
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Summary
Actress Ellen Page reveals she was the target of a transphobic attack. Mayor Pete Buttigieg responds to Tucker Carlson's return to the media, and why he thinks the LGBTQ community is being used as a political punching bag.
Transcript
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Actress Ellen Page, who now goes by Elliot, has a new book out and coincidentally has revealed
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that she was the target of a transphobic attack sometime last year. According to Page, a year ago,
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a hateful stranger approached her in West Hollywood yelling, quote, I'm going to effing
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gay bash you, F-A-double-G-O-T, at which point he chased her into a shop screaming, this is why I
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need a gun. Now, this incident that we are for some reason only hearing about right now obviously
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happened a long time ago. But it is being reported that police have released a sketch of the alleged
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transphobe, and he appears to be two Nigerian bodybuilders from the south side of MAGA country.
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And news reports have not specified whether or not Miss Page was able to hold on to her subway
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sandwich during the harrowing attack. Perhaps that detail is included in the book that she is now
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hawking. I'm not saying for certain that it didn't happen. Hollywood has always been weird.
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Terrible political leadership has let the crime problem in Hollywood get out of control. A friend
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of mine shortly before we moved out of LA was threatened on the street by a bum with a cross
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bow. Okay, there are freaks out there for sure. But even more than criminals and bums,
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Hollywood is filled with fabulists and narcissists, people with a very tenuous grip on reality.
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It just seems unlikely, okay? The big red flag in Ellen Page's story is that phrase gay bashing.
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No heterosexual uses that phrase. That is a phrase that is used exclusively by leftists and LGBT
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positive activists. It's the biggest sign of a Hollywood imagination run amok. Unfortunately for
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us, that Hollywood imagination has run amok all over our country. And as is especially clear during
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Pride Month, large numbers of Americans can no longer tell the difference between fantasy
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and reality. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. This episode is brought to you by my very good friends over at Good Ranchers.
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Great meat at a secure price. $30 off your order with code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S. Go to goodranchers.com.
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Use code Knowles today. Really big news on the presidential campaign front. Can't wait to get into
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that. And on the media front, Tucker is back, baby. Tucker is back on Twitter. He's got very
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interesting things to say about Ukraine, about aliens, about terrorist attacks. So we will get to
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that in just a moment. First, though, the Pride Month update. Today's daily Pride Month update
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comes from Mayor Pete, who was asked why those mean, nasty conservatives would have the gall
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to criticize certain aspects of the Rainbow Coalition, the Gestapo. And here is Pete's answer.
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Well, our country is at very real risk of backsliding on freedom and equality. But that is exactly why we
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continue to push. There has been extraordinary work that's been done just in this presidency,
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certainly the president being able to sign the Respect for Marriage Act, for example. And if you
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zoom out to the progress that's been made in the last 10 or 15 years, including the ability of somebody
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like me to be standing here doing this job, it's extraordinary. And yet now you see the attacks on
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the LGBTQ community, especially on the trans community and what they are going through. And, you know,
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I think it's being done out of a perception that it is politically convenient to target vulnerable
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groups. And honestly, I think where it largely comes from is folks who don't want to talk about
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why they were against the infrastructure law that's building the roads and bridges. They don't want to
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talk about why they were against $35 insulin that the president delivered for Medicare recipients.
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They don't want to explain why they were for these radical positions that speak to what most people
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are worried about in their everyday lives. Yeah, that's it, Pete. That's it. The Republicans
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are speaking out against transing little kids, pumping them full of poison, chopping their body parts off
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because we're just so afraid of our opposition to an infrastructure law. Yeah, that's it. We know
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that the people are strongly on the side of building some new bridge somewhere and we've got to run away.
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From our radical opposition to insulin reform by focusing on this really minor issue that no one's really
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interested in, namely the fact that Democrats are trying to chop kids' genitals off. That's it. You hit the nail
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on the head. We just don't want to talk about the real hot button issue, paving roads. Yeah, you got it, Pete.
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I don't know. I think it probably has more to do with the fact that people around this country,
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especially parents, but just pretty much everybody, realizes that it's probably not a great idea
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to turn innocent little kids into eunuchs and sterilize them and chop off their body parts. I
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think that's probably why. Can you believe, can you guys believe how radical the Republicans have
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become, they didn't, the Republicans didn't even want to pursue the particular kind of
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pharmaceutical insulin reform that I was advocating for? Whoa, that's some crazy stuff, huh?
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Okay, chop, chop. Get that kid on the operating table. Let's go. Give me the scalpel.
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I don't even know what the insulin reform was. I don't even know what stupid infrastructure
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regulation people do with judges talking about, but I'm willing to bet. I am willing to bet
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every dollar to my name that if you had these three types of legislation before you,
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regulate the price of a diabetes treatment, build a certain kind of bridge instead of another kind
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of bridge, chop off a child's genitals. I am willing to bet every material possession that I have,
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the last one is going to be the most radical. And that's why it's not just Republicans who are
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opposed to it. It's why normal people, centrists, even a number of leftists all around this country,
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even the feminists, even a lot of people around this country realize that that is a very, very bad
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idea. That seems to be the more likely reason. And on that point, even as the people are pushing
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against trancing the kids, the liberal establishment, especially through the judges,
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are coming in to preserve that sacrament, that sacred right of progressive liberalism. Speaking of
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Download Halo at halo.com slash Knowles. Get an exclusive three months free, three months absolutely
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free at halo.com slash Knowles. Federal judge has just struck down a law in Florida that would ban
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doctors from prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to little kids. Why did the
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federal judge strike this down? He struck it down because he says that gender identity is real.
