The Michael Knowles Show - Friendly Fire： Massie's Mess, Trump Victorious & Dr. Oz's War on Fraud

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00:00:05.200 Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game?

00:00:07.260 Well, statistically speaking...

00:00:08.800 Nah, no more statistically speaking. I want hot takes. I want knee-jerk reactions. 0.97

00:00:13.280 That's not really what I do.

00:00:15.440 Is that because you don't have any knees? Or...

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00:01:00.000 Why aren't we on the air, by the way?

00:01:03.120 Why was that?

00:01:04.460 Why aren't we on the air?

00:01:06.380 Why aren't we?

00:01:08.200 Why aren't we?

00:01:09.940 We're waiting for Knowles.

00:01:11.560 I mean, Knowles is like, I don't know, he's smoking a cigar.

00:01:14.900 I don't know, waiting for...

00:01:16.400 Why are you asking, Clavin?

00:01:17.540 If you had not brought Knowles to a dinner party 15 years ago,

00:01:20.600 none of this would have been a problem.

00:01:22.100 It is my fault.

00:01:23.240 It's just such a good invitation to be online.

00:01:24.480 It is 100% your fault.

00:01:26.740 Everything winds up being my fault.

00:01:28.760 It's funny, you know, whatever happens, it all comes back to me.

00:01:31.940 Yeah, well, that's true.

00:01:38.540 Fine, let's just do that.

00:01:39.580 I don't care.

00:01:39.840 No, I think it's an improvement.

00:01:40.800 I think, yeah, no, I think it raises the level of the conversation.

00:01:44.540 Okay, fine.

00:01:47.120 Okay, so what are we going to talk about?

00:01:48.340 Are we going to just start talking about pine cones or what?

00:01:52.200 I'm sorry.

00:01:52.920 I hate to admit this.

00:01:53.820 I don't know what the pine cone thing is about.

00:01:55.760 Oh, okay. I'm going to have Baya explain this to you so that I don't get in HR trouble.

00:01:59.940 Baya, explain the pine cone thing to Clay Vane because I prefer not to be sued.

00:02:04.500 Well, I don't know. I don't want to get sued, but all right.

00:02:07.420 And also, the reason I bring this up is because—are we actually recording already?

00:02:12.300 We're recording all this, but we'll cut out anything that is unpleasant.

00:02:15.660 Which is to say three quarters of the show will be cut out.

00:02:17.760 No, no, no. So I want to give Laura Loomer credit because I feel like she often has great reporting

00:02:23.860 and she never gets credited for it,

00:02:26.380 but she will go into the gutter

00:02:28.100 and get the people and find the people.

00:02:30.980 And like last night was really Laura Loomer's night.

00:02:33.760 And what she did was she found a woman

00:02:36.560 who claims to have had an affair with Thomas Massey

00:02:39.600 two months after his wife died.

00:02:43.580 And the things that she claimed he asked her to do,

00:02:47.560 they're perverse.

00:02:48.640 I will not repeat them. 0.96

00:02:49.540 But in part of her, what she, sort of what Laura got out of her was that Massey allegedly also had an affair with Lauren Boebert and in text messages would refer to his genitals, specifically his male member, as his pine cone. 0.96

00:03:10.920 Whoa, that just sounds painful. 0.97

00:03:12.560 I know. I know. I know. It's horrific. But I truly want to know, like, I'm sure a lot of us feel that like the downfall of Thomas Massey was sort of of a piece with the downfall of the podcast stereotype and the influencers with no influence. And these people who have turned rabidly anti-Semitic on the right who pretend to have influence. There's that. There's the fact that, you know, he really pissed off Trump.

00:03:34.260 But to me, I really do want to know, like, did Pinecone Gate make a difference to the people of Kentucky?

00:03:45.800 I'm going to go know that the Pinecone Gate really didn't make a difference.

00:03:48.860 If it had been Cactus Gate, that would have been a completely different thing.

00:03:52.540 I mean, I'm just honestly like what other parts of the natural world would be worse to label your member than a Pinecone?

00:04:01.600 really you're running into like a sea anemone gate like i i don't i don't know coral gate like

00:04:07.920 what are we talking here and he was and apparently he was texting with women using this this name

00:04:13.920 right i mean like i think that's where the text came from is in a text with a woman he was referring

00:04:17.900 allegedly to his member as a pine cone and it's like i'm just wondering you know i know i entered

00:04:22.960 a little bit late here but i i do want to tell the audience we have the pine cone coming on actually

00:04:28.040 later in the show so be sure to stay tuned because this is friendly fire

00:04:31.920 that's pornographic is that yeah well that's for behind the the paywall obviously we you know you

00:04:44.520 got to subscribe for that you don't get to put the only point onto youtube only can i ask i want

00:04:49.460 to ask a question about this though because i the only part of this i actually heard and maybe this

00:04:53.280 is selective deafness on my part but the only part of this i heard was the part that he had an

00:04:57.140 affair with a woman two months after his wife died, which I didn't think was so bad. I mean,

00:05:02.120 what was she going to do? Come back? I mean, she died. He moved down.

00:05:07.380 It is interesting, you know, like on all of the dirt that they were digging up on Massey right

00:05:12.320 before the election, it is interesting that, look, I mean, a lot of it was like raised a lot

00:05:16.920 of eyebrows and probably didn't represent good judgment if it was true. But yeah, right. You're

00:05:22.020 right, Drew. It wasn't, they didn't allege that he cheated on his wife. They didn't allege that

00:05:25.400 kind of impropriety. So, you know, it's kind of typical political stuff. Some of it was kind of

00:05:29.900 weird, like the pine cones or whatever, but it, it, all of it together, it, I was confident. I'd

00:05:35.720 be curious to know what you all were thinking yesterday. I predicted Massey was going to go

00:05:40.560 down. I didn't know it was going to be a nine point swing, but I predicted he was going to go

00:05:43.580 down. And the reason why it wasn't just because of the big, beautiful bill. It wasn't just because

00:05:48.420 of the pro Israel donors. It wasn't just because of this, that, or the other thing. It was because

00:05:53.040 he was acting like a guy who was about to lose he was correct right yeah all right thanks

00:05:58.340 yeah no this is totally right okay so first of all like you don't run a campaign in northern 0.99

00:06:04.020 kentucky in which your chief issue is israel and the jews that's the dumbest thing you can do 0.94

00:06:09.780 because if you think that the voters in northern kentucky are thinking about that you're out of 0.97

00:06:13.640 your mind his district has 780 000 people and he has less than 500 jews and so if you actually

00:06:19.060 want to know what happened in that election cycle it's very easy watch the local tv ads the local tv

00:06:23.680 ads were massey trying to hump trump's leg and then the rest of the campaign was trump saying

00:06:28.000 get off my leg that was the entire campaign the entire campaign was saying it was ed galrein being 0.62

00:06:32.620 like dude trump doesn't like you and you're not going to make it happen you're trying too hard

00:06:37.600 and massey being like no no we're best friends we're super best friends and trump tweeting i

00:06:42.060 don't even like him i want him gone he's the worst and so there is an entire race we can't paper over

00:06:46.740 the fact. What's kind of funny with Massey is he had a super pro-Israel billionaire donor who was 0.52

00:06:51.900 backing him. But there's no doubt pro-Israel donors and sort of commentators. Yeah, for sure.

00:06:58.580 But that's because he was vulnerable. Yes, it's because he was vulnerable. And the other thing is

00:07:03.460 though, because a lot of the Massey supporters are basically trying to peg the whole thing on

00:07:07.040 Jews for the reason he went down. But within the context of Brad Raffensperger going down,

00:07:13.520 Bill Cassidy going down, the five state legislators in Indiana going down.

00:07:17.780 Within that context, I think you've got to say the reason he went down, even if the Israel donors played a role in the race, the reason he went down is the same reason all those other guys went down.

00:07:26.400 And it's because they opposed Trump and Trump owns the party.

00:07:29.860 That's 100% right.

00:07:30.740 Libertarians are inherently annoying, though, because they're constantly saying, I'm standing on principle.

00:07:36.700 I'm not going to play politics.

00:07:38.340 And I keep thinking, you're a politician.

00:07:40.540 It's like Aaron Judd saying, I'm not going to play baseball.

00:07:42.980 You know, it just doesn't make any sense.

