00:02:49.540But 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.
00:03:12.560I 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.
00:03:34.260But to me, I really do want to know, like, did Pinecone Gate make a difference to the people of Kentucky?
00:03:45.800I'm going to go know that the Pinecone Gate really didn't make a difference.
00:03:48.860If it had been Cactus Gate, that would have been a completely different thing.
00:03:52.540I mean, I'm just honestly like what other parts of the natural world would be worse to label your member than a Pinecone?
00:04:01.600really you're running into like a sea anemone gate like i i don't i don't know coral gate like
00:04:07.920what are we talking here and he was and apparently he was texting with women using this this name
00:04:13.920right i mean like i think that's where the text came from is in a text with a woman he was referring
00:04:17.900allegedly to his member as a pine cone and it's like i'm just wondering you know i know i entered
00:04:22.960a little bit late here but i i do want to tell the audience we have the pine cone coming on actually
00:04:28.040later in the show so be sure to stay tuned because this is friendly fire
00:04:31.920that's pornographic is that yeah well that's for behind the the paywall obviously we you know you
00:04:44.520got to subscribe for that you don't get to put the only point onto youtube only can i ask i want
00:04:49.460to ask a question about this though because i the only part of this i actually heard and maybe this
00:04:53.280is selective deafness on my part but the only part of this i heard was the part that he had an
00:04:57.140affair with a woman two months after his wife died, which I didn't think was so bad. I mean,
00:05:02.120what was she going to do? Come back? I mean, she died. He moved down.
00:05:07.380It is interesting, you know, like on all of the dirt that they were digging up on Massey right
00:05:12.320before the election, it is interesting that, look, I mean, a lot of it was like raised a lot
00:05:16.920of eyebrows and probably didn't represent good judgment if it was true. But yeah, right. You're
00:05:22.020right, Drew. It wasn't, they didn't allege that he cheated on his wife. They didn't allege that
00:05:25.400kind of impropriety. So, you know, it's kind of typical political stuff. Some of it was kind of
00:05:29.900weird, like the pine cones or whatever, but it, it, all of it together, it, I was confident. I'd
00:05:35.720be curious to know what you all were thinking yesterday. I predicted Massey was going to go
00:05:40.560down. I didn't know it was going to be a nine point swing, but I predicted he was going to go
00:05:43.580down. And the reason why it wasn't just because of the big, beautiful bill. It wasn't just because
00:05:48.420of the pro Israel donors. It wasn't just because of this, that, or the other thing. It was because
00:05:53.040he was acting like a guy who was about to lose he was correct right yeah all right thanks
00:05:58.340yeah no this is totally right okay so first of all like you don't run a campaign in northern
00:06:04.020kentucky in which your chief issue is israel and the jews that's the dumbest thing you can do
00:06:09.780because if you think that the voters in northern kentucky are thinking about that you're out of
00:06:13.640your mind his district has 780 000 people and he has less than 500 jews and so if you actually
00:06:19.060want to know what happened in that election cycle it's very easy watch the local tv ads the local tv
00:06:23.680ads were massey trying to hump trump's leg and then the rest of the campaign was trump saying
00:06:28.000get off my leg that was the entire campaign the entire campaign was saying it was ed galrein being
00:06:32.620like dude trump doesn't like you and you're not going to make it happen you're trying too hard
00:06:37.600and massey being like no no we're best friends we're super best friends and trump tweeting i
00:06:42.060don't even like him i want him gone he's the worst and so there is an entire race we can't paper over
00:06:46.740the fact. What's kind of funny with Massey is he had a super pro-Israel billionaire donor who was
00:06:51.900backing him. But there's no doubt pro-Israel donors and sort of commentators. Yeah, for sure.
00:06:58.580But that's because he was vulnerable. Yes, it's because he was vulnerable. And the other thing is
00:07:03.460though, because a lot of the Massey supporters are basically trying to peg the whole thing on
00:07:07.040Jews for the reason he went down. But within the context of Brad Raffensperger going down,
00:07:13.520Bill Cassidy going down, the five state legislators in Indiana going down.
00:07:17.780Within 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.