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That's why. That's the whole reason he struck it down. The judge says, quote, and his name, by the way,
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is Robert Hinkle. He says, quote, the elephant in the room should be noted at the outset.
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Gender identity is real. The record makes this clear. What record? I don't know. Nobody knows.
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He says, despite the defense admissions, there are those who believe that cisgender individuals,
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that meaning people who understand who they are, properly adhere to their natal sex and that
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transgender individuals have inappropriately chosen a contrary gender identity, male or female,
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just as one might choose to whether to read Shakespeare or Grisham.
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And this is false because gender identity is real.
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This is obviously going to be headed for the Supreme Court. You're seeing a lot of liberal
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judges go in and overturn laws passed by the representatives of the people, duly elected
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representatives representing the people's will to stop quacks from transing little kids.
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The judges come in and say, no, it's unconstitutional not to pump kids full of poison and sterilize them
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and chop off their body parts. So this is obviously headed for the Supreme Court. Not great for us
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because even this conservative Supreme Court has affirmed transgenderism. You saw this especially in
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the Bostock decision where Judge Gorsuch, Justice Gorsuch, who is a conservative, came in and said
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that civil rights law that provides protections on the basis of sex actually secretly provides
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protections on the basis of gender identity, which is ironic because if the civil rights law protects
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gender identity, then it very much does not protect sex. If the civil rights law says that men have the
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right to play on a girl's sports team, then it undercuts what the civil rights law was actually
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intended to do, which was to say that women have the right to their own sports teams separate from
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men. Because you can't have both. And even a conservative on the Supreme Court sided with
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the transgenderists here. So this is not great news that it's headed to the Supreme Court because
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the court, just judging by precedent, judging by the Harris Funeral Homes case that says that civil
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rights law means that a man has the right to wear a mini skirt at a funeral home if he wants to,
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to express his quote unquote gender identity. That's not great news. It would be really nice if
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the people could answer this question themselves, wouldn't it? It would be really nice if the people
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were able to say, no, we actually don't think that men can become women and we're going to
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enshrine that in our law and we're going to say don't chop up little kids. But when the people have
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done that, the liberal establishment has come in through the courts, through the unaccountability of
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the judiciary, to come in and say, no, actually, never mind. Somewhere in the Constitution, it says
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that men have the right to pretend to be women. And parents and quacks have the right to poison their
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kids. Oh, the civil rights law? Yeah, even though we know for a fact that when the civil rights law
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was passed, nobody thought the protections on the basis of sex were protections on the basis of gender
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identity or whatever. Because that concept didn't even really exist at the time. Yeah, well, anyway,
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now I'm just deciding that's what it is. Do you see how, do you see how circular this argument is
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from the judiciary? They're saying sex means gender identity because today a significant portion of
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the people say that sex means gender identity. Not the majority of the people, certainly, but a decent
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number of the people, including me, we say that. And so that's obviously what it must mean for the
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purposes of the law, even though the law was written 60 years ago. And so that's what we're
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going to do. Gender identity is real. Why? Because I say it is. Okay, there it is. All right,
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I guess we're just ruled by this dictatorship of some random federal judges. It would be really nice
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if the people had to say here, not only for a procedural matter, not just because I think that
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the voice of the people is the voice of God. I don't really care about the procedure. I want good
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government. Whatever just procedure leads me to good government, that's what I want. If the judges
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give us good government, then let the judges have the say. If the people are going to give us good
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government, let the people have the say. If the president's going to go then, okay, let the
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president have the say. But the people happen to be right on this. The people tend to have much more
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common sense, especially today where our ruling class is entirely liberal. The people are almost always
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right when they disagree with the ruling class. And you see that here. Okay, you're getting some
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political pushback, even on the right. The presidential race is heating up. Some Republicans
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hate this stuff. I love it. Some Republicans are pulling their hair out. No, why? Why is this
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candidate attacking this candidate? No, they shouldn't do that. They should all get along. That's not what
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primaries are for. Primaries are when really thick-skinned, really ambitious people
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just rip each other to shreds. And the benefit of this is not only that it is extremely entertaining,
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but that it's going to toughen up the eventual nominee so that the attacks from the real opposition,
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the Democrats, will not be as effective come the general election. So Nikki Haley is kicking this off.
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She is attacking Ron DeSantis over this issue of gender identity and the rainbow movement. She's attacking
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him for turning on Disney. Here you have DeSantis, who accepted 50,000 in political contributions
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from Disney. He went and put their executives and their lobbyists on prominent boards throughout
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Florida. And he went and basically gave the highest corporate subsidies in Florida history to Disney.
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But because they went and criticized him, now he's going to spend taxpayer dollars on a lawsuit.
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It's just like all this vendetta stuff. We've been down that road again. We can't go down that.
