Ep. 1308 - This Viral Song Just Changed Everything
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Summary
On the bright side, the DOJ has appointed a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, which proves that Republicans were right all along. And on the downside, it further protects Joe Biden and the Democrats. Michael Knowles explains why.
Transcript
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If you're an American conservative, it has been a huge weekend for music.
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An unknown Southern folk singer became the most popular musician in the country
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for railing against the liberal establishment. The Vaik Ramaswamy rapped Eminem at the Iowa
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State Fair. And best music of all, Hunter Biden's business partner sang like a canary
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to the point that now the DOJ has appointed a special counsel, which on the bright side
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proves that Republicans were right all along. And on the downside, further protects
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Joe Biden and the Democrats. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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You remember that mother effer is not real girl, the one from the airplane? I'm sorry to say we
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now know who she is, I think, probably. There's a little wrinkle to that. We'll get into it.
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And I'm sorry to say she apologized. Very sad. She had nothing to apologize for. That mother effer
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who was not real had a lot to apologize for. She did not. We'll get to that. First, though,
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the big political news, which every other news story is distracting from, but the actual political
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news that affects your political order is that the DOJ under Merrick Garland, Joe Biden's extremely
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political, political, wheeling and dealing attorney general has just appointed a special counsel to
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investigate Hunter Biden. On Tuesday of this week, Mr. Weiss advised me that in his judgment,
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his investigation had reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a special counsel,
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and he asked to be so appointed. Upon considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances
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relating to this matter, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint him
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as special counsel. This appointment confirms my commitment to provide Mr. Weiss all the resources
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he requests. Now, you heard that. He didn't say we have appointed a new special counsel to
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investigate Hunter Biden. He said, Mr. Weiss, David Weiss, who is the US attorney who had been on the
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Hunter Biden case, he has asked that he have his title changed, have his role changed to continue the
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investigation. Weiss has been investigating Hunter Biden for, these investigations have been going on
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for years. Weiss was involved in all of the seemingly incompetent, plotting, dead end BS Hunter Biden
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investigation that culminated in the attempt by prosecutors like David Weiss to get Hunter Biden a
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plea deal that would have let him off the hook for all of his crimes, wouldn't have even addressed the most
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serious crimes, would have given him a slap on the wrist for tax crimes, which were the evidence of the
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deeper crimes, the political corruption, and would have put him in a diversion program for the gun charge so that
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the gun crime would have been expunged from his record. So this is a guy, a prosecutor, who has
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every step of the way tried to let the criminal off the hook. And now, now that the evidence is just so
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clear, not only of Hunter Biden's personal crime, but of the corruption that it means for the Biden
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family, now all of a sudden David Weiss has said, well, you know what, I can't continue this investigation
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at the DOJ. All of my schemes to try to let the Bidens off the hook have been foiled. So now I need
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to be an independent special counsel so that I can further screw up this investigation. On the one
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hand, this is nice news in that it shows the public beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Hunter Biden
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investigation is serious, that Hunter Biden's crimes are serious. The whole time, Democrats have said,
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no, he didn't do anything wrong. Republicans are just distracting. This is BS, BS, BS. CNN ran
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endless segments about how there was no evidence against Hunter Biden, much less against Joe.
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The allegations, without evidence, mostly, that Republicans have out there.
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There has been no corroboration. There's no evidence there.
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I mean, you would agree we don't have, there's no evidence of that at all.
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Republicans get riled up and keep making allegations that at this point have not been substantiated with
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evidence. So far, there is no evidence that the evidence has come out. They don't have evidence
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to show that Joe Biden did anything wrong. Comers said that repeatedly. He's like, well,
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I hope we find evidence. And of course, they present that without clear evidence.