00:07:26.400And it's because they opposed Trump and Trump owns the party.
00:08:01.360And 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?
00:08:09.580I mean, it was literally people wearing sweatshirts that said American Reich on them.
00:08:12.760Really? 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.
00:08:27.000And 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.
00:11:10.400But 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.
00:11:33.080But there is a line in the sand when it becomes obvious that it's not just Israel you have
00:11:38.880a problem with, which, you know, Rand Paul doesn't, you know, want to fund Israel.
00:11:43.400I don't ever feel like he's being anti-Semitic.
00:11:46.380There's a line where you cross that it's not just Jews and it's not just pro-Israel people.
00:11:51.460The American people have very little tolerance for anti-Semitism.
00:11:55.620And when you start saying that the Republican Jewish coalition, just Republican Jews are
00:12:01.880somehow undermining American interests because they're, you know, trying to whip up support
00:12:07.920against you. That reads, I think, to average Americans as really anti-Semitic. And I think
00:12:14.040it's really off-putting. Like, I think the fact that he, you know, the Trump piece obviously is
00:12:17.920a really big deal, but he won before against a Trump-backed candidate. I really think it was
00:12:24.200the tonal shift, the way that he talked about Israel. It stopped being the same as the way he
00:12:29.500talked about Ukraine. It stopped sounding like it was a principal opposition to funding and to war
00:12:34.680and started sounding like he was attacking American Jews. And I feel like average Americans,
00:12:40.700they're not so into Israel right now, but they are very protective of their Jewish neighbors.
00:12:45.940And I think that that just came off as so gross. Like his opening to his concession speech where
00:12:53.220he said, I had to go find my opponent's phone number and he's in Tel Aviv somewhere.
00:14:20.220He was a consistent no vote for every major agenda item that Trump was pushing, which pissed Trump off.
00:14:25.060But 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.
00:14:34.040Right. He and Ro Khanna decided that they were going to run an op going after Trump.
00:14:38.200Right. He was going to reach across the aisle and suggest that Trump was covering for a child sex trafficking ring.
00:14:42.420And 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.
00:14:49.240And he decided he was going to ramp this up.
00:14:51.120So I think that actually the anti-Semitism, as always, is the symptom, not the cause.
00:14:55.300I think that that he started thinking in very conspiratorial ways about American politics
00:14:59.100and grievance based ways about American politics.
00:15:01.420He started attributing that to weird cliquish conspiracies like the quote unquote Epstein
00:15:17.900The 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%.
00:15:30.780If 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.
00:15:45.260Yeah, 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.
00:16:05.900And I thought, okay, hold on, wait, that doesn't even make a coherent political position.
00:16:11.280So you agree with the pedos and the pedo protectors 91% of the time?
00:16:15.700I don't want to agree with them on any percent of the time.
00:16:17.760And so what he represented to me, if you kind of zoom out from these individual issues
00:16:23.000or the individual donors or whatever, is he had two problems going for him.
00:16:26.440One, he voted a little over 77% of the time with the GOP in Congress this term,
00:16:32.960which is way below the median GOP congressman who voted 95% of the time.
00:16:37.800This was also down from Massey last term who was voting 91% of the time GOP
00:16:41.760which itself was down from the previous term when he voted 95% of the time GOP.
00:19:16.760I've had my Helix mattress for years and multiple Helix mattresses.
00:19:19.880In fact, I'm such a good father, I've gotten them for my kids. Go to HelixSleep.com slash Friendly Fire, 27% off sitewide. HelixSleep.com slash Friendly Fire, 27% off sitewide. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know that we sent you. HelixSleep.com slash Friendly Fire. Now, before Bhati was so rudely interrupted by that advertisement, we can get back to her point.