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Businesses were my partners in South Carolina. We didn't always get along. And I, you know,
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luckily South Carolina is very anti-woke. But when you have a company like that, don't bring the
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citizen's taxpayer dollars into it. Pick up the phone, deal with it, settle it the way you should.
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And I just think he's being hypocritical. I like Nikki Haley a lot. Personally,
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very nice, nice lady. This was an ill-advised attack on DeSantis because the attack ends up
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making DeSantis look good. She's saying DeSantis received a lot of campaign contributions.
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DeSantis worked very nicely with Disney and put Disney on, on certain boards and gave them some
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influence. But then when Disney opposed the elected representatives representing their people and the
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law that they passed to stop transing the kids, then DeSantis turned on Disney. So her attack is that
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DeSantis is not totally bought and paid for by his donors, specifically Disney, which ends up making
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DeSantis look good. I think the point she was trying to make is that DeSantis is showboating here,
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or he's disrupting business in a way that is not conducive to the flourishing of the state,
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or it's just nationally self-serving, but doesn't serve Florida. I don't know. I don't know,
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because she didn't make that point. Instead, she says, hey, DeSantis will take donations from people,
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but then not just do whatever they say. So if I were running the Haley campaign right now,
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I would retire that line of attack. I don't think that is going to work very well. But it is attack
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season. So the attacks are all going to come out, and the attacks are going to come out against
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DeSantis. They're not going to come out really against Trump. You're seeing attacks from Vivek
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Ramaswamy against DeSantis. You're seeing Nikki Haley attack Ron DeSantis. There's one candidate who is
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attacking Trump, brand new candidate in the race who we'll get to in one second. But the attacks are
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going to come against DeSantis because Trump is so far ahead in the polls right now that if you just try
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to attack Trump, then he's going to nuke you from outer space, and your campaign's going to be dead
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in the cradle. You've got to go after DeSantis to weaken DeSantis so that it ceases to be a two-man
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race, and it becomes a gigantic candidate versus all of the other guys. Then they can all turn on
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Trump, which if 2016 is any indication, will probably occur once it's too late, which is why Trump likely
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right now will receive the nomination. But the one candidate who is attacking Trump right now
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is the new candidate in the race. He's the dark horse that a lot of you have made fun of me for
00:17:15.880
suggesting could have a moment in the campaign. It's the croissants, baby. It's the croissants for
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short. It is Governor Christie. You might have forgotten about him, but he's popping back up,
00:17:29.600
and he's officially filed paperwork to run, so he hasn't made a formal announcement, but the government,
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as far as the government is concerned, he's a candidate for president. He said he's going to
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run as the chief Trump antagonist. He said, I am running my campaign just to attack Trump,
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which is a big deal because while a lot of politicians in the Republican Party have bad
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blood with Trump going back a long way, Christie and Trump used to be buddies. Christie was an advisor to
00:17:57.260
Trump. During the 2020 debate prep for Trump and Biden, Chris Christie was Trump's sparring partner,
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which tells you two things. One, Christie was pretty close to Trump. And two, Christie's a pretty
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good debater. He's the guy that Trump world picked to be the toughest challenger to prepare Trump for
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that debate. And now things have changed in the last few years. Christie is really going after Trump,
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specifically going after Trump's family. Let me tell you something, everybody. The grift from this
00:18:28.140
family is breathtaking. It's breathtaking. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Kushner walk out of the White House
00:18:36.640
and months later get $2 billion from the Saudis. $2 billion from the Saudis. You think it's because
00:18:45.360
he's some kind of investing genius? Or do you think it's because he was sitting next to the president
00:18:50.000
of the United States for four years doing favors for the Saudis? That's your money. That's your money.
00:18:56.360
He stole and gave it to his family. You know what that makes us? A banana republic. That's what it
00:19:03.640
makes us. So he may get 30% again. I'm not sure. Maybe he'll get more. Maybe he'll get less. But let me
00:19:11.420
tell you what he'll know in 2024 that he had no idea of in 2016. He's in for a fight to get it.
00:19:17.340
Okay. That's not very persuasive. What do you mean? Trump didn't know he was in for a fight
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in 2016. There was a brutal presidential race and there were a bazillion people running.
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But Christie has a point, which is that in 2016, everybody reserved their fire.
00:19:35.940
Well, the people who attacked Trump got nuked immediately. And then the candidates who were
00:19:39.800
trying to come in number two, they were maybe trying to wait until the very end to edge him out.
00:19:43.520
They held their fire until it was too late. You saw this, especially with the Cruz campaign.
00:19:48.180
You saw with the Rubio campaign. So now Christie's coming out there saying, look at this grift from
00:19:53.800
this family. Now it's tough for Christie because Christie was very close to Trump and he helped
00:19:59.060
Trump for a long time, including up through the 2020 election. So now is Christie running a
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Liz Cheney kind of campaign? Oh, I've seen the light. I used to do lots of terrible corrupt stuff with
00:20:09.980
those awful Republicans, but now I've seen the light. No, he's not quite running that. He's not
00:20:14.360
quite running on how close he was to Trump, but he's not quite running on being an outsider in Trump
00:20:19.460
world. The message is a little bit confused. And so he's going to get in the race now. And
00:20:26.160
what complicates this even further is the only thing Christie can do in this race is help Trump.