00:07:45.360 You know, the guy would not compromise over anything.

00:07:48.060 They know they're all the same.

00:07:49.460 I mean, Rand Paul, who I kind of like, is like this, too, though.

00:07:51.880 They will not play the game, part of which is getting the president's agenda, you know.

00:07:56.760 And so I just think Trump was like, you know, be gone, you know.

00:08:01.140 Yeah.

00:08:01.360 And Michael, to your point, the reason you knew he was going to lose is because he started running a campaign where it was like, what if I have over podcast Nazis to my house?

00:08:08.860 And I'm not joking.

00:08:09.580 I mean, it was literally people wearing sweatshirts that said American Reich on them.

00:08:12.760 Really? He wasn't really trying to. Yeah, no, that was real. Oh, that was real. And so like that is that is not the move of a person who thinks he is long for the Congress. That is a person who is trying to steer into the dollars and cents a podcast and and making a future for himself.

00:08:27.000 And by the way, I will point out the strange new respect he is likely to receive for this campaign from MSNBC and from New York Times and from all of these clowns is demonstrative of the fact that if you want to be accepted in left wing world, what you really should do is steer into the anti-Israel, anti-Semitism stuff.

00:08:43.220 It is not about resistance to Trump.

00:08:44.720 You know who is more resistant to Trump than Thomas Massey?

00:08:47.300 A guy named Bill Cassidy who voted for his actual impeachment in 2021.

00:08:51.640 You think Bill Cassidy is going to be on MSNOW anytime soon as a resistance hero?

00:08:55.400 There's no way in hell. 0.96

00:08:56.540 but massey will and so will mtg and so will joe kent and so will the rest of these clowns and that 0.98

00:09:01.080 is because again the the anti-semitism of the left is is now baked into the cake i mean that 0.97

00:09:05.860 is a very real thing from graham plattner up in maine to this insane house democrat down in texas

00:09:12.020 who is literally calling for me to go to an internment camp like to be sent to an

00:09:16.500 bai and i have to be sent to an intern but he has some bad technically you may too

00:09:20.180 you may you may be there too drew it depends on his on her classification jury or not i don't know

00:09:26.640 i don't know if your conversion was effective so it's so i'm you know it all depends but you know

00:09:31.700 what that says is that massey at a certain point here i think when trump came out against him

00:09:35.880 realized that he was going down and he was like well i'm going to launch a new movement that is

00:09:40.560 that is sort of you know the horseshoe right and the woke left all together and we will be best

00:09:44.860 friends and i think that that's that's really what the campaign became as far as the the jewish

00:09:49.160 American money that came in. And it was not Israeli money. That's illegal. It was Jewish

00:09:52.380 American money that came in to that race via AIPAC and via other super PACs. Well, yeah, 0.87

00:09:57.860 the guy's wildly anti-Israel. And it turns out that a lot of donors would like to see him go

00:10:02.160 because he opposed things that they like. That's what happens in every race. But you'll notice

00:10:05.600 that it was not until Trump actually started the process of kicking his ass out of Congress 0.97

00:10:09.220 that that happened because he won over 75% of the primary vote in 2020, 2022, and 2024. And it was 0.97

00:10:16.080 only when he went up against Trump that things started to get really squirrely for him. Yeah,

00:10:19.320 no, this is the key, Ben. I think, because, like, I don't mean to paper over it or gaslight. Like,

00:10:23.600 obviously, there were a lot of pro-Israel donors who didn't like Massey. And, you know, Massey

00:10:27.640 kind of earned their ire in many ways in a lot of his comments. But first of all, he's not the

00:10:31.700 only congressman who voted against funding for Israel. And, like, the hypothetical I think of

00:10:37.920 here is, had Massey voted for the big, beautiful bill, had Massey gone along with the White House

00:10:43.560 and not liked Israel, voted against funding Israel,

00:10:47.200 even made comments that were anti-Israel.

00:10:49.180 If that were the case, I think he would still have his seat.

00:10:52.800 In other words, it's not that the pro-Israel donors

00:10:55.200 would like him or anything like that,

00:10:56.480 but it's that Trump was this sort of catacomb figure.

00:10:59.040 And it was when Trump said, hey, buddy, you're out,

00:11:02.060 that was when all of the other political machinations

00:11:05.280 really started to play out.

00:11:06.760 But didn't Trump- 0.98

00:11:07.640 And to be fair, Massey doesn't send anybody money. 0.52

00:11:10.240 Yeah.

00:11:10.400 But didn't Trump back his opponent? Massey has won before against a Trump backed opponent. I think I see this exactly the opposite as Michael Knowles. I think Americans, especially young people on the right, people on the right, people on the left are very comfortable criticizing Israel right now. 1.00

00:11:33.080 But there is a line in the sand when it becomes obvious that it's not just Israel you have

00:11:38.880 a problem with, which, you know, Rand Paul doesn't, you know, want to fund Israel.

00:11:43.400 I don't ever feel like he's being anti-Semitic.

00:11:46.380 There's a line where you cross that it's not just Jews and it's not just pro-Israel people.

00:11:51.460 The American people have very little tolerance for anti-Semitism. 0.55

00:11:55.620 And when you start saying that the Republican Jewish coalition, just Republican Jews are 0.75

00:12:01.880 somehow undermining American interests because they're, you know, trying to whip up support 0.86

00:12:07.920 against you. That reads, I think, to average Americans as really anti-Semitic. And I think

00:12:14.040 it's really off-putting. Like, I think the fact that he, you know, the Trump piece obviously is

00:12:17.920 a really big deal, but he won before against a Trump-backed candidate. I really think it was

00:12:24.200 the tonal shift, the way that he talked about Israel. It stopped being the same as the way he

00:12:29.500 talked about Ukraine. It stopped sounding like it was a principal opposition to funding and to war

00:12:34.680 and started sounding like he was attacking American Jews. And I feel like average Americans,

00:12:40.700 they're not so into Israel right now, but they are very protective of their Jewish neighbors.

00:12:45.940 And I think that that just came off as so gross. Like his opening to his concession speech where

00:12:53.220 he said, I had to go find my opponent's phone number and he's in Tel Aviv somewhere.

00:12:57.580 I think we have the clip.

00:12:58.520 Do we have the clip?

00:13:01.360 I would have come out sooner,

00:13:03.420 but I had to call my opponent and concede,

00:13:06.160 and it took a while to find Ed Galrine in Tel Aviv.

00:13:17.560 I did get the call through, though.

00:13:19.240 I have called and conceded the race. 0.99

00:13:22.100 We've been honorable the whole time,

00:13:24.900 and we're going to stay that way.

00:13:26.960 Ha!

00:13:28.040 He's been honorable the whole time.

00:13:29.300 I just think that that gives Americans the ick. 1.00

00:13:34.960 I wish you were right, Boccia, but I don't think that's true. 1.00

00:13:37.260 I mean, I think that people in America, people tend to be tolerant. 0.99

00:13:42.600 They tend to be fairly accepting as long as you leave them alone.

00:13:46.340 But I don't think that that's what brought them down.

00:13:48.160 I mean, Trump stomped on the guy.

00:13:50.280 It was a curb stomping.

00:13:51.820 And it was kind of unfair.

00:13:53.620 I mean, I don't think Massey has actually been that bad if you just consider him as a series of votes.

00:13:58.780 I don't think he's been that bad.

00:13:59.640 No, he's been quite good in a lot of ways.

00:14:01.360 Yeah, no.

00:14:02.100 Yeah, a lot of ways he's fine.

00:14:03.200 I mean, I just think he got up Trump's nose.

00:14:05.660 People are just really sick of a Congress that cannot accomplish anything.

00:14:10.440 And I think that when he gets in Trump's way, it's going to be – yeah.

00:14:13.360 I think there's something else there with Massey too.

00:14:15.540 One is, yes, he is the most obstructionist congressman on the right.

00:14:19.120 I mean, there's no question.

00:14:20.220 He was a consistent no vote for every major agenda item that Trump was pushing, which pissed Trump off. 0.95

00:14:25.060 But there was something else that we're ignoring here, which is that Massey decided to make it his chief goal in life to drag Trump through the mud with a bunch of bullshit about Jeffrey Epstein. 0.93

00:14:34.040 Right. He and Ro Khanna decided that they were going to run an op going after Trump. 0.92

00:14:38.200 Right. He was going to reach across the aisle and suggest that Trump was covering for a child sex trafficking ring.