00:19:40.260what i was going to say is um yes on the far right and the left you see a similar kind of
00:19:47.200blame the jews for everything the jews are all pedophiles the jewish state is undermining
00:19:50.780american interests etc etc but i i really kind of dispute this um horseshoe theory because a
00:19:57.060horseshoe suggests that they're equal but they really aren't in terms of the mainstream which
00:20:00.740is i think what drew was just pointing to um the right has done in my view an admirable job
00:20:36.500into celebrities and really elevating their profile, campaigning with them, mainstreaming
00:20:42.860their views. So if I may just do a short plug for my book, The Jews and the Left,
00:20:47.720they're not the same. These are not the same. You've got one side that is deeply committed
00:20:52.900to saying we stand against anti-Semitism. You're allowed to criticize Israel, of course,
00:20:58.280but we are not going to allow Jew hate to infiltrate and become mainstream. And the other
00:21:03.000side, which is saying, actually, no, this is the price of entry now. The word Zionist is a full-on
00:21:08.400slur. I agree with that. I think that's true. I think the Republicans have been much better
00:21:15.400about this. They definitely have. Speaking of brutalizing the left, are we about to just take
00:21:22.100out a 150-year-old communist dictator in Cuba? Could happen, yeah.
00:21:29.640Well, I mean, they're threatening to prosecute Raul Castro, right?
00:21:33.700I mean, I think that's ā so presumably that's the precursor to maybe go in and kidnap him and fly him in a tracksuit.
00:21:40.000And you just hope that whoever sponsors that tracksuit has really paid top dollar for it because Nike made bank off of that Maduro tracksuit.
00:21:47.320So if we're going to do this in full capitalist fashion, we don't just go and take Raul Castro.
00:21:51.100We get an endorsement deal, and then we put him in a Reebok tracksuit and really make some money back for the American people.
00:22:24.220So, you know, we're talking about Tom Massey's future prospects.
00:22:27.280I 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.
00:22:40.020Not 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.
00:22:49.820and it's not going to be, I think, Joe Kent or Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Massey MTG ticket,
00:22:56.020man, that could do serious double-digit numbers of voters. I think that'd be huge.
00:23:01.640Look, just on the libertarian point, I mean, put all the other controversy aside. If Massey's
00:23:06.320going to be Mr. Libertarian, there's always some guy doing that. You know, Ron Paul would run for
00:23:10.840president. Rand Paul has already signaled he does want to run. And Massey would have some juice to
00:23:15.440do that. So there is that lane. The other thing that's kind of interesting, because Massey's now
00:23:19.300a Republican, I think he's still a Republican, who's in opposition to Trump, is if Trump is doing
00:23:24.960really, really well, you saw Rubio once again saying he would back J.D., Trump reasserting
00:23:29.880control over the party. If it's like J.D. Rubio, if that ticket, they keep floating from the White
00:23:35.220House, if that's the ticket, if Trump's doing really, really well, there you go, you got it.
00:23:39.100But if the Trump administration does collapse for whatever reason, then the Republicans who are
00:23:43.600going to have a better shot are the ones who are not tied to the administration. So all of a sudden
00:23:47.720then, the Ron DeSantis candidacy starts to look pretty interesting, assuming he doesn't join the
00:23:52.920admin. Or, I'm not saying Thomas Massey or Rand Paul are going to be president, but all of a
00:23:57.200sudden, they actually do get a little boost to their prospects. Yeah, but this is the place where
00:24:01.360AOC comes in. This is my nightmare, that if the Trump administration really tanks, which I don't
00:24:06.080think it's going to do, actually. I think it's going to come out of smelling like a rose. But
00:24:09.060if it does, I think AOC is the most dangerous person in the country. The woman is a pretty,
00:24:14.840an idiot and a fascist i mean it's it's an almost perfect combination to win over the left
00:24:19.480mr dominich you're in and we turn back why are you bringing me on you could have kept her i know
00:24:25.740i 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
00:24:31.620point about the massey thing before we turn to cuba because frankly i'm much more interested in
00:24:35.480the massey thing than the cuba thing to be honest with you because nothing's happening in cuba until
00:24:38.920it actually happens so i want to get your guys's take on this i they're they're kind of it's very
00:24:43.800weird that thomas massey decides that he's going to steer directly into crazy land he was he was
00:24:48.280like hanging with chank ueger and anna kasparian the day before a republican primary in a bright