00:20:32.060
He can't, he can't really hurt Trump. There is not one single Trump voter who is going to vote for
00:20:40.020
Christie over Trump unless they throw Trump in the gulag or something and Trump's not available for a
00:20:45.520
campaign. So Christie, even as he targets all of his attacks on Trump, he's still running in the
00:20:51.800
anti-Trump lane. Christie is still the alternative. He is an alternative that is more acceptable to the
00:20:57.240
establishment because his policies are a little more liberal, significantly more liberal than Trump's.
00:21:02.060
But he's got that fight. And so it's, in a way, it's a kind of a smart campaign pitch, which is
00:21:07.560
I'm the guy who can take on Trump. Christie is dealing with the political reality that this is
00:21:11.980
Trump's nomination right now. Look at the polls. This is his to lose. And so, okay, the only guy who's
00:21:17.780
going to have a shot is going to be the guy who explicitly says he's going to take on Trump.
00:21:21.760
That is where he's running. And I know you doubt me. He could have a moment. He could have a moment.
00:21:27.660
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So you got Haley attacking DeSantis, Christie attacking Trump. Now Rubio, Rubio's not even
00:23:49.020
running for president. He's attacking Christie. Rubio is furious because Christie's pitch is,
00:23:54.080
hey, I destroyed Rubio's campaign. I'm going to do it to Trump this time.
00:23:57.960
And you remember there was that great clip. I didn't pull it today. I should have it. But a lot of
00:24:01.480
people have been Googling over the last 24 hours where Christie and Rubio were on a debate stage.
00:24:05.920
Rubio gave some canned 30-second speech about how, we need to dispel what this fiction that Barack
00:24:11.360
Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. And he goes on, and it
00:24:14.080
was some rehearsed line. And Christie made fun of him for it. And he said, that's the thing that's
00:24:17.900
wrong with Washington. He says, that thing, the canned 30-second speech, it's so stupid, it's
00:24:21.940
ridiculous. And it really flustered Rubio. And so Rubio sputtered for a little bit, and then
00:24:26.440
he repeated the line. He didn't know what else to say, so he repeated the line. And Christie just
00:24:31.240
demolished him for it. He said, there it is. There's the line again. Okay, here you go.
00:24:34.720
Proves my point. It was devastating. It was devastating. So Rubio, out of nowhere,
00:24:40.280
tweets out, any political reporter commentator claiming Christie ended my campaign in 2016 is
00:24:44.640
lazy or dumb. New Hampshire debate sucked because instead of hitting back when attacked
00:24:48.660
like I wanted to, I listened to advice about pivoting and not punching down on Chris Christie,
00:24:52.800
who was at 7% and about to drop out. But it didn't end my campaign. After New Hampshire,
00:24:56.840
I finished second in South Carolina and Nevada, won three primaries, almost won Virginia on Super
00:25:00.940
Tuesday, finished with the third most delegates behind the Trump's historic campaign and was
00:25:06.500
reelected twice by eight and 17 points. Okay, Marco, it's all right. It's all right. Okay,
00:25:11.940
this is not, I like Marco Rubio. But this is a weak sauce, man. His defense is one, I didn't follow
00:25:22.640
my instincts and I listened to whatever the consultants told me. So don't blame me. It's the consultant's
00:25:26.740
fault. Okay, come on. That's not, that doesn't make you look good. And then two is not convincing
00:25:32.660
anybody. In fact, all this tweet is making people do is go look up this very embarrassing moment for
00:25:38.160
Marco Rubio. And there's a political lesson here for all of us. I'm not just beating up on Rubio.
00:25:42.020
The political lesson is don't try to fight yesterday's battles. Yesterday's battles are over
00:25:47.800
and you either won or you lost. And if you lost, then you're not going to win by rehashing a loss.
00:25:56.580
People are just going to be reminded that you lost. And if you won, you actually can lose somewhat
00:26:04.280
by rehashing it. If you're going to reopen that issue and reopen that victory, then people are going
00:26:09.680
to analyze it again. Maybe because political circumstances have changed, they're going to
00:26:14.340
re-examine, maybe, maybe change their perception of what you've done. You can't win. You've got to
00:26:19.900
fight today's battles. You've got to fight on today's terms. You definitely don't want to remind
00:26:24.300
people. For people in politics, for anyone who's got any kind of an ego, who's got any kind of a sense
00:26:30.480
of pride or, you know, wounded dignity or something, those moments where we screw up, where you said the
00:26:37.800
wrong thing, you did the wrong thing, you just, oh, you feel queasy that you've got so much regret.
00:26:41.940
They stick with you forever. And you think that if you just keep bringing them up, you can fix it.
00:26:46.700
You can't. Just move on. Just move on. Don't make people Google the worst moment of your political
00:26:51.620
career. Now, speaking of battles and presidential candidates, Vivek Ramaswamy is going on the offense
00:26:58.180
here. He's not merely attacking the other candidates. Vivek was on ABC News. He was asked by Martha
00:27:04.260
Raddatz to explain his position on Ukraine. And Vivek went a long way to differentiate himself from the
00:27:11.720
rest of the field. You do not believe that Russia taking over Ukraine would be bad for our national
00:27:18.560
interest. I do not think it is a top foreign policy priority for us. I don't think it is preferable
00:27:23.220
for Russia to be able to invade a sovereign country that it's its neighbor. But I think the job of the
00:27:27.960
US president is to look after American interests. And what I think the number one threat to the US
00:27:32.680
military is right now, our top military threat, is the Sino-Russian alliance. I think that by fighting
00:27:38.880
further in Russia, by further arming Ukraine, we are driving Russia into China's hands.