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So if there was evidence that they had accumulated in their four to five year investigation,
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this request to be a special counsel would have come already. It seems unlikely that they have that
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So before we move on to why this is actually bad for Republicans and a pretty crafty move
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by Biden and the Democrats, just, I don't want to gloss over the fact that all of those people
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were completely dead wrong. Every single person you just heard, the CNN anchors, the CNN guests,
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the former prosecutors, the special legal analysts, all just completely wrong. The Republicans
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write the whole time. Your dumb hillbilly hick, Uncle Jimbo, in the middle of the mountain
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somewhere said, you know, these Bidons are corrupt. That guy, totally right, completely vindicated,
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has much better legal insight than all of the geniuses in the neckties on CNN. Now, probably what
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they were doing was not just being ignorant and naive. They probably were doing what the corporate
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media always do, which is cover up for the liberal establishment, truth be damned. But they were wrong
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by their own standards. The appointment of the special counsel proves that there is a lot of
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evidence. There is a there there, and they're going to investigate it. The reason this is bad,
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though, for the conservatives is, one, look who the special counsel is. The guy who has bungled this
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investigation and actively, intentionally tried to undermine the case against Hunter Biden is now the
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guy in charge as special counsel, not just as US attorney. He's the last person in America who should
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be in charge of it if you actually wanted to get to the bottom of something, if you actually wanted to
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punish Hunter Biden. But of course they don't. One of the reasons that they've appointed the special
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counsel is to give themselves a little bit of distance. So they can pretend, it's not true,
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but they can pretend that actually Merrick Garland and Joe Biden, they really don't have anything to do
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with this now. We want to make sure there's no semblance of impropriety. The other reason they're
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doing this is because it's going to make it a lot easier for Weiss and his office and the DOJ to resist
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congressional subpoenas. Now that the Republicans in Congress are finally digging into this stuff,
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now that Jim Jordan and the Judiciary Committee and all of these Republican investigators are
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interviewing Devin Archer, Hunter Biden's former business partner, are hearing stories of Joe
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Biden's significant involvement in all of these crooked business deals. Now that that evidence is
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coming out, the DOJ comes in, and whether this will be successful or not is at least trying to
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throw a roadblock up there to stop the Republicans from being able to talk to the people who intentionally
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screwed up that investigation. They're just going to stonewall and stonewall and stonewall.
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The election is only a year and a half, less than a year and a half away now, the 2024 election.
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So they're just going to try to drag this thing out until nobody cares anymore, of course.
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At least though we can take the tiny victory. We were right. We were right the whole time.
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And being right, proving that there's a double standard is not going to do anything. That and
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a buck fifty will get Republicans a cup of coffee. But it is a reminder, I think, the next time that
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the Democrats try to throw some BS legal argument at us, that some Midwestern granny is a terrorist and
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needs to be thrown in solitary confinement, that Donald Trump, because he gave a speech, is an
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insurrectionist and a threat to democracy and can't be on the ballot. Whatever BS they throw at us
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that sometimes convinces the libs and the squishes and the center-right people who want to get along,
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this should be a reminder. The whole thing is completely fixed. The whole thing is completely
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rigged. We are not playing by the same set of rules here. And if we lie down in the name of
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principles or something, we are conceding the country unjustly to people who have absolutely no
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respect for the rule of law whatsoever. And that's not very good. And that's going to screw up all sorts of
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things. Our system of justice, our economy, and when both of those things are wonky, you're going
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text Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, to 989898. Speaking of incompetence at the FBI, the FBI executed a 5'6",
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300-pound, 75-year-old practical invalid over the weekend. This is a really, really sad story.
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There's a guy in Utah. I guess the news broke sometime on Friday. 75-year-old man who had posted
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some threats against Joe Biden on his personal Facebook page that had very few connections
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was executed by the FBI. How did it happen? Well, there was a SWAT team that showed up.
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There were agents who showed up. There were gunshots. The only video that we really have of it
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shows a massive show of force very, very early in the morning against this guy. And what the FBI is
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saying is that, well, he was resisting, and so they had to take him out. They left his body out just
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bloodied, covered with just a bloody sheet for a long time. Why did they do it? Because he did post
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threats. He said, I'm going to go out here when Joe Biden comes to town. I'm going to bring my gun
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out. I'm going to show up there. I'm going to put a bullet in his head. He was saying all sorts of
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terrible things. Did the FBI really believe this guy was a threat? Well, maybe they didn't know that
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he was so overweight. Maybe they didn't know that he was so elderly. Maybe they didn't know that he
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had trouble walking. If you talk to his neighbors, his neighbors say the guy could barely walk around.
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He barely went anywhere. He was involved in his church, but that was pretty much it. He'd go from
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his house to his church, and he could barely walk the distance from his car into the church.