00:14:42.420 And there he was he was on video. I mean, naming people in the files who were guilty of nothing, which they then later had to admit.

00:14:49.240 And he decided he was going to ramp this up.

00:14:51.120 So I think that actually the anti-Semitism, as always, is the symptom, not the cause.

00:14:55.300 I think that that he started thinking in very conspiratorial ways about American politics

00:14:59.100 and grievance based ways about American politics.

00:15:01.420 He started attributing that to weird cliquish conspiracies like the quote unquote Epstein

00:15:06.760 class and all this stuff.

00:15:07.740 And Trump read that.

00:15:08.540 And he's like, listen, it's one thing for you to vote against me sometimes.

00:15:11.260 It's another thing for you to vote against me always.

00:15:13.620 It's another thing for you to go on MSNL and talk about how I'm covering up child sex

00:15:17.480 trafficking.

00:15:17.900 The answer here is no. And it just turns out that the crossover between believing all of those former things and also believing that the Jews are deciding on your fate at their Friday night dinners, the crossover there tends to be almost 100%. 0.87

00:15:30.780 If you're a conspiratorial thinker who does grievance-based politics and also opposes every element of Trump's agenda, the chances that you are going to be wandering around outside in the rain ranting about the Juden is pretty high. 0.63

00:15:45.260 Yeah, no, you know, there was this clip that was going around. It was one of the last real knocks on Massey, you know, 11th hour. And it was him being interviewed by a hostile journalist saying, hey, why do you oppose Trump? And why have you voted against the GOP on these crucial votes, whatever? And he said, hey, hey, hey, I vote with the Republicans 91% of the time, but 9% of the time I don't vote for them because they're covering up for pedophiles.

00:16:05.900 And I thought, okay, hold on, wait, that doesn't even make a coherent political position. 0.99

00:16:11.280 So you agree with the pedos and the pedo protectors 91% of the time? 0.87

00:16:15.700 I don't want to agree with them on any percent of the time.

00:16:17.760 And so what he represented to me, if you kind of zoom out from these individual issues

00:16:23.000 or the individual donors or whatever, is he had two problems going for him.

00:16:26.440 One, he voted a little over 77% of the time with the GOP in Congress this term,

00:16:32.960 which is way below the median GOP congressman who voted 95% of the time.

00:16:37.800 This was also down from Massey last term who was voting 91% of the time GOP

00:16:41.760 which itself was down from the previous term when he voted 95% of the time GOP.

00:16:46.480 So you can say, look, I hate the GOP.

00:16:48.120 I'm glad he bucked the party.

00:16:49.300 I like that he's independent, whatever.

00:16:50.540 But that's not going to win you support with the party.

00:16:53.720 And then the other issue was, and this gets to your point, Ben,

00:16:56.820 you know, when you're palling around with Ro Khanna,

00:16:58.900 one of these unctuous left-wing figures who's just constantly taking shots at the right.

00:17:03.740 When you're calling your colleagues and the people who are supposed to be on your team

00:17:07.420 pedophiles, essentially, I mean, what you're expressing is not just independence from the

00:17:12.800 party. You're expressing a kind of contempt for the party and a contempt for the leader of the

00:17:17.140 party. And it just, at that point, the vice president put it very well. He said, look,

00:17:20.200 I've gotten along with Thomas in the past. We've agreed on a lot of things. But, you know,

00:17:25.000 if you're going to go against the party in such a brutal way, you can't expect the party to back

00:17:30.160 you. So I want to get three possible theories. Sorry, go ahead, Drew. No, I think that kind of

00:17:37.800 backs what Ben was saying, that the Jewish issue is really part and parcel of this horseshoe where 0.65

00:17:44.400 the right meets left. I mean, I cannot see the difference between most of the people who are 1.00

00:17:49.260 spouting this stuff. I can't see the political difference. They all seem to be on the same side,

00:17:53.820 and the worst of the kind of hatred 1.00

00:17:56.720 and the Jew hatred that comes out

00:17:58.400 is in the New York Times,

00:17:59.700 which has always kind of been in that position.

00:18:02.080 So I do think that there is this way

00:18:03.680 that this guy just drifted out

00:18:05.560 of the mainstream of the right,

00:18:07.660 which actually doesn't adhere to a lot of that stuff.

00:18:09.860 Well, you know what I like to do

00:18:10.760 is drift out of consciousness

00:18:12.020 so that I can go take a nice sleep

00:18:13.780 on my Helix mattress.

00:18:14.680 But I think there's- 0.96

00:18:15.300 What I like, hold on one second, Bachi.

00:18:16.760 I had a great- 0.86

00:18:17.260 Hold on, hold on, wait.

00:18:18.860 Hold on.

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00:19:40.260 what i was going to say is um yes on the far right and the left you see a similar kind of 0.75

00:19:47.200 blame the jews for everything the jews are all pedophiles the jewish state is undermining

00:19:50.780 american interests etc etc but i i really kind of dispute this um horseshoe theory because a 0.97

00:19:57.060 horseshoe suggests that they're equal but they really aren't in terms of the mainstream which

00:20:00.740 is i think what drew was just pointing to um the right has done in my view an admirable job

00:20:06.840 of telling these guys like Massey,

00:20:09.760 this party has no place for you.

00:20:12.020 Trump kicked Tucker and Megyn Kelly

00:20:14.660 and Candace Owens out of the party, basically.

00:20:17.080 They have all been excised on my show.

00:20:19.520 You've had congressmen, senators,

00:20:22.120 members of the cabinet saying,

00:20:23.620 what happened to Tucker Carlson?

00:20:24.840 I would be surprised if Tucker Carlson

00:20:26.860 is at the next RNC.

00:20:28.540 And while they're doing a really good job

00:20:30.620 on the right of excising this,

00:20:32.520 the left is just allowing it to metastasize.

00:20:34.920 They're turning the very same people

00:20:36.500 into celebrities and really elevating their profile, campaigning with them, mainstreaming

00:20:42.860 their views. So if I may just do a short plug for my book, The Jews and the Left,

00:20:47.720 they're not the same. These are not the same. You've got one side that is deeply committed 0.99

00:20:52.900 to saying we stand against anti-Semitism. You're allowed to criticize Israel, of course, 0.88

00:20:58.280 but we are not going to allow Jew hate to infiltrate and become mainstream. And the other 0.72

00:21:03.000 side, which is saying, actually, no, this is the price of entry now. The word Zionist is a full-on

00:21:08.400 slur. I agree with that. I think that's true. I think the Republicans have been much better 1.00

00:21:15.400 about this. They definitely have. Speaking of brutalizing the left, are we about to just take

00:21:22.100 out a 150-year-old communist dictator in Cuba? Could happen, yeah.

00:21:29.640 Well, I mean, they're threatening to prosecute Raul Castro, right?

00:21:33.700 I mean, I think that's – so presumably that's the precursor to maybe go in and kidnap him and fly him in a tracksuit. 0.53

00:21:40.000 And you just hope that whoever sponsors that tracksuit has really paid top dollar for it because Nike made bank off of that Maduro tracksuit.

00:21:47.320 So if we're going to do this in full capitalist fashion, we don't just go and take Raul Castro.

00:21:51.100 We get an endorsement deal, and then we put him in a Reebok tracksuit and really make some money back for the American people.

00:21:58.640 Spread it out a little bit. 0.94

00:21:59.320 Well, listen, before we get into it, even though Batia, I'm certain, would look much

00:22:04.720 better in a tracksuit and really anything else than Ben Dominich would, we unfortunately

00:22:08.800 have to say goodbye to Batia.

00:22:09.880 We have to bring on Ben Dominich.

00:22:11.340 I have no say over it.

00:22:12.760 The producers make me do it.

00:22:13.920 Batia, wonderful to see you, as always. 0.51

00:22:16.940 Everybody should go watch Batia's show and follow her all over the place.

00:22:19.880 Thank you.

00:22:20.120 Thank you for having me.

00:22:21.260 God bless and protect you all.

00:22:22.680 Take care.

00:22:23.240 Good to see you.

00:22:24.220 So, you know, we're talking about Tom Massey's future prospects.