00:27:44.360
And that Sino-Russian alliance is the top threat we faced. And what I've said is I would end this war
00:27:49.720
in return for pulling Putin out of that treaty with China.
00:27:53.940
How do you do this? No one tells Vladimir Putin what to do.
00:27:57.260
What I think we need to do is end the Ukraine war on peaceful terms that, yes,
00:28:01.520
do make some major concessions to Russia, including freezing the current lines of control
00:28:06.460
in a Korean war style. Which Ukraine really wouldn't want to do.
00:28:09.880
Which Ukraine wouldn't want to do. And also a permanent commitment not to allow Ukraine to
00:28:13.460
enter NATO. But in return, Russia has to leave its treaty and its joint military agreement
00:28:18.860
with China. That better advances American interests and actually further deters China
00:28:24.120
from going after Taiwan. It's a great plan. It's a great plan.
00:28:30.060
And it is the best specific plan that anybody in the race has laid out on the Ukraine war.
00:28:39.500
Now, some people might knock Vivek. The only way they could knock Vivek for this answer is either
00:28:45.500
if they're total war hawks who just want NATO to expand around the world and just want to conquer
00:28:49.800
Ukraine. Some people, the establishmentarians will do that. But the other criticism would be,
00:28:57.180
well, you know, you've shown your strategy. You've given up your plan. Okay. Yeah, that's true. All
00:29:01.020
right. I guess it would be better to play close to the vest. But this is a presidential campaign.
00:29:04.140
You got to tell people what you're going to do. Okay. And Vivek's plan here is very, very good.
00:29:09.680
Very, very good one. DeSantis' answer on this question was, hey, we'll see what happens by 2025.
00:29:15.560
Yeah, we'll see. We'll deal with it then. So he's just brushing it off. Trump's answer was,
00:29:19.080
I'm going to end the war on day one. Which is a better answer than DeSantis' answer.
00:29:24.020
saying, we want the war to come to an end. So he's signaling here some of what Vivek is talking
00:29:29.680
about. Maybe exactly what Vivek is talking about. Trump just doesn't want to give the details here.
00:29:33.940
Okay. Why are Trump and DeSantis playing it so safe? They're playing it safe because Ukraine is
00:29:39.060
a wedge issue on the right. The base base, the real, the conservatives of the conservatives are
00:29:45.200
very skeptical of the Ukraine war. They want it to come to an end. They see Ukraine as a buffer state.
00:29:49.500
They don't want NATO to expand. They don't want Ukraine to join NATO, certainly. They don't want
00:29:56.500
to have to fight a world war with a nuclear former superpower over a territory that's been contested
00:30:01.980
for 1,000 years. So that, the base base, the Tucker audience, I don't know, you guys, the base base
00:30:11.180
is with Vivek on this. And I imagine with Trump. And maybe with DeSantis too, he's just not being
00:30:18.320
specific. The sort of base, the kind of more normie GOP voter is reflexively anti-Putin, hates Putin,
00:30:31.580
Putin's the worst guy in the world, still views the world largely through the lens of the Cold War,
00:30:36.200
and wants Ukraine to win, doesn't want Russia to get a single inch of territory, doesn't have any
00:30:43.900
specific ideas for exactly how to wind this war down, but hates the idea of us giving in in any
00:30:49.120
way to Vladimir Putin. So even if their instincts are not exactly realistic or practicable without
00:30:54.800
entering into a major war between the US and Russia, which we were able to avoid for the whole Cold
00:30:59.920
War, but now, who knows, maybe things are dicier because we have weaker leadership. That base probably
00:31:07.420
won't like Vivek's answer. And so it's a wedge issue. So why is Vivek being specific here? Because
00:31:14.200
Trump, and to a lesser degree DeSantis, are way up in the polls. So they don't need to get specific
00:31:18.440
foreign policy. It's usually not the determining factor of presidential campaigns. And so they kind of
00:31:26.060
want to avoid it. Vivek is running an insurgent campaign at a left field. No one knew this guy
00:31:30.500
was going to run in 2024. So he doesn't have the luxury of waiting on this. And I think not only is
00:31:37.440
his view right, I think politically it's wise for him to make this argument. Yeah, it's high risk,
00:31:45.160
but there can be some real reward here too. This is actually exactly what Trump did in 2016.
00:31:50.060
Trump in 2016, on that debate stage, was asked about the Iraq war. And all the Republicans were
00:31:55.100
asked about the Iraq war. And they knew public opinion had turned against the Iraq war.