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So did the FBI just not know that? No, the FBI did know that because the FBI had actually had two
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encounters with this guy. So they knew exactly what he was like. Why didn't the FBI just pick him up
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when he was getting out of his car, walking maybe to the grocery store, or walking maybe to church,
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or why? The FBI had been surveilling this guy for months. If they thought that he was really a
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threat to Joe Biden, why didn't they arrest him when there would have been less of a chance for a
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violent confrontation? The only conclusion that I can draw is either the FBI is just absolutely,
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completely incompetent. To a degree, not just what we joke about government incompetence,
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all those government bureaucrats, they don't know what they're doing. I mean, like, doesn't know the
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first thing about law enforcement. Or this was a political decision to go in there and show those
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damn right-wingers what for. Make an example out of this 300-pound short guy who was 75 years old,
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who could barely move. I take threats very seriously. I'm not dismissing the fact that this
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guy posted on his Facebook page threats against the president. As somebody who has received a threat or
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two before, I'm always very happy when law enforcement takes those threats seriously.
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The problem is, law enforcement very rarely takes those threats seriously when they're against
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conservatives. When prominent conservatives get death threats, I won't even name names, I won't even
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name examples, because frankly, when you get too specific on some of these examples, they can put
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people at even greater risk. But I've been around it enough to know very often law enforcement won't
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do a damn thing. And everybody knows at the public level, law enforcement will get the most prominent
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criminals off the hook. BLM burns the country down for eight months. They get off with a little slap
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on the wrist. The Midwestern granny shows up to the Capitol Rotunda. They throw her in solitary and
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they don't let her out. And that's exactly what's going on here, as far as I'm concerned.
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Unless some shocking new evidence comes out, I just don't see how anybody could conclude that
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this would be the best way to pick this guy up. The guy was so immobile that even if he had actually
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been planning to go on the day that Joe Biden showed up to Utah, drive the 40 minutes to go to
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where Joe Biden was, get out and try to shoot him or something, the FBI could have probably walked
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alongside him and picked him up. There was so much time. They were obviously watching him the whole
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time. Did they really have to go in and kill him? No, it's not. That's not even the safest way to pick
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him up. Because if they're saying that this actually was a violent, dangerous standoff, then the agents
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were in far greater trouble trying to arrest him at his house. They could have just picked him up
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walking from his car. They didn't do it though. I don't want to Monday morning quarterback this
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thing. But when the FBI gets caught spying on Catholic churches because they think that Catholics
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are a grave terror threat to America, lying about spying on Catholic churches, getting caught lying
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about spying on Catholic churches. They once said it was a single field office. Turns out it was a
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nationwide program involving multiple field offices. When the FBI shows up to fathers of seven pro-life
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advocates and arrests them in front of their kids and traumatizes them for opposing abortion.
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Meanwhile, they celebrate the infanticidal maniacs. Give them prizes. Give them special
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days and parades and celebrations. You know something's very, very corrupt. When the FBI spies on the
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Donald Trump campaign because the Donald Trump campaign is advocating for popular conservative
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messages. Meanwhile, the FBI is coordinating with the Clinton campaign and the Democrats. That's
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evidence of real corruption. When the FBI, not just the FBI in this case, when the DOJ at the higher
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level goes in and systematically, consistently tries to let Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, that's what
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they're really protecting here. When they let the Bidens off the hook for flagrant crimes that we've seen
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with our own eyes, the messages, the pictures, the videos, all of it. And then doubles down when they
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get caught and they say, okay, we're going to put it in the special counsel investigation over here and
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don't worry. Nothing to see. Move along, move along. Nothing to see here. Then when the FBI goes in and
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executes some elderly obese man in Utah who, according to all of his neighbors and according
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to common sense, didn't pose an actual threat to anyone. He was mouthing off on Facebook, I'm not
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excusing threats. But if you're using prudence, which is the highest political virtue, you recognize
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this guy didn't pose a threat to anybody. I don't know what conclusion I can draw other than yet
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again, the FBI and the Biden administration and the liberal establishment wanted to make an example
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and let every conservative know in this country, you better keep your mouth shut.
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Forget about the Democrats who get to go out and maraud and rape and kill and murder. They get to
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do whatever they want. If you so much as mouth off on Facebook, we're going to come to your home.
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You could be elderly. You could be out of shape. You could be in terrible health. We will execute you.