00:22:27.280 I mean, one of the other things here is that if you if you go out in a blaze of glory shouting about how you've started a movement, maybe you run for president or sponsors over at CalShare, estimating like 36 percent odds that Thomas Massey tries a 2028 presidential run.

00:22:40.020 Not totally crazy. Honestly, I think that that's that's actually that might be low because somebody is going to have to try and be the avatar of the of the psycho woke right movement.

00:22:49.820 and it's not going to be, I think, Joe Kent or Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Massey MTG ticket,

00:22:56.020 man, that could do serious double-digit numbers of voters. I think that'd be huge.

00:23:01.640 Look, just on the libertarian point, I mean, put all the other controversy aside. If Massey's

00:23:06.320 going to be Mr. Libertarian, there's always some guy doing that. You know, Ron Paul would run for

00:23:10.840 president. Rand Paul has already signaled he does want to run. And Massey would have some juice to

00:23:15.440 do that. So there is that lane. The other thing that's kind of interesting, because Massey's now 0.99

00:23:19.300 a Republican, I think he's still a Republican, who's in opposition to Trump, is if Trump is doing

00:23:24.960 really, really well, you saw Rubio once again saying he would back J.D., Trump reasserting

00:23:29.880 control over the party. If it's like J.D. Rubio, if that ticket, they keep floating from the White

00:23:35.220 House, if that's the ticket, if Trump's doing really, really well, there you go, you got it.

00:23:39.100 But if the Trump administration does collapse for whatever reason, then the Republicans who are

00:23:43.600 going to have a better shot are the ones who are not tied to the administration. So all of a sudden

00:23:47.720 then, the Ron DeSantis candidacy starts to look pretty interesting, assuming he doesn't join the

00:23:52.920 admin. Or, I'm not saying Thomas Massey or Rand Paul are going to be president, but all of a

00:23:57.200 sudden, they actually do get a little boost to their prospects. Yeah, but this is the place where

00:24:01.360 AOC comes in. This is my nightmare, that if the Trump administration really tanks, which I don't

00:24:06.080 think it's going to do, actually. I think it's going to come out of smelling like a rose. But

00:24:09.060 if it does, I think AOC is the most dangerous person in the country. The woman is a pretty, 1.00

00:24:14.840 an idiot and a fascist i mean it's it's an almost perfect combination to win over the left 1.00

00:24:19.480 mr dominich you're in and we turn back why are you bringing me on you could have kept her i know 1.00

00:24:25.740 i know she's so much nicer than you are ben she's like i'm so much nicer can i can i make one more

00:24:31.620 point about the massey thing before we turn to cuba because frankly i'm much more interested in

00:24:35.480 the massey thing than the cuba thing to be honest with you because nothing's happening in cuba until

00:24:38.920 it actually happens so i want to get your guys's take on this i they're they're kind of it's very

00:24:43.800 weird that thomas massey decides that he's going to steer directly into crazy land he was he was

00:24:48.280 like hanging with chank ueger and anna kasparian the day before a republican primary in a bright

00:24:52.700 red district in northern kentucky right which is the highest order libertarians are like this

00:24:58.500 they just i mean listen they swing left sometimes oh no no they're totally psycho i mean this is why

00:25:03.180 their convention is the best watch in tv right i mean if you like every four years their convention 0.97

00:25:07.160 is some fat dude with an iron cross dancing around without a shirt followed by some naked 0.99

00:25:12.500 chick talking about how pornography is the most American thing. It's an amazing place, 0.99

00:25:16.740 the Libertarian Convention. But in any case, here's the question. I had three possible theories as to

00:25:21.320 why Massey did this. Theory number one is the most obvious, which is Trump decided that he was going

00:25:25.620 to punch Massey as hard as he could in the face. Massey did not want to blame Trump, so he blamed

00:25:29.380 the Jews, which is a typical thing. You see Tucker Carlson do the same thing where he says,

00:25:33.380 well, you know, it's not Trump that I'm upset with. It's his puppeteers. It's the marionette

00:25:37.720 masters who are really doing it. And those marionettes, the people who are handling all

00:25:41.660 the strings, that's the Jews. So a great way to avoid hitting Trump in a race where Trump is 0.98

00:25:45.480 hitting you is to say it's really not Trump. It's people who are being manipulative of Trump. So

00:25:50.540 that's theory number one. Theory number two is he knew he was toast. So he was going to steer

00:25:53.980 directly into podcastistan and try to make himself his next career. And again, we talked about that

00:25:59.060 before. I think that's quite plausible. And then theory number three is that people like Massey

00:26:03.020 spend an awful lot of time online and you just get brain worms. And once you get those brain

00:26:07.000 worms online, it is very difficult to excise them in real life because let's be real. Again,

00:26:11.240 this was a district in northern kentucky in which thomas massey made his number one issue

00:26:16.220 a small middle eastern state halfway around the globe which about is which is again only

00:26:21.840 understandable if you have brain worms or if it's on purpose or if it's on purpose a different way

00:26:26.480 so i kind of want to know which theory of those three you buy i'll give a more charitable view

00:26:30.480 which is it how did it start it could have started from a real principled opposition to

00:26:37.100 wars in the middle east or so i actually think it might have started a little earlier than that but

00:26:41.180 let's say it started there. There's no doubt that a ton of pro-Israel Jews really wanted to get

00:26:47.300 Massey out. And Trump, again, we were talking about it earlier, but I think Trump was really

00:26:52.560 the factor that made the difference. But nevertheless, it could well be the case that

00:26:57.640 even if Massey didn't start out smacking at the Jews, or he obviously had his Tel Aviv comment

00:27:03.200 last night, it might just be the case that when he saw that his big opposition was going to be

00:27:09.040 coming from pro-israel jews it just uh accelerated whatever trend was going on there you know in

00:27:15.220 other words i like he had a problem strategic it was emotional that basically he saw a bunch of

00:27:19.920 jewish money coming in can i can i make a vote here for brain worms can i make a vote here for

00:27:24.840 brain worms because i know i know who thomas massey used to be and he basically was this like 0.57

00:27:30.020 hippie libertarian who was also uh somebody who would you know build these chicken coops and and

00:27:36.080 make them controlled by Bluetooth and stuff like this. He was just sort of weird and eccentric,

00:27:41.140 but he really was not leaning into any of the crazy stuff that he leaned in all the way up to

00:27:46.540 this. And that's why it doesn't really, it makes, it makes no sense that he would, you know,

00:27:50.720 steal the rocket ship directly into the sun, you know, based on prior behavior and, and the way

00:27:55.840 that he was just kind of this, you know, this loner who was kind of off on the side, you know, 0.95

00:27:59.720 and, and the fact that he would pair up with Ro Khanna to deal in all of this bullshit going 0.98

00:28:05.680 after Trump. Look, there are four things on my Mount Rushmore of hate. It's communist, 0.97

00:28:12.040 it's anti-Semites, it's Karens, and it's hippies. And by the end of the day, he was hanging out

00:28:16.980 with three or four of those and doing it all the time. So who does that? Someone who was a

00:28:23.060 libertarian, who has any kind of rural libertarian principle or something like that, who has the kind

00:28:27.720 of pro-life record that Massey had, the kind of pro-gun record that he had in the past, stuff

00:28:31.920 like that. You just don't anticipate him going in that direction. And so I think the last couple

00:28:36.500 of years of him, he just went crazy and he started hanging around with the worst of the crazies.

00:28:41.360 I think my vote is for a combination of the two theories that one is the brain worms that he went 0.88

00:28:45.660 crazy. It was exacerbated by the fact that Jewish money was pouring into the campaign against him. 0.88

00:28:52.240 But also people do tend to look for an exit strategy. And it wouldn't surprise me whatsoever 0.88

00:28:57.620 as he started to go nuts, he started to see that little light at the end of the tunnel

00:29:01.840 that ends up in podcastistan and making good money and with a big audience.

00:29:06.840 So I think there might be a combination of the passion and the greed

00:29:09.760 because he did seem to really lose his whole personality.

00:29:14.280 You know, if it is the greed, I think that that does speak

00:29:16.080 to kind of where the Republican Party is.

00:29:17.740 In other words, the anti-Semitism and the conspiratorial muddiness

00:29:20.580 and sort of the Tucker wing of what's going on, 0.90

00:29:23.840 that is an excellent exit strategy and it's a very poor entry strategy.