00:31:58.960
But a lot of them still wanted to defend it because they had been defending the Iraq war for
00:32:02.580
15 years at that point. And Trump comes out and he says, oh, the Iraq war was a mistake. George
00:32:08.240
Bush made a dumb policy, foreign policy error, and we're paying for it now. Gasps in the room. You can't
00:32:15.860
upend the GOP line on Iraq. Yeah, well, I did anyway, because I'm not even really a Republican that
00:32:21.920
much. I'm just Donald Trump and I do whatever the hell I want. You can't say that. But a lot of people
00:32:27.140
agreed with Trump's position, including in the GOP base. And he was rewarded for that. I think you could
00:32:33.620
see a similar kind of political reward for Vivek here, for getting specific on Ukraine. Now, speaking
00:32:40.380
of Ukraine war skeptics, Tucker's back, baby. Tucker on Twitter, available to stream now. I lost count of
00:32:49.380
how many views it has. Tucker on Twitter has got like a bazillion views, a hugely successful launch.
00:32:57.920
The episode is about 10 to 11 minutes. And I thought, well, wait, he's not doing his whole 30
00:33:02.240
minute show. Or I guess it was an hour long show on Fox. But then I remembered that when it's on cable
00:33:06.640
news, half of that is commercials. So you're actually not losing too much Tucker content. It was an excellent
00:33:12.120
first episode. And he went even further than he would on cable. It was a similar kind of show,
00:33:20.280
but he went even further because now he's not constrained by the rules of one of these big
00:33:25.320
establishment news corporations. The Russians are dying. It's the best money we've ever spent,
00:33:31.040
Graham says. A smile spreads across his thin, quivering lips as he forms the words. He looks like
00:33:37.400
a starving man contemplating a breakfast buffet. The aroma of death has aroused Lindsey Graham.
00:33:43.420
Thanks so much, replies Zelensky. He feels the same way. See, there's nothing dark here. Just two
00:33:49.180
middle-aged guys celebrating the killing of a population. They don't seem like the kind of
00:33:53.260
people who'd enjoy flooding villages or starting a famine. And in any case, who cares if they are?
00:34:00.180
It's really not your business. Your job is to support Ukraine. The media lie. They do.
00:34:05.180
But mostly, they just ignore the stories that matter. What's happened to the hundreds of billions
00:34:11.140
of U.S. dollars we've sent to Ukraine? No clue. Who organized those BLM riots three years ago?
00:34:18.160
No one's gotten to the bottom of that. What exactly happened on 9-11? Well, it's still classified.
00:34:24.140
How did Jeffrey Epstein make all that money? How did he die? How about JFK? And so endlessly on.
00:34:29.540
Not only are the media not interested in any of this, they are actively hostile to anybody who is.
00:34:40.420
Great stuff. One, Tucker's writers, and Tucker himself is a writer. He's a very talented writer
00:34:48.020
himself. They're just phenomenal. That bit about Lindsey Graham's quivering lip as he thought about
00:34:55.220
the war in Ukraine is so mean, so vivid, so really good stuff. And then Tucker's beginning to answer
00:35:03.400
one of the big questions about the future of his show, which is, does Tucker work without
00:35:10.400
the constraints of cable news? Part of what made the Tucker show so great was that he was saying it
00:35:16.940
on cable news. Cable news, which had been so milquetoast and reigned in, and a lot of these hosts,
00:35:24.200
even the conservative ones, just kind of towed the uniparty liberal line. And Tucker comes out,
00:35:28.400
and he contradicts it. A lot of people on Fox News even, but throughout the cable news,
00:35:33.780
they wouldn't invite really conservative people on the air. Oh no, the real conservatives,
00:35:39.680
they're going to be blacklisted. And then Tucker comes on, he says, yeah, no, forget about that.
00:35:43.320
We're going to have all these guys on. I'm going to have whoever I want on the show.
00:35:47.120
Well, the question was, does that work when you take away the constraints? And the answer I think is
00:35:51.060
yes, Tucker is doing the same kind of show, but going further, talking about aliens, talking about
00:35:58.980
foreign policy, talking about 9-11, raising questions about 9-11, raising questions about
00:36:04.480
the JFK assassination, and saying, I'm going to go further. I'm going to push further than I
00:36:08.760
previously could before. It's just a way forward. If this works, Tucker leans in and adapts himself
00:36:15.400
to the media, which he obviously is doing. This could be a real death blow for the establishment,
00:36:22.500
longstanding legacy media. We're now premiering movies on Twitter that get a bazillion views,
00:36:28.940
like we did with What is a Woman last week. We're now premiering presidential campaigns on Twitter,
00:36:35.620
not the smoothest rollout ever, but impressive that it happened. RFK Jr. now, Democrat presidential
00:36:43.740
candidate, using Twitter to advance his campaign for a town hall. Now, Tucker Carlson, biggest
00:36:49.920
cable news host ever, coming to Twitter, getting bazillions and bazillions of views.