00:24:52.700red district in northern kentucky right which is the highest order libertarians are like this
00:24:58.500they just i mean listen they swing left sometimes oh no no they're totally psycho i mean this is why
00:25:03.180their convention is the best watch in tv right i mean if you like every four years their convention
00:25:07.160is some fat dude with an iron cross dancing around without a shirt followed by some naked
00:25:12.500chick talking about how pornography is the most American thing. It's an amazing place,
00:25:16.740the Libertarian Convention. But in any case, here's the question. I had three possible theories as to
00:25:21.320why Massey did this. Theory number one is the most obvious, which is Trump decided that he was going
00:25:25.620to punch Massey as hard as he could in the face. Massey did not want to blame Trump, so he blamed
00:25:29.380the Jews, which is a typical thing. You see Tucker Carlson do the same thing where he says,
00:25:33.380well, you know, it's not Trump that I'm upset with. It's his puppeteers. It's the marionette
00:25:37.720masters who are really doing it. And those marionettes, the people who are handling all
00:25:41.660the strings, that's the Jews. So a great way to avoid hitting Trump in a race where Trump is
00:25:45.480hitting you is to say it's really not Trump. It's people who are being manipulative of Trump. So
00:25:50.540that's theory number one. Theory number two is he knew he was toast. So he was going to steer
00:25:53.980directly into podcastistan and try to make himself his next career. And again, we talked about that
00:25:59.060before. I think that's quite plausible. And then theory number three is that people like Massey
00:26:03.020spend an awful lot of time online and you just get brain worms. And once you get those brain
00:26:07.000worms online, it is very difficult to excise them in real life because let's be real. Again,
00:26:11.240this was a district in northern kentucky in which thomas massey made his number one issue
00:26:16.220a small middle eastern state halfway around the globe which about is which is again only
00:26:21.840understandable if you have brain worms or if it's on purpose or if it's on purpose a different way
00:26:26.480so i kind of want to know which theory of those three you buy i'll give a more charitable view
00:26:30.480which is it how did it start it could have started from a real principled opposition to
00:26:37.100wars in the middle east or so i actually think it might have started a little earlier than that but
00:26:41.180let's say it started there. There's no doubt that a ton of pro-Israel Jews really wanted to get
00:26:47.300Massey out. And Trump, again, we were talking about it earlier, but I think Trump was really
00:26:52.560the factor that made the difference. But nevertheless, it could well be the case that
00:26:57.640even if Massey didn't start out smacking at the Jews, or he obviously had his Tel Aviv comment
00:27:03.200last night, it might just be the case that when he saw that his big opposition was going to be
00:27:09.040coming from pro-israel jews it just uh accelerated whatever trend was going on there you know in
00:27:15.220other words i like he had a problem strategic it was emotional that basically he saw a bunch of
00:27:19.920jewish money coming in can i can i make a vote here for brain worms can i make a vote here for
00:27:24.840brain worms because i know i know who thomas massey used to be and he basically was this like
00:27:30.020hippie libertarian who was also uh somebody who would you know build these chicken coops and and
00:27:36.080make them controlled by Bluetooth and stuff like this. He was just sort of weird and eccentric,
00:27:41.140but he really was not leaning into any of the crazy stuff that he leaned in all the way up to
00:27:46.540this. And that's why it doesn't really, it makes, it makes no sense that he would, you know,
00:27:50.720steal the rocket ship directly into the sun, you know, based on prior behavior and, and the way
00:27:55.840that he was just kind of this, you know, this loner who was kind of off on the side, you know,
00:27:59.720and, and the fact that he would pair up with Ro Khanna to deal in all of this bullshit going
00:28:05.680after Trump. Look, there are four things on my Mount Rushmore of hate. It's communist,
00:28:12.040it's anti-Semites, it's Karens, and it's hippies. And by the end of the day, he was hanging out
00:28:16.980with three or four of those and doing it all the time. So who does that? Someone who was a
00:28:23.060libertarian, who has any kind of rural libertarian principle or something like that, who has the kind
00:28:27.720of pro-life record that Massey had, the kind of pro-gun record that he had in the past, stuff
00:28:31.920like that. You just don't anticipate him going in that direction. And so I think the last couple
00:28:36.500of years of him, he just went crazy and he started hanging around with the worst of the crazies.