00:29:27.920 And I think people are mistaking an exit strategy for an entry strategy,

00:29:30.700 Meaning that we've seen a bunch of candidates who are endorsed by Tucker, who are getting their asses just handed to them in election after election, whether it's Casey Putsch against Vivek Ramaswamy up in Ohio. 0.60

00:29:40.900 James Fishbeck is about to get crushed by Byron Donalds down here. 0.78

00:29:43.680 You have you have Massey, who's now lost his seat.

00:29:46.160 MTG has lost her seat.

00:29:47.740 You're seeing this happen like over and over and over and over.

00:29:50.480 And so you're seeing people exit and presumably make more money and get the strange new respect on the other end.

00:29:55.420 But if you're a politician who is looking to get into sort of a position of power in the Republican Party, is your best way of doing that, like as an elected official to steer into crazy land?

00:30:05.160 Or does it turn out that actually normie land is the way that you get in and crazy land is the way that you get out with money?

00:30:10.280 No, that's a good observation.

00:30:11.420 There's also one sort of emotional aspect here because my theory is still like a lot of this was exacerbated emotionally and kind of understandably.

00:30:19.860 but the part that we haven't talked about is he started to fall afoul of Trump and get a little

00:30:25.940 bit more eccentric than usual right around the time his wife died. I mean, to what degree is

00:30:31.020 this just his wife of decades died and he got kind of emotionally unmoored and it upended his

00:30:36.120 political career. Is that too much psychobabble for political analysis? I don't know him well

00:30:41.040 enough to know that. I just know that he became unrecognizable to a lot of us who interacted with

00:30:45.860 him over the years. He, again, went from being this kind of country libertarian type who was

00:30:52.680 always smiling and kind of happy and knew that he was basically irrelevant to being someone who

00:30:57.020 was aggressively going after the most important person in politics in America, not just in his

00:31:02.840 party, and doing so in ways that repeatedly involved him lying blatantly about all these

00:31:08.740 sorts of things related to the Epstein files, as Ben was saying earlier. So I think that there

00:31:14.440 there is something to that michael but uh but you know i haven't had him on the uh the psychoanalysis

00:31:19.540 couch uh personally right i just wonder it's interesting though that the that tucker's lack

00:31:24.960 of influence is the exact opposite of what tucker himself predicted and that almost everything that

00:31:29.840 tucker predicts turns out to be the opposite which i think is is proof that god is a gigantic

00:31:34.560 invisible jewish man with a long white beard i think he's just screwing with tucker it is either 0.98

00:31:40.360 it's just the demon. I actually like looking at the way these, these things have shaken out here. 1.00

00:31:46.500 One, there are two things that make me feel really good about it. One, even again, it's like,

00:31:50.780 I'm not, I'm not a huge Massey hater. I think for a lot of his career, he was great. It just

00:31:54.480 irritated me when he was really turning away and kind of, I don't know, you know, opposing the

00:31:58.540 party and the president. But, but nevertheless, the, the two great affirmations are one, Twitter's

00:32:04.580 not real life. Sometimes I worry about that. Sometimes I think maybe Twitter is becoming

00:32:07.720 real life. But no, there's a huge distinction between those things. And there's a big chasm

00:32:13.320 between the hardcore politics on the ground and the political media. And so if the podcasts

00:32:19.420 conducted the election, the results would all be different, but they didn't. It was conducted by

00:32:23.500 voters in districts around the country. And we have so many data points. We have the Indiana

00:32:27.640 data point, which again, that issue was redistricting. We have the Georgia data point.

00:32:31.760 That issue was really the election of 2020. We have Bill Cassidy. We have that data point.

00:32:37.420 We now have Massey. So it just it seems to me that the guardrails hold and politics is actually a little different than the entertainment products.

00:32:45.400 If we had a political media. I have to break in here. I'm sorry. I have to break in here.

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00:34:56.500 My goodness.

00:34:57.580 As long as I don't have to have a health checkup because I never blast those for some reason.

00:35:02.940 So I just wanted to add, if you made a comment about political media, I think that if we had a functional political media that wasn't just interested in carrying water for the Democrats, the narrative after last night would be that Republicans are way more unified than Democrats are.

00:35:19.540 Over the course of the past couple of months, we've seen Democrats prevail in multiple primaries.

00:35:24.560 We've seen the situation play out in Maine.

00:35:26.500 We've seen the election of Mamdani.

00:35:28.380 We've seen all of these different situations where the DSA-backed candidate, the AOC-backed

00:35:33.580 candidate has prevailed over people that the Democrats have actually preferred or the

00:35:38.520 establishment has even anointed on their side.

00:35:41.200 And nobody's talking about that story in the legacy media because it's an inconvenient

00:35:45.280 story and it's actually true.

00:35:46.780 The fact is that they're only united by the fact that they all loathe Trump.

00:35:51.420 And it's just a contest of how much they loathe him between them.

00:35:54.740 And that's, I think, the real story of what's going on on the left today, which is far more divided than the right after everything that's played out in these primaries.

00:36:03.060 And it's clear that unity really is a political virtue.

00:36:06.400 You know, I think one of the real points of pride for Massey, and it's a point of pride among libertarians, is they love to point out how different they are, how they're willing to stand up to their party or how they, I don't know, how special they are.

00:36:18.160 They love that, you know.

00:36:19.900 Individualist political ideologies do that.

00:36:22.020 But unity really matters, you know.

00:36:23.880 it's one of the four marks of the church per the Nicene Creed. And it's important in your home.

00:36:27.920 It's important, you know, in your country. And it's certainly important in political parties.

00:36:31.660 And so it's not just, look, you don't want to blindly follow the leader of a party and the

00:36:36.280 Republicans do a bunch of dumb things that we should, you know, try to fight against. But I

00:36:40.600 can't help but going back to this clip that has been going viral of a journalist with an activist

00:36:45.800 outside New York courthouse talking about Luigi Mangione and the killing of Brian Thompson.

00:36:50.280 And this girl said, you know, his kids are better off without him. 0.99

00:36:54.220 It's this guy, you know, he deserved to die. 0.99

00:36:56.200 And, you know, those kids, they can enjoy the blood money. 0.99

00:36:58.440 And what I keep coming back to, and we've seen this time and time again,

00:37:01.240 obviously with Charlie's assassination and with the near assassination of Trump,

00:37:04.360 is that the left, mainstream swaths of the left have been telling us for over a year now,

00:37:09.260 really for much longer, that they would want to kill us

00:37:12.340 and we'll mock our kids when they have succeeded.

00:37:15.000 They keep telling us that.

00:37:16.360 And in the face of that, we need party unity.

00:37:19.100 Not to be lemmings, not to be blind followers, not to be NPCs, but we can duke it out in the primaries, but then we need to get in line, follow the leader, and win elections.

00:37:28.680 And to your point, Ben, I think that that really comes out pretty cleanly last night.

00:37:32.760 There is a clear leader of the political party.

00:37:34.660 There is a clear party apparatus, funding, media, organizing, and looking ahead to the midterms in 2028, the stakes are very, very high, and I'll take unity as a virtue.

00:37:45.060 I mean, I agree with that, but I think that what happened here and what's been happening is that there are lines drawn, right?

00:37:50.180 Unity has to be around a thing.

00:37:52.020 Right now, the unity in the Republican Party is around the thing of the Trump administration, right?

00:37:57.140 And so you can say, well, you know, Massey was more of a principled conservative when it came to spending, which, by the way, I agree with.

00:38:03.080 I was very praiseworthy of Massey's positions for most of his career when it came to the role of the federal government, for example.

00:38:08.260 but but the reality is that there were lines that were drawn and then trump is legitimately excising

00:38:13.400 people from those lines he's not just saying blanket unity come hug me he's saying listen

00:38:17.640 here's where the line is and if you're on the other side of that line you're on the other side

00:38:20.600 of that line the point that you're making about the democrats is is a good one it also is demonstrative

00:38:25.900 they have embraced the worst parts of themselves i mean legitimately the worst parts of themselves

00:38:30.480 hassan piker talking about social murder with the new york times about brian thompson and then

00:38:35.840 Hassan Piker, no shock, endorsing people like Abdul El-Sayed, the Senate Democrat would-be

00:38:41.500 nominee in Michigan, who's probably going to end up with the nomination, who's like a full-scale

00:38:44.860 terrorism supporter. And by the way, Hassan Piker endorsing, wait for it, Thomas Massey.