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We'll leave you out for people to see that, to learn from that example. Really, really sad and
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unnecessary stuff. This is happening all around the world though. I've mentioned that the phenomenon of
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conservative populism, which we'll get to in a second, the biggest trending news story of the
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whole weekend was this folk singer who came out of nowhere with this cri de coeur about how corrupt
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our political order is. This is happening all over the world. The anti-Trump people in America,
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on the right and the left, they think that Trump is just a weirdo and he's kind of funny and he's a
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carnival barker and he's tricked people into supporting him. They don't recognize that
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the reason that he got so much support is not just because he has a funny personality,
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but because he was advocating a different political vision than the Republicans had been advocating for
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the entirety of my lifetime. He came out and he questioned GOP orthodoxy on trade, not just the
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squishes on trade, but even the so-called movement conservatives. He questioned GOP policies on
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immigration, not just the squishes, but the movement conservatives on and on and on. He was uncouth and
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so they supported him in the same way that the Brits supported Brexit, in the same way that the Italians
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supported Maloney, in the same way that the Hungarians support Viktor Orban, in the same way that the
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Spaniards support the Vox party. And in Germany right now, there's a far right political party called
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Alternative for Deutschland, the AFD, which is gaining support. According to latest polls, the Alternative for
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Germany, Alternative for Deutschland has 21% in the polls. And don't forget, this is a system where
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there are lots of different parties, so that's a pretty significant number. And now the German
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president, Franz Volta Steinmeier, warned in a speech that they might just ban the party
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to save democracy. To save democracy in Germany, the president of Germany is considering banning,
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outlawing, one of the most popular parties. And the party that in terms of political momentum probably
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is the single most popular. If you look at the direction of support. Democracy. To save democracy,
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the liberals in America want to do the same thing. They want to throw the leader of the opposition into
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prison. The president of the United States is trying to imprison the leader of the opposition
00:19:09.200
to do the American version of the exact same thing they're trying to do in Germany.
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And Germany has a history of banning political parties. America doesn't really have that history
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so much, but they're going to do that. Because why? Because the people, the democracy,
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is rejecting liberalism. The Alternative for Deutschland, you know they're real crime. It's not
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that they, they're racist, they're sexist, they're thisist, they're thatist, whatever the liberals
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say. The AFD came out and said the European Union is a failed project. They're arguing for a federation
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of European nations, a new economic and interest community for Europe that preserves the sovereignty
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of member states. That's the threat. They're threatening the liberal hegemony there. And even if all the
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people want to do that, even if the full democracy is saying we reject liberalism, the liberals are
00:20:02.280
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the people are recognizing that the problem is not just the Democrats, the liberals, though everywhere
00:21:37.460
in other than one country, other than in Hungary, which is a little advanced in terms of the conservative
00:21:44.020
populist uprising. In every other country in the West, people are realizing that the problem is not
00:21:51.020
just the liberal party, which is the dominant political party throughout the whole civilization,
00:21:55.300
and the problem is not just the conservative political party, which is the junior partner in
00:21:59.980
the liberal project, but that maybe the problem is the whole system. Maybe this whole system that we
00:22:05.900
call the uniparty here in America, or the liberal establishment, or whatever, that the semblance of political
00:22:13.740
opposition, the semblance of the representation of diverse voices that, in fact, castigates a large part,
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if not the majority of the people, as deplorable, irredeemable, not worth hearing. They should just
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go off and die somewhere. Let small-town America die. Tell these people to learn to code. Tell them to
00:22:33.260
shut up. They're insurrectionists. They need to be put in prison. They need to be banned on social media.
00:22:37.960
The people are recognizing that system might be the problem, which is why a man that nobody had
00:22:46.320
heard of until three days ago, Oliver Anthony, just went viral and now has the number one song in
00:22:51.800
America, top of the charts in the country. The song is called The Rich Men, North of Richmond. This song
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is such a phenomenon. We have to play at least a good chunk of it on the show, because what's most
00:23:09.180
interesting about this phenomenon is not the song. Everybody's saying, oh, this is the greatest song
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in recent memory, and this guy's a musical genius. The story is more politically interesting than just
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I've been selling my soul, working all day, overtime hours for bulls*** pay, so I can sit out here and waste my
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life away, drag back home and drown my troubles away. It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to for people
00:23:47.500
like me. People like you wish I could just wake up and it not be true. But it is, oh, it is, living in the
00:23:58.880
new world with an old soul. These rich men, North of Richmond, Lord knows it all. Just want to have
00:24:12.740
So the first thing that strikes me, this guy is a genuine musical talent. His voice is, is
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captivating. He reminds me of Levon Helm. Levon Helm, who is the drummer in the bands, you know,
00:24:28.120
old end of Nazareth was feeling bad. He's got this, this way of wailing while he sings that is,
00:24:34.960
sounds raw. It sounds authentic. It's a little dangerous. It's not, this is not a classically
00:24:43.400
trained singer, obviously. He's really good and his pitch is good and he's playing a dobro guitar
00:24:47.340
and the whole thing just, he even looks a little bit like Levon Helm. He's got that red beard and
00:24:51.900
he's, he's singing a song about how he's selling his soul. He feels like he's losing his soul and he's
00:25:00.820
working for basically no pay and he's drinking his troubles away. And the other thing that's,
00:25:07.200
that's raw about this song is that don't, I'm not knocking the guy at all. I think this is a
00:25:14.560
wonderful story and it's a good song, but the, the lyrics could be tuned up. You know, he's rhyming
00:25:20.020
away with away. He's rhyming rich, rich men and Richmond, which is not, those don't actually
00:25:26.820
rhyme. The, the lyrics are a little bit confused here because is this a, is this a neo-Confederate
00:25:34.520
anthem as the liberals are calling it? Richmond is the capital of the Confederacy. So is that what
00:25:39.220
he's talking about? Those damn Northerners coming in here and bringing their reconstruction or something?