00:36:58.300
If this succeeds, every sign says that it has. The media landscape has fundamentally changed and
00:37:05.920
changed for the better. It's great. We got to talk to each other about it. When you want to talk to
00:37:10.580
your friends, you got to check out Pure Talk. Right now, go to puretalk.com slash Knowles,
00:37:14.360
a company that I am proud to stand behind, a company that's proud to stand behind this show
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wireless for Americans by Americans. My favorite comment yesterday is from Edgar Hoods, who says,
00:38:21.960
he says this of my observation yesterday, that with DeSantis running as Trump 2.0, with DeSantis
00:38:30.660
running as the more competent Trump or the more effective Trump, he's going to have an uphill battle
00:38:35.540
because even if he's right, many people will still prefer Trump. Even if DeSantis is more effective,
00:38:43.440
even if DeSantis is smarter and more precise and all the things, let's say it's all true,
00:38:48.240
many people are still going to prefer Trump. And Edgar Hoods says, it's like the taste test with
00:38:54.200
Coke and Pepsi. People like Pepsi when they're blindfolded, but they like Coke better when they
00:38:59.280
can see it. I think that's true. If you close your eyes and said, hey, what would you think about
00:39:05.300
an executive, a politician who's in an executive role, who bans the porn from libraries and fires
00:39:14.980
Soros prosecutors and fires the weird pro-COVID lockdown health apparatchiks and replaces them
00:39:25.560
with people who are going to take the side of tradition and reason and freedom and all the rest
00:39:29.320
of it? What do you think of someone who's going to take on the administrative state or all of the
00:39:34.760
rest of the things DeSantis is focused on? Close your eyes. You say, okay, I prefer that guy.
00:39:40.900
But then you open your eyes and you say, nah, I'm with Trump. And I'm just telling you, I know
00:39:46.260
there are going to be people who like DeSantis who say, well, why? They shouldn't pick Trump.
00:39:49.400
And I know there are going to be people who like Trump who say, nah, DeSantis, he's not really that
00:39:52.880
good. He's just, only when you close your eyes do you think he's that good. I'm just describing to
00:39:57.200
you the phenomenon and that the Coke-Pepsi analogy is a very good one. Maybe Pepsi is better than Coke
00:40:04.940
and maybe it's not. Many people are going to say Pepsi is better than Coke when they don't know
00:40:10.260
which one they're drinking. But when they open their eyes and they just look at it and they're
00:40:14.420
presented with those two things, people are going to pick Coke. It's the original. That's what you're
00:40:21.980
seeing in the polls right now. And so if DeSantis or any other candidate wants to turn that dynamic
00:40:26.600
around, they've got to differentiate themselves a little bit more, a little bit more than Pepsi has
00:40:32.720
from Coca-Cola. Now, speaking of the media, something very, very telling about this whole
00:40:39.860
point with the way movies are being released now, presidential campaigns being released,
00:40:43.520
Tucker Carlson's new show. There's a UC Davis study out. The UC Davis study asks, can movie reviews
00:40:54.340
predict box office success? And you would think from that question, the question is, if the critics
00:40:59.140
like a movie, does that mean that the movie is going to do well necessarily? And if the critics
00:41:03.520
pan a movie, does that mean that the movie is really dead? No, it doesn't. Actually, the opposite
00:41:10.540
is true. So what the survey found was that positive reviews signal that a film will flop and negative
00:41:19.620
reviews signal that a film will be a hit. This published by UC Davis just a few days ago.
00:41:26.840
What does this tell you? This tells you about a lot more than just movies. This tells you,
00:41:33.280
one, we are living increasingly in a totalitarian state, not just an authoritarian state where the
00:41:43.660
governors, the rulers have a little bit of a heavy hand, a totalitarian state where the ideology of the
00:41:49.340
state seeps heavy handedly into everything, into art, into all forms of education, into all sorts of
00:41:58.680
public rituals, into the language we're allowed to use, into the thoughts that we're allowed to have.
00:42:03.680
That's totalitarian. It's when it's a total state. It would be a distinction here you could see between
00:42:10.700
communist Soviet Union and Francisco Franco's Spain. Francisco Franco was an authoritarian ruler,
00:42:18.700
but he basically tolerated diversity. He tolerated people doing pretty much what they wanted to do,
00:42:24.040
but they couldn't insist upon it in public. They couldn't make a big show about it. They couldn't
00:42:30.500
go out there and march against his regime. He would suppress that kind of stuff, but he didn't send the
00:42:36.540
thought police into your home to tell you that you got to use certain pronouns, okay? He actually had
00:42:40.800
a looser hand than that, whereas the Soviet Union would encourage people to rat on their neighbors,
00:42:45.920
rat on their family. The communist totalitarian states really insist upon the ideology at every
00:42:50.880
single level all of the time. That's more of the society we're living in now, because the ideology of
00:42:57.000
the state is not just coming from the congressmen or the politicians. It's coming from the movie
00:43:00.920
reviewers. It's coming from the mainstream media broadcasters. It's coming from the teachers.
00:43:05.520
It's coming from the sports. It's coming from ESPN. It's just everywhere, okay?
00:43:10.220
But the people know that it's BS. The people oppose it. And so when the people see that the
00:43:18.820
establishment likes something, they assume it's bad, and they won't go see it. When the establishment
00:43:23.560
sees, when the people see that the establishment hates something, the people will go see it. They will
00:43:27.120
like it. You see it on Rotten Tomatoes. The way you know a movie is going to be really,
00:43:31.360
really good is when it has a very low critic score, and then it will have a high audience score.
00:43:34.240
And now, because Rotten Tomatoes has messed around even with how the audience score works,
00:43:38.780
now even the audience score isn't totally reliable. So that's one thing that it tells
00:43:41.960
you. That's the most important thing that that study tells you. The second thing that
00:43:45.620
the study tells you is that movies are a dead industry. They're effectively a dead industry
00:43:50.020
at this point. The studios are churning out all the same crap. The Oscars don't reward movies that
00:43:55.480
people like. The Oscars only reward movies about like 15-year-old gay cowboys or whatever that
00:43:59.900
nobody's going to go see. And the critics are in on it. The critics are part of the film industry.