00:38:49.300 Again, so there is this horseshoe that has taken place. But I think Baia's earlier point is right.

00:38:54.380 The part of the right-wing horseshoe that is horseshoeing is being actively excised from the

00:38:58.800 party by President Trump, which is a pretty amazing thing, actually.

00:39:02.520 You know, it's always the theory of the guys on the furthest edge of a party that if they would only allow them to do their thing, they would win everything.

00:39:11.440 The Democrats are going to test that theory.

00:39:12.840 I mean, they've been testing it.

00:39:14.140 And these DSA guys are going to get out there.

00:39:16.740 And it's going to be interesting to see how much, you know, leverage they have.

00:39:20.000 Because there is a move to the left in a younger cohort of voters who usually don't vote.

00:39:25.540 So we've been safe from them.

00:39:27.020 But they do get excited over a guy like Mamdani.

00:39:29.060 I think he is the only politician that I think of as actually being evil, Mamdani. 0.55

00:39:34.100 I think he's an actual bad guy, you know, an actual –

00:39:37.220 The only one.

00:39:38.740 Well, I mean, there's a lot of corruption, a lot of that stuff.

00:39:42.060 But this guy is an actual destroyer. 0.63

00:39:44.000 Plattner is legitimately evil.

00:39:46.540 I mean, some of the stuff that Plattner is posted –

00:39:48.800 The stuff that Plattner –

00:39:50.380 He's not in office yet.

00:39:51.340 I was talking about office holders.

00:39:53.020 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

00:39:53.940 I know what you mean.

00:39:54.560 But Plattner is, again, another guy who's being fully endorsed and legitimized by the entire Democratic Party infrastructure.

00:40:00.900 You have members of the Democratic media who are out there massaging a guy who was saying on Reddit like a couple of years ago about how happy he was to watch a video of an American military member literally being killed. 0.99

00:40:11.120 I mean, he is – Plattner is disgusting, disgusting. 0.96

00:40:14.240 And the Democratic Party is hugging him with both arms right now. 0.97

00:40:17.960 I mean, legitimately saying – I mean, there are people who are saying that he should run for main senate and then he should run for president.

00:40:23.120 and the only saving grace of mom donny is he wasn't born in america so he can't run for the

00:40:27.420 presidency but graham plattner can and there are a bunch of people in the democratic party who are 0.96

00:40:31.640 rising and the next generation of the democratic party is psychotic i mean fully damned crazy like

00:40:37.080 they are not remotely anywhere in the neighborhood of the same and so you know i get asked the

00:40:42.100 question a lot do we think that there's going to be a reversion to a sort of normal politics after

00:40:46.240 this i mean the only way that that happens if the democrats get absolutely shellacked and i think

00:40:50.980 that unfortunately because of the polarized nature of the political system right now the chances that

00:40:55.260 they get totally shellacked pretty low actually yeah i agree the demonization they don't have to

00:41:00.320 get shellacked in the midterms they just have to do badly yeah the demonization thing that michael

00:41:05.340 was just talking about i think we need to really consider and take it seriously i think people

00:41:11.080 have kind of they've joked about it's starting to turn because of luigi and gioni because of the

00:41:16.340 a number of attempts on, on Trump's life. And of course, because of, of Charlie's assassination,

00:41:20.320 but I think like, I don't know why it hasn't gotten more attention that there have been

00:41:24.580 multiple attempts on Sam Altman's life that like the, that the AI phenomenon is now creating

00:41:30.480 and the, and the demonization of billionaires that Bernie Sanders talks about, uh, that is

00:41:35.640 echoed by so many, uh, just not just on the DSA left, but just on the left generally, uh, that

00:41:40.980 that's going to create a climate in which these people, they're, they're not going to be able to

00:41:45.360 live and work and have the kind of roles as captains of industry that they've had in the

00:41:49.260 past without having the fear of the kind of backlash that these radical demonizing elements

00:41:55.960 of the left really, I think, believe in truly in their hearts. And that's something that is so evil

00:42:01.680 and so atrocious in terms of American history. We've seen things like this happen in the past,

00:42:07.480 and it led to bombings, it led to assassination attempts, it led to things that were absolutely

00:42:11.320 terrible for fabric. And to see this happening in the 250th anniversary of America really is

00:42:16.500 depressing to me. Well, one of the things that actually is unique, and Ben, you're pointing it

00:42:20.420 out here, is that in the history of the United States, when there are assassination attempts,

00:42:25.080 typically it is people who are involved directly in the business of politics, right? It's RFK

00:42:29.340 getting shot or MLK getting shot, or even Charlie in the line of MLK, right? Just being a political

00:42:35.080 activist and not to say they were saying the same thing or anything. But the reality is that it is

00:42:40.900 now extended out to almost Russian Revolution style violence, like going after people who are

00:42:46.920 just captains of industry, as you say, people who are running companies, people who are just engaged

00:42:51.260 in the marketplace, like the actual marketplace. If you had said to me 15 years ago that there

00:42:56.340 would be an assassination attempt on the president, I said, OK, that's kind of like,

00:42:59.280 unfortunately, a relative norm in American political life. Even if you had said to me

00:43:02.720 there would be an assassination of a high level political activist like Charlie, I said that

00:43:06.620 that's unique and horrifying, but not totally unexpected. If you would say to me that we would

00:43:12.120 be at a point where, you know, people like a Jeff Bezos or a Mark Zuckerberg or a Sam Altman,

00:43:18.620 that these are people who have to walk around with 24-7 security for the crime of creating

00:43:22.400 products and services that people want to buy. And these are the bad guys now. The United Healthcare

00:43:26.300 CEO is now considered the bad guy, engaged in quote-unquote social murder. You're talking about

00:43:31.180 true Russian Revolution-style 0.91

00:43:32.720 revolutionary violence

00:43:33.740 directed against an entire class.

00:43:36.380 And that's scary stuff.

00:43:38.240 I mean, that is a completely different thing.

00:43:40.100 And also, these are all soft targets.

00:43:42.200 You know, Ben, we should also point out

00:43:43.680 this has happened before,

00:43:45.460 and we kind of forget about it

00:43:46.680 in American history,

00:43:47.440 but you think about the Palmer Raids,

00:43:48.800 you think about the early part

00:43:49.800 of the 20th century,

00:43:50.880 you had anarchists and communists

00:43:52.860 who were setting off bombs on Wall Street,

00:43:55.400 who were setting off bombs

00:43:56.440 and shooting people in the Capitol.

00:43:58.100 You had a Marxist professor from Harvard in 1915,

00:44:00.380 of course it was Harvard, 0.79

00:44:01.180 shooting up or setting off a bomb in the Capitol. You did have these kinds of anarchist bombings

00:44:06.240 about almost exactly 100 years ago. You're seeing them begin to crop up again. The last time that

00:44:12.160 that happened, the federal government came in and curtailed civil rights and put these people in

00:44:17.020 prison, deported these people, got them out of our country. Whether or not we have the ability

00:44:22.700 to actually exert that kind of political authority or the desire to do so right now, I'm not so sure.

00:44:27.300 But we have seen this play out before. And the only way that we were able to survive it right around the time of the Russian Revolution, when Russia did not survive it, is because we wielded federal authority in a very, very strong way.

00:44:39.840 And if we don't do that now, I fear that the problem won't resolve itself on its own.

00:44:45.580 Well, we'll get to more on that in just one second. First, we need to talk about how you talk. And I mean like actually talk, like on your phone.

00:44:52.620 And one of the weirder financial habits people have is you'll spend hours comparison shopping

00:44:56.560 for a plane ticket that saves you like $12, and then you'll continue paying $80 or $90

00:45:00.280 a month for wireless service without any question.

00:45:02.540 And at a certain point, you have to ask yourself, why am I doing that?

00:45:04.840 Especially now that companies like PureTalk exist.

00:45:07.760 PureTalk is veteran-led.

00:45:09.000 It's backed by 100% U.S.-based customer service and now offers unlimited high-speed data for

00:45:13.080 just $34.99 a month.

00:45:14.260 It's a pretty major shift because unlimited high-speed data at PureTalk used to start

00:45:18.080 around $55 a month.