00:25:44.460
He's, he's wailing about this 200 years later, 150 years later. No, I don't think so. I think he's
00:25:49.320
probably referring to Washington DC as the rich men north of Richmond and they want to have total
00:25:54.580
control. So they want to have total control, but is the problem that he's, that he's not making his
00:26:00.820
money? Is the problem that he's being forced to sell his soul or being encouraged to sell his soul?
00:26:07.260
Is it, is it a, a substance question, the substantive nature of the political order,
00:26:12.880
or is it a procedural aspect? Just that these men want total control, but we don't want them to have
00:26:17.800
control. We're not saying how people should live, but we are saying that those guys north of Richmond
00:26:22.260
shouldn't do it. It's, it's a little bit confused. So I don't think that what is making this song go
00:26:28.020
viral is necessarily the lyrical content of it. You'll, you'll see why in just a second. Keep going.
00:26:35.240
I want to know what you think. I want to know what you do. And they don't think you know,
00:26:41.440
but I know that you do. Cause your dollar ain't shit. And it's taxed to no end.
00:26:52.480
See, put a, put a pause there. This is lyrically what's interesting to me too, is you hear some real
00:26:59.240
populist complaints? I'm selling, I'm selling my soul. I'm not, this is, this is not the sort of
00:27:06.680
thing that Mitt Romney would complain about. This is not the sort of thing John McCain would complain
00:27:10.140
about. Oh yeah, this new liberal economy is making us sell our souls. No. And the, we're not making
00:27:16.200
enough money. Okay. That's a populist complaint. And inflation is really bad. The dollar ain't worth
00:27:22.000
SHIT. That's a populist complaint. And it's taxed to no end. That high taxes is not exactly a populist
00:27:31.000
complaint. That's more of a, an establishment, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, John McCain kind of complaint.
00:27:37.380
And the fact is virtually all the taxes in America are paid by the rich anyway. So it's,
00:27:41.640
it is the rich men in Richmond. Well, maybe not them because they're corrupt government apparatchiks
00:27:45.500
in Washington DC, but it is the wealthy generally who are paying virtually all of the taxes in America.
00:27:51.740
So that, that's a little bit of a just standard GOP complaint, you know, and, but the rest is
00:27:59.480
populist. And the whole, the whole vibe of the song is this calling out, literally calling out from
00:28:07.660
the woods in the middle of nowhere. Keep going.
00:28:09.380
Put a pause there. So this is probably intentional to, to be a contradiction or to maybe to seem like
00:28:38.240
a paradox, but I don't think it is a paradox. I think it's just a contradiction. He's saying
00:28:41.020
people in the street don't have any food, but, but the obese are milking welfare.
00:28:51.180
The, the, the knock on the American political order is that the poor are obese and they're not
00:28:57.100
just obese because they're milking welfare. You could complain about welfare. Again, that's not
00:29:00.300
totally a populist complaint. That's a little bit more of the Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan kind of stuff.
00:29:07.760
And people don't really starve. The problem is that the poor in America are obese because,
00:29:12.300
because of the culture problems, because we've, we've sold our political soul because we don't have
00:29:19.620
really community or political love anymore because marriages have fallen apart because we've got
00:29:24.320
rampant drug abuse and addiction because we've got people who are despondent. Don't think they have a
00:29:28.580
future because their money is not worth anything and they can't get any good jobs. And so it's,
00:29:32.800
it's all kind of jumbled up. It's a, it's a stew of lamenting about the political order.