00:44:05.580
The studios are part of it. The distributors are part of it. The actors are part of it. The writers
00:44:08.440
are part of it. And it's just kind of dead. And it's been dying for a long time. And so if movies
00:44:15.360
or just premium content generally, meaning miniseries, extended series, middle ground kind
00:44:22.700
of shows, if that's going to have a future, it's not going to have a future in Hollywood.
00:44:25.940
Hollywood. The future of that is going to be outside of Hollywood, maybe places like Tennessee
00:44:29.860
or maybe elsewhere. This is true of politics too. This is another reason why Trump is doing well in
00:44:37.880
the polls. I think, I fear that people who like DeSantis for the nominee in 2024, they think I'm
00:44:45.020
being too nice to Trump. Probably the people who support Trump think I'm being too nice to DeSantis
00:44:50.920
and the other candidates. I'm just calling him like I sees him, okay? I'm describing what I'm
00:44:56.560
seeing. And what I'm seeing here is that Trump is dominating in the polls and he's gaining in the
00:45:01.180
polls. And he's gaining even after his chief primary opponent, Ron DeSantis announces, he's
00:45:06.440
gaining because of the phenomenon that you're seeing in the UC Davis movie review study.
00:45:11.900
Because of the phenomenon that you're seeing in Tucker Carlson getting a bazillion views when he
00:45:15.620
debuts his cable news show on Twitter. It's because negative reviews from the elites is taken as a
00:45:24.520
positive by the people. And the candidate that the liberal establishment hates the most is Trump.
00:45:33.840
Maybe they fear other candidates more. Maybe they think that DeSantis would be more effective. Maybe
00:45:38.200
they, I don't know, they're helping Donald Trump become the nominee by giving him so much media
00:45:43.560
coverage. Okay, sure, whatever. I think we all have to admit they hate this guy. They hate him.
00:45:50.800
They've hated him for so long because of the way he talks and the way he is. And he's so boorish.
00:45:57.620
And he doesn't behave like a nice, fancy, sophisticated person. And he's threatening
00:46:01.320
major entrenched interests on trade and foreign policy. And they're going to try to stop him.
00:46:07.080
And they're going to try to cheat to stop him. And they're going to change all the election laws to
00:46:09.780
stop him. And they're going to shut down the world to stop him. And they're going to throw him in jail
00:46:12.600
if they have to, to stop him. And if they can't get him in jail in New York, they're going to get
00:46:15.220
him in jail in DC. If they can't get him in DC, they're going to get him in Georgia or Florida
00:46:18.900
or wherever else. They just freaking hate this guy. And everybody knows it. They hate him more than
00:46:23.740
they hate the other people. And that's why the people right now are supporting him more.
00:46:30.140
They're supporting him more than Biden, even in important swing states. Right now,
00:46:34.600
Trump is leading Biden in Nevada. Trump is leading Biden 48 to 47. So it's fairly close,
00:46:40.580
but that's according to McLaughlin & Associates, a very reliable poll firm. That's according to
00:46:44.860
former Congressman Lee Zeldin's Leadership American Needs PAC. So it's not just, well,
00:46:51.640
okay, Trump can win the primary, but he can't win the general. At least not according to these polls.
00:46:55.440
And it's not even just national polls. You're seeing this in important states that Trump's got to win.
00:47:01.900
What about with the independents? Well, Trump can't win independents. Well,
00:47:05.080
according to another survey just came out from The Economist and YouGov,
00:47:08.540
more independents prefer Trump than Biden. By a lot. 36% Trump, 26% Biden. It's a 10-point gap
00:47:18.860
among independents. We always hear about the suburban housewife or whatever. We always hear
00:47:24.060
about the moderate voter. Well, according to this poll, at least, and maybe it's not because of
00:47:29.500
anything Trump has done. Maybe it's just because of what a screw up Joe Biden is. But regardless,
00:47:32.960
people are viewing Trump as the likely nominee and they seem to be supporting him more than Biden.
00:47:40.960
That's the state of the race. And it's just, I'm so glad that we're finally out of the kind of dull
00:47:46.640
season where it's just a little attack here, a little lob here, a little jab there. No,
00:47:50.540
we're getting into real, brutal, bare knuckle politics. If you don't get a kick out of that
00:47:59.140
sort of thing, why do you pay attention to the news? If you don't get a kick out of that sort of
00:48:04.640
thing, get another hobby. Go play ukulele or something. You can play ukulele anyway. That's
00:48:08.140
a fun hobby to pick up regardless. But if you like politics, you got to like this stuff. This is what
00:48:15.120
politics is. Speaking of politics, rehashing old battles and my producers have reminded me of one
00:48:23.840
of the, one of the all-time great political interviews. That would be Hillary Clinton on
00:48:28.660
Between Two Ferns, which we will be delving into all of the important details of this,
00:48:35.620
of this great political interview. The rest of the show continues now. You don't want to miss it.
00:48:39.280
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00:48:45.120
to make sure you leave your account. You won't be.