00:45:19.460 But PureTalk has continued pushing to offer more value at lower prices.

00:45:22.840 So if you looked at PureTalk before and you didn't make the switch, well, that was double

00:45:26.400 view.

00:45:26.620 You should have done that.

00:45:27.300 And now you should probably take another look.

00:45:29.620 One thing people always ask is whether the service holds up compared to the massively

00:45:33.100 overpriced major carriers.

00:45:34.340 The answer is, I mean, it's yes, but you should try it yourself.

00:45:37.040 PureTalk lets you test the service for 30 days with no contract and no cancellation fees.

00:45:40.920 There's really pretty much no downside to seeing whether it works for you.

00:45:44.400 Knowles, I know that you have been using PureTalk.

00:45:46.000 How has your service been?

00:45:46.940 I absolutely love it.

00:45:48.360 I've had my PureTalk phone for about six years now.

00:45:51.720 The customer service is great because they speak English,

00:45:53.740 and they speak it in a normal American way.

00:45:55.960 But two, it is actually the best service in the country.

00:45:58.380 A lot of people hear that, and they think,

00:45:59.720 oh, you use similar towers, similar coverage.

00:46:01.500 No, no, no.

00:46:01.740 It is the same towers.

00:46:03.160 It's the same coverage as the best places in the country.

00:46:05.180 And you can even take it overseas if you're going on vacation this summer.

00:46:09.020 So it's just phenomenal.

00:46:09.980 I could not possibly recommend it highly enough.

00:46:13.160 Well, take it from Knowles.

00:46:14.000 It's the one issue I trust him on.

00:46:15.140 The switch itself can happen in as little as 10 minutes.

00:46:17.560 And again, if you need help, that U.S.-based customer service team is standing by.

00:46:21.180 Head on over to puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

00:46:23.260 Claim unlimited high-speed data for just $34.99.

00:46:25.800 Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

00:46:28.220 To switch to my wireless company and Knowles' wireless company and America's wireless company, PureTalk.

00:46:33.660 We're saying goodbye to you, Mr. Dominic, because you don't have a doctoral degree.

00:46:39.600 And we are replacing you with Dr. Oz.

00:46:42.100 Good to see you, sir.

00:46:42.740 Like all of us.

00:46:43.860 Good to see you.

00:46:44.760 Good to see you, man.

00:46:45.660 I'm an honorary doctor.

00:46:47.020 So if anyone ever, you know, has a heart attack on an airplane, I'll say, hey, hey, hey, who needs a commencement speech?

00:46:52.520 I'm here. I got you. I'm totally recovered.

00:46:54.820 Do we have Dr. Oz with us?

00:46:58.560 Dr. Oz, good to see you, sir.

00:47:01.560 Good afternoon, everybody. How are you?

00:47:03.380 Doing very, very well.

00:47:04.700 I know we're all here just, you know, babbling and cackling and giggling, whereas you are not only helping to lead, you know, health in the country,

00:47:13.120 but also rooting out all of that terrible fraud, which we have not talked enough about.

00:47:18.900 Well, maybe I can put it in the context of affordability, because I think for a lot of

00:47:22.280 Americans, it's what they're most concerned about. And if you just took the fraud out of

00:47:26.460 Medicare and Medicaid, and we estimate there's probably $100 billion of fraud on the programs

00:47:31.820 that the government pays for you to get better health, that would allow us to double the life

00:47:35.940 expectancy of the Medicare Trust Fund. To put that in context, if you're working your tail

00:47:40.360 off right now and watching the show, and you're worried Medicare is not going to be there for you

00:47:44.420 when you reach the ripe old age of 65, it's the parachute that's going to catch you and deal with

00:47:49.260 your health issues without costing you an arm and a leg, so you can keep your arms and legs,

00:47:53.280 then you should be pretty much with us on this fraud issue. Because by doubling the life expectancy

00:47:58.260 of the program, we'll make sure it's there for you and for your grandkids. And that's the kind

00:48:01.960 of discussion we need to be having in earnest with each other, because the fraud is so large,

00:48:06.120 is so weaponized that we have to start asking ourselves, is this really a flaw for state

00:48:11.720 leadership, for governors? Or maybe there's a feature here we had not noticed before,

00:48:16.120 which is why they've allowed it to go unimpeded for so many years.

00:48:21.100 Can you explain what kind of fraud is taking place exactly?

00:48:25.760 I'll give you three examples. So South Florida, where you guys have some affinity,

00:48:29.300 is a state that has generally done okay on fraud, waste, and abuse. But in the area of

00:48:34.440 durable medical equipment where, you know, the wheelchairs and canes, these companies have now

00:48:40.800 grown so quickly that we have twice as many of these durable medical equipment suppliers as

00:48:46.420 McDonald's in South Florida. It's impossible that that many people want to sell you wheelchairs.

00:48:51.400 But that's the norm. We think the Cuban government's involved because many of the

00:48:55.060 perpetrators actually flee back to Cuba. Even worse, one third of all hospices in the entire

00:49:00.740 country are in Los Angeles, not California, and actually specifically the city of Los Angeles.

00:49:06.400 Now, that would imply a very high death rate in LA. And no matter what we might say about Los

00:49:10.660 Angeles, that's just not the truth. And so if you have one third of all of the hospices taking care

00:49:15.660 of people at the end of their life with dignity in one city, then we would have to assume most

00:49:20.480 of those folks are fraudulent. In fact, half of the people in Los Angeles, the hospice centers,

00:49:25.600 we do think are fraudulent, and we have stopped paying almost half of them already.

00:49:29.920 and here's the craziness of all things, 800 of these hospices we've stopped paying.

00:49:34.300 We've had maybe two dozen complain. So most of these guys say, all right, the gig's up.

00:49:38.880 You know, they came looking for a man. We know one day we'd be out of business. We're going to

00:49:41.620 go defraud somebody else. But the fact that that could have occurred under the watch of Gavin

00:49:45.360 Newsom, even though he was warned four years ago by the state auditor general that there was

00:49:50.660 widespread fraud and really just did performative things to pretend he was dealing with the crisis.

00:49:55.920 Why should the federal government have to come in and clean up the mess? Well, unfortunately,

00:49:59.420 it's federal dollars they're spending. So literally New Mexico, another blue state and

00:50:03.960 Mississippi, a red state, their tax bills are higher because those folks who don't have the

00:50:08.920 income of people in California are paying extra federal taxes. So we can transfer it right to Los

00:50:13.840 Angeles where the unmitigated disaster of fraud, not just in hospice, but in other programs exist.

00:50:19.760 Let me give you a third example. And then we can come to the why question, which is always the

00:50:23.260 most important one. New York City, New York State, these are big, prosperous areas. The number one

00:50:29.940 job growth, in fact, the number one job of all in New York State is a personal care service

00:50:35.720 attendant. Now, what does that mean? That means we're paying someone to carry your groceries up

00:50:39.800 the stairs to your kitchen. That person is often your child or the neighbor's kid, and your neighbor's

00:50:44.680 kid's driving you to the doctor's office. So all these services that historically your family would

00:50:49.700 do for you. We're not paying someone to do for you. It's become a jobs program. Let's take it

00:50:55.500 to the why question. Why would it be that you would allow that much growth? Why does California

00:51:00.380 have twice the amount of money being spent on these same personal care services than the national

00:51:05.080 average? It's because if you're not making jobs yourself and you want to pretend like you're

00:51:09.200 creating jobs and you want to be able to get federal tax dollars to pay for those jobs and

00:51:13.580 then tax that income so you have more state revenue, well, you'd create personal care services.

00:51:19.420 It's literally exactly what they have done in New York and in California.

00:51:22.760 And here's the part that's really getting me.

00:51:24.180 They're unionizing those workers, which means we're going to help the union that's the big service workers union in New York double in size.

00:51:33.040 All that union dues and all the taxes on that, that all flows back potentially for political patronage purposes to support the single dominant party in New York State and California.

00:51:43.900 So, Dr. Oz, other than sort of the rooting out of the fraud that's happening, what systemic changes do you think need to be made to how the federal government deals with Medicaid at the state level?

00:51:55.060 I know there have been a lot of critiques of the block grant program because it basically removes a lot of the incentive for states to actually police their own fraud because if you're just getting a chunk of change, it doesn't really matter to you whether or not you identify the fraud or not.