00:29:41.000
Keep going. We got a little bit more of the song.
00:29:42.580
Well God, if you're five foot three and you're 300 pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of
00:29:50.460
fudge rounds. Young men are putting themselves six feet in the ground because all this damn country does
00:29:57.120
is keep on kicking them down. Lord, it's a damn shame. What the world's gotten to people like me,
00:30:07.400
people like you wish I could just wake up and it not be true. But it is, oh it is.
00:30:15.680
Put a pause in. So this is, this is where the song really sings. This is where the song really takes
00:30:20.820
off. When he's saying, when you're five foot two and you're 300 pounds, then welfare shouldn't be
00:30:25.880
paying for your box of fudge rounds. And it's so unfair because you got ordinary men who are being
00:30:31.280
responsible, who are trying to take care of themselves. And they're putting themselves six
00:30:34.500
feet in the ground because they're dying deaths of despair. And it's a damn shame because no one's
00:30:38.840
looking out for people like me and people like you, backbone of America. No one's looking out for us.
00:30:44.300
And it's a damn shame. And I wish it weren't this way, but it is. And that, that's where it really
00:30:49.040
sings. Cause it's not this happy go lucky BS beltway establishment, astroturf conservative
00:30:57.140
movement, which says everything's really great. We've got iPhones and cheap Chinese products.
00:31:01.340
We need to stop complaining and recognize what a special, wonderful political order this is.
00:31:05.800
He's saying, no, there are really structural problems. And maybe we do have cheap crap from
00:31:09.580
China and maybe GDP has been ticking up, but life expectancy is going down. So clearly something's
00:31:15.720
rotten here. That's a beautiful complaint. And he's saying, and it's a damn shame and it shouldn't
00:31:21.460
be this way, but it is, but it is very different from the bubble gum appeal to the Southern man
00:31:32.380
movement, conservative kind of music. This is not your average country song. Okay. Very different.
00:31:40.140
And the political analogy would be in 2016, you've got a, you've got a bunch of GOP candidates and they
00:31:47.740
all have the same, roughly the same kinds of complaints. This immigration, illegal immigration
00:31:53.140
is out of control. They never complain about legal immigration, which is the lion's share of
00:31:56.220
immigration. They say this illegal immigration is out of control and there are some economic
00:32:01.300
problems, but look, we're still the greatest, most prosperous, most wonderful country on earth.
00:32:05.980
And it's always just, we don't have any real problems and everything here is great,
00:32:08.880
but we just got to work around the edges a little bit. We've got some problems to fix.
00:32:11.920
And then Trump comes in and he goes, nah, man, this is all going to hell in a handbasket. This
00:32:15.240
is completely screwed up. We are, we are going to become one of those SHIT whole countries pretty
00:32:20.400
soon if we keep it up. And we're, we've got chaos and destruction in our streets and I'm going
00:32:25.660
to turn it around and make America great again. And what all the chattering consultant geniuses
00:32:30.620
at the time said was, this is too dark. Oh, this is too dark and divisive. What was the title
00:32:37.500
of Trump's campaign book? Every other campaign book is standing up for standing. The courage
00:32:43.420
to stand in freedom and liberty and happiness and freedom and courage and the future and the
00:32:51.060
sunshine by Senator so-and-so running for some office or whatever. And then Trump's book was
00:32:56.820
crippled America. And this song is, this, this is the anthem of crippled America. This is not your
00:33:03.660
usual. We're going to put a boot up your derriere because this is America and we bleed red, white,
00:33:08.620
and blue all day. I mean, there's a place for those songs. This isn't those songs. This isn't
00:33:12.240
even a country song. This is a folk song. And for the people who are criticizing this guy and say,
00:33:17.520
well, he just shouldn't be political. He is coming out of a very long line of American folk music.
00:33:27.380
He shouldn't be political. You know, he should, we should just get back to the old days of folk music,
00:33:31.040
like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, for that matter.
00:33:35.740
And I don't know, Joni Mitchell and all these, all these people. Joan Baez.
00:33:43.700
They're always political songs and they're always fairly urgent contemporary political songs.