00:52:06.260 The chunk is the same.

00:52:07.480 What sort of systemic changes do you think need to happen?

00:52:11.120 Oh, this is very addressable.

00:52:12.240 Well, first of all, you need a federal government that wants to do their job.

00:52:15.080 The prior administration gutted the Medicaid program integrity.

00:52:18.780 And I'm going to be clear about this.

00:52:20.560 There were six people left that we're aware of that were working in Medicaid program integrity

00:52:25.640 for the country at CMS, the agency that I run for the president.

00:52:29.400 And that basically means we're not serious about this.

00:52:31.580 We just want you to enroll as many people as possible into the Medicaid program.

00:52:36.000 We don't want to hear about fraud.

00:52:37.520 And that's what I was told by people who are here, because they were told, listen, just

00:52:40.920 go do something else. Just don't focus on the fraud issue because you're going to create a

00:52:44.900 narrative, a micro narrative that doesn't agree with our administration policy. But you also have

00:52:49.620 to have states that want to work with us. We need an all government approach. So what the president

00:52:53.440 did by appointing J.D. Vance to be the head of this White House anti-fraud task force, and we've

00:52:58.340 been doing announcements as you've been witnessing frequently, highlighting these realities, is if

00:53:02.280 I've got a problem at CMS and I'm the insurance company and I see that there's some aberrancy in

00:53:07.240 payments. We've doubled or tripled the payments in an area. It doesn't make any sense. I can go to

00:53:11.400 DOJ, FBI, the Office of Inspector General, and they're going to actually work for me,

00:53:15.800 with me rather, and take charge of this issue to actually investigate crime. Or I can go to

00:53:21.300 Scott Best in the Treasury, and he's going to actually use forensic accountants to find out

00:53:25.420 where's the money getting laundered to. Like, who are the big players involved? Because it turns out

00:53:29.920 we have foreign groups that are involved in organized criminal activities and foreign

00:53:35.420 governments, we believe, that may also be involved in these endeavors. These are not mom-and-pop

00:53:39.300 setups. We need an all-of-government effort. And finally, governors have to feel the pressure.

00:53:44.120 Governor Walz stepped down in Minnesota because of pressure over the massive amount of fraud that

00:53:48.720 he was unwilling to take charge of when he was governor. We had the governor of Maine has now

00:53:53.480 stepped down. Others may as well. If your governor's not willing to do their job, you, the people,

00:53:58.280 should be upset because you're compromising your people and your state programs by not taking

00:54:03.540 charge of the fraud. Medicaid has to be run by the states. Medicaid, therefore, should be

00:54:08.060 matured and nurtured and, for good reason, protected by state leadership against this

00:54:14.500 kind of fraud. And if the federal government has to step in because our tax dollars are being abused,

00:54:18.560 it's not going to be a happy day. To what degree is all of this fraud organized? To me,

00:54:23.500 with my political cap on, that's what's most interesting. Not just that some scam artists

00:54:27.940 are trying to bilk the system, but that there is a system of patronage that, you know, has politicians

00:54:34.440 not just looking the other way, but really in some ways cooperating with it. You mentioned

00:54:38.960 Governor Walz. There are plenty of accusations there. So how organized is this? And who can we

00:54:47.500 bring to account, not just for stealing some taxpayer dollars, but for setting up a system

00:54:52.140 that's fundamentally unjust.

00:54:54.780 Well, I just interviewed a whistleblower yesterday

00:54:57.420 from Minnesota.

00:54:59.180 She worked in state agency.

00:55:00.280 She's a Democrat, by the way,

00:55:01.860 was raised a Democrat, was a Democrat.

00:55:03.680 And as soon as she began raising concerns

00:55:05.520 about the fact that there was a disproportionate

00:55:07.280 amount of money being taken by the Somalians in Minnesota,

00:55:10.120 she was quickly ostracized and blocked off.

00:55:12.980 And she said the big problem there

00:55:14.380 was they did not want to be perceived as racist.

00:55:17.180 They want to be Minnesota nice.

00:55:19.260 And that doesn't mean that you literally blind yourself

00:55:22.120 to the reality of criminal activities,

00:55:24.280 but because she was willing to call that out,

00:55:26.120 she was ostracized.

00:55:27.420 And I think that's part of the puzzle,

00:55:28.980 that people aren't willing to just do the right thing.

00:55:31.180 Part of it is they recognize that by doing the right thing,

00:55:33.980 they might actually look worse

00:55:35.240 in the eyes of their voters.

00:55:36.740 Some people may not like the fact

00:55:38.020 that you're going after criminal entities.

00:55:39.420 And these are dangerous groups that intimidate witnesses.

00:55:42.580 If you go to Flushing, Queens in New York, 1.00

00:55:44.800 you're not gonna get any of the Chinese folks

00:55:46.460 who live there to talk to you 1.00

00:55:47.840 about the fraud that they're witnessing.

00:55:49.380 But we know there's tremendous amounts of fraud.

00:55:51.260 Human trafficking, by the way, lots of other bad things, because once you tolerate corruption, it spreads widely.

00:55:56.520 But there has to be a change in expectations.

00:55:59.780 Many states have normalized fraud.

00:56:02.580 Now, think about this.

00:56:03.620 If it's okay for a doctor to lie about a patient needing hospice by claiming that they're going to die when, in fact, they don't have any problems whatsoever that are mortal or even near mortal, they're selling their soul.

00:56:16.540 And what we have allowed to happen is it got worse during COVID, when there was a general

00:56:20.040 belief you could just throw money at the problem and hope it worked out, and then a lack of

00:56:23.680 policing of program integrity over the last administration's tenure, you're left with

00:56:28.400 a system where fraud is normalized, where corruption is what's always out there.

00:56:33.020 So you're looking for your little handout.

00:56:34.620 Like many countries that have fraud, it's systemic.

00:56:38.180 Everyone gets a little piece of the action.

00:56:39.540 Everyone dips their beak into the equation.

00:56:42.260 But I was told this by a friend of mine, and this is a profound statement that he made.

00:56:46.220 They said, when Republicans win the White House, everybody wants to be the Secretary

00:56:49.520 of Treasury.

00:56:50.460 Everybody wants to be the ambassador to England.

00:56:52.400 That's what Republicans seek.

00:56:53.840 When a Democrat wins the White House, they want to get control of health and human services

00:56:57.420 because that's where the big money is.

00:56:59.420 Our budget's almost $2 trillion, and that money flows through many systems where all

00:57:04.860 you need is a beneficiary's identification number to serve as a credit card, and you

00:57:09.300 can take advantage of the system.

00:57:10.640 So we have got to create a world where taking advantage of our most vulnerable Americans

00:57:14.880 is no longer acceptable.

00:57:17.020 Yes, we need to do that.

00:57:18.560 Two things I really desire.

00:57:20.180 I would desire to totally clean up HHS with all of this fraud.

00:57:23.860 I would also desire to be the ambassador to England.

00:57:26.260 That sounds like a great job.

00:57:27.680 Dr. Oz, we've taken up enough of your time.

00:57:30.040 Thank you very much for coming on the show.

00:57:31.260 Thank you for everything you're doing.

00:57:33.040 And Godspeed on this very important task.

00:57:35.280 Now we turn to a man who every day goes by will more likely need health care coverage.

00:57:41.220 And that is, of course, Andrew Klavan.

00:57:43.640 This Memorial Day, and I remember the first Memorial Day, this Memorial Day weekend, get 45% off an annual Daily Wire Plus membership.

00:57:52.680 That's too nice for these people.

00:57:54.460 God, here's what you get.

00:57:55.880 Exclusive member-only content like Real History with Matt Walsh, which has new episodes every single month.

00:58:00.780 And frankly, we've got a lot more coming.

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00:58:04.920 all exclusive to members. This is the time to join 45% off dailywire.com. Do it today or else.

00:58:13.020 Do it. Do it right now. That's what I'm going to leave you on. Just go do it. I don't want to put

00:58:17.180 any distraction in your head before then. And I hope everyone has a good Memorial Day. Good to

00:58:21.940 see you gentlemen. See you next time. You too, Michael. Good talking to you.

The Michael Knowles Show - May 20, 2026

Friendly Fire： Massie's Mess, Trump Victorious & Dr. Oz's War on Fraud

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