00:33:49.420
The reason that this is so fascinating that he took off is he's the first one of them to be
00:33:56.140
conservative. Woody Guthrie, communist. Pete Seeger, communist. Bob Dylan was a big lib. He's oddly
00:34:02.840
kind of conservative and more so over the years, but he's considered a big lib. He's the people who
00:34:08.640
really love Bob Dylan tend to be hippies. Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie,
00:34:14.900
all the, all the popular folk singers in America. Actually, Arlo Guthrie got a little bit conservative
00:34:19.440
too, though he kind of, he kind of went back to being a liberal. They're all big libs. And the
00:34:25.340
fact that you've now got a guy playing, this could be a Woody Guthrie song, but he's a conservative.
00:34:31.140
What that tells you is, truly, for the first time in my life, conservatism is the popular
00:34:39.280
counterculture. Liberalism is not only the political establishment, as it has been for a long time,
00:34:46.960
but now everybody knows it. This is, the Woody Guthrie's of today are that guy. And that means
00:34:58.160
that the political playbook for conservatives has got to change. And finally, we can start,
00:35:05.360
we can stop telling ourselves these fairy tales that we have for 50 years. Oh, we're the real
00:35:11.020
cool kids. We finally are the real cool kids. The evidence is this kind of a song, the fact that when
00:35:16.480
conservative movies do squeak through, they do extremely well. The fact that when conservative
00:35:21.420
politicians do squeak through, they tend to do extremely well. And they pose such a threat to the
00:35:26.440
liberal political order that the liberal political order starts changing all of the election rules right
00:35:30.740
before the elections, starts rigging the elections, and starts trying to throw the candidates into
00:35:35.220
prison. Not just here in America, though they're obviously doing that, but around the entire West.
00:35:39.920
That is an insurgent culture that shows that the people, after a long enough time, have finally woken up.
00:35:48.660
Are you planning to send your kid off to college this year? Condolences. Now, I've been on a lot of
00:35:53.560
college campuses, go to at least, I don't know, a dozen, sometimes maybe upwards of 20 per year.
00:36:00.620
Remember, I've seen firsthand how liberal ideology has infiltrated and polluted these universities.
00:36:05.960
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today. My favorite comment yesterday is from, or on Friday, rather, is from CarsonianTheGreat4672,
00:36:46.340
who says, Michael, if there was a movement to reinstitute the kingdom of the two Sicilies today,
00:36:50.820
would you support it? I certainly would if I was given at least one of the Sicilies. If I could be
00:36:57.820
the Archduke Grand Viscount of, and I don't even care which Sicily, then it has my full support.
00:37:06.040
Speaking of conservatives making music, you know, I really like Vivek Ramaswamy. He's a pal of mine.
00:37:15.140
We go back to college together. I think he's one of the most exciting candidates in the GOP race.
00:37:21.040
I like a lot of what he's saying and calling for and the way he's shaking it up. I have to formally
00:37:27.580
disavow my friend Vivek. I have to, because I have a line. Okay, my line, it's not how you feel about
00:37:37.100
immigration. My line is not how you feel about tariffs or something. My line is, if you embrace
00:37:44.820
hip hop, if you embrace, I can't, I just can't, I can't bring myself to accept that. And Vivek did
00:37:55.160
embrace hip hop. He wasn't, he could have gotten on the stage at the Iowa State Fair and started humming
00:38:00.080
along to the Brandenburg Concertos. He could have gotten there and pulled out a kazoo and started
00:38:06.020
humming for your release, but he didn't. He rapped Eminem.
00:38:13.860
He opens his mouth, but the words won't come out. He's joking how. Everybody's joking now.
00:38:19.500
The clock's run out. Time's up. Oh, the plow snap back to reality.
00:38:29.480
He won't, he won't act it. He knows he's so mad.
00:38:36.620
I'm not the biggest Eminem fan in the world, so I don't know how it's supposed to sound, but
00:38:39.800
I am impressed and horrified that Vivek knows all of the words, and I am dismayed that the
00:38:50.180
audience appeared to like it. So, I just formally, for once and for all, disavow my friend.
00:38:57.060
It's very charming. It is very, if I can take my own prejudices out of it,
00:39:02.340
it is very charming to see a candidate get up there and do that. And even if you don't like Eminem,
00:39:06.460
and even if you think that's, it's a little too performative or something like that,
00:39:09.700
this is why this guy is rising in the polls is because he is taking risks all the time. All sorts
00:39:19.680
of risks. He's risking his money on the campaign. I think he made a, like a, an eight figure donation
00:39:27.560
to his own political campaign. He is going out there taking unpopular stances sometimes that
00:39:35.180
then become popular stances. He's debating abortion advocates on the campaign trail.
00:39:41.420
He's getting in the scrum everywhere. He, he's going, giving speeches in support of, uh, Trump,
00:39:48.280
even though he's sometimes going after Trump and distinguishing himself from Trump, but he's,
00:39:52.560
he's supporting Trump on the indictment stuff, but then he'll go after him and he'll go after other
00:39:56.880
candidates and he's just mixing it up, man. And the only way that you even have a chance
00:40:03.900
of becoming the GOP nominee in 2024 is if you take risks and the other candidates are not doing that.
00:40:12.080
The, the also Rams who are at single digits right now, they're obviously not taking risks. And even
00:40:18.460
governor DeSantis, who's, who is in the best position to take Trump out. I don't blame him
00:40:24.560
as the candidate so much as I blame the campaign. They're not taking the risks that they need.
00:40:31.140
And maybe that's on the candidate too. And sure, the buck stops at the candidate. They've got to start
00:40:35.080
taking, I'm not saying Ron DeSantis needs to get up and wrap Eminem. Please don't wrap Eminem.
00:40:41.260
the other GOP candidates could learn from Vivek right now. It is not possible to win this race
00:40:50.140
in a safe way. You're either going to, you're going to take a big risk and it's either going
00:40:55.120
to pay off and you're going to jump from number seventh in the race to number three or maybe even
00:40:59.360
number two, or you're going to flame out. That's a big risk. It had that gone a different way.
00:41:04.140
Had he messed up the words a little bit or had someone heckled him, he would have looked
00:41:07.200
completely humiliated. It actually would have hurt, but he took the risk. And more importantly,
00:41:13.100
they're taking risks on policy and they're taking risks on places they're going to visit.
00:41:16.860
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delivered. Meanwhile, Trump shows up to the Iowa fair and is warmly welcomed by the crowd. There was a
00:42:00.700
clip that was going viral there. People seemed to love him. Four more years, four more years, you see it.
00:42:09.420
Now, the anti-Trump people will say, well, they weren't all there for Trump and some people were there
00:42:13.940
for other candidates. But it doesn't really matter, guys, because every single poll, with the exception
00:42:22.180
of Reuters, every single presidential poll right now shows the majority of Republicans supporting
00:42:27.260
Trump, greater than 50 percent. And Reuters is a thing at 47 percent. And so people sometimes accuse
00:42:35.860
me of flacking for Trump. I'm really not. I'm really not, guys. I'm describing the state of the race
00:42:45.640
right now. And objectively describing the state of the race might sound like flacking for Trump
00:42:53.500
because he is completely dominating the race and the momentum is with him. So I don't think that if
00:43:02.420
you want to, if you support another candidate and you want to win this race, don't shoot the messenger
00:43:06.540
man. You've got to ask yourself, why is Trump dominating? I feel that most of my take on the
00:43:12.060
2024 has been, hey, Donald Trump is absolutely crushing right now. Here's why I think he's doing
00:43:17.460
that. And then the supporters, mostly of DeSantis, but of other candidates too, will say, well, he
00:43:22.740
shouldn't be dominating. I'll say, yeah, maybe, maybe, I don't know, whatever. But he is. So here's
00:43:28.940
why I think. Stop saying that he's dominating. Guys, he just is. That is just a fact. And if you
00:43:35.100
want to have even a snowball's chance in hell at taking Trump out, then you need to at least begin
00:43:41.520
to understand why it is that he still has support instead of just sneering at that support and
00:43:48.800
sneering at his supporters. That's what the GOP candidates, all the other candidates did in 2016.
00:43:56.100
That's what Hillary Clinton did in 2016. People still don't quite get it. Now, I've got a little
00:44:03.400
tease for you, okay? And the tease is that that, that mother effer isn't real girl has just come
00:44:13.740
out. She's, she's said who she is. She's issued an apology. I know, look, I teased it at the top of
00:44:20.580
the show today. This is going to be an extended tease because we're going to have to get to this
00:44:24.340
tomorrow. I'm sorry. We have to. There's no, there's no more time. We've got to get to the member
00:44:29.080
block right now, okay? The rest of the show continues now. You don't want to miss it. Become a member.
00:44:33.020
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