00:28:41.360I think my vote is for a combination of the two theories that one is the brain worms that he went
00:28:45.660crazy. It was exacerbated by the fact that Jewish money was pouring into the campaign against him.
00:28:52.240But also people do tend to look for an exit strategy. And it wouldn't surprise me whatsoever
00:28:57.620as he started to go nuts, he started to see that little light at the end of the tunnel
00:29:01.840that ends up in podcastistan and making good money and with a big audience.
00:29:06.840So I think there might be a combination of the passion and the greed
00:29:09.760because he did seem to really lose his whole personality.
00:29:14.280You know, if it is the greed, I think that that does speak
00:29:16.080to kind of where the Republican Party is.
00:29:17.740In other words, the anti-Semitism and the conspiratorial muddiness
00:29:20.580and sort of the Tucker wing of what's going on,
00:29:23.840that is an excellent exit strategy and it's a very poor entry strategy.
00:29:27.920And I think people are mistaking an exit strategy for an entry strategy,
00:29:30.700Meaning 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.
00:29:40.900James Fishbeck is about to get crushed by Byron Donalds down here.
00:29:43.680You have you have Massey, who's now lost his seat.
00:29:47.740You're seeing this happen like over and over and over and over.
00:29:50.480And so you're seeing people exit and presumably make more money and get the strange new respect on the other end.
00:29:55.420But 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?
00:30:05.160Or 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?
00:30:11.420There'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.
00:30:19.860but the part that we haven't talked about is he started to fall afoul of Trump and get a little
00:30:25.940bit more eccentric than usual right around the time his wife died. I mean, to what degree is
00:30:31.020this just his wife of decades died and he got kind of emotionally unmoored and it upended his
00:30:36.120political career. Is that too much psychobabble for political analysis? I don't know him well
00:30:41.040enough to know that. I just know that he became unrecognizable to a lot of us who interacted with
00:30:45.860him over the years. He, again, went from being this kind of country libertarian type who was
00:30:52.680always smiling and kind of happy and knew that he was basically irrelevant to being someone who
00:30:57.020was aggressively going after the most important person in politics in America, not just in his
00:31:02.840party, and doing so in ways that repeatedly involved him lying blatantly about all these
00:31:08.740sorts of things related to the Epstein files, as Ben was saying earlier. So I think that there
00:31:14.440there is something to that michael but uh but you know i haven't had him on the uh the psychoanalysis
00:31:19.540couch uh personally right i just wonder it's interesting though that the that tucker's lack
00:31:24.960of influence is the exact opposite of what tucker himself predicted and that almost everything that
00:31:29.840tucker predicts turns out to be the opposite which i think is is proof that god is a gigantic
00:31:34.560invisible jewish man with a long white beard i think he's just screwing with tucker it is either
00:31:40.360it's just the demon. I actually like looking at the way these, these things have shaken out here.
00:31:46.500One, there are two things that make me feel really good about it. One, even again, it's like,
00:31:50.780I'm not, I'm not a huge Massey hater. I think for a lot of his career, he was great. It just
00:31:54.480irritated me when he was really turning away and kind of, I don't know, you know, opposing the
00:31:58.540party and the president. But, but nevertheless, the, the two great affirmations are one, Twitter's
00:32:04.580not real life. Sometimes I worry about that. Sometimes I think maybe Twitter is becoming
00:32:07.720real life. But no, there's a huge distinction between those things. And there's a big chasm
00:32:13.320between the hardcore politics on the ground and the political media. And so if the podcasts
00:32:19.420conducted the election, the results would all be different, but they didn't. It was conducted by
00:32:23.500voters in districts around the country. And we have so many data points. We have the Indiana
00:32:27.640data point, which again, that issue was redistricting. We have the Georgia data point.
00:32:31.760That issue was really the election of 2020. We have Bill Cassidy. We have that data point.
00:32:37.420We 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.
00:32:45.400If we had a political media. I have to break in here. I'm sorry. I have to break in here.
00:32:48.980I have to break in here with a smooth segue into a policy genius commercial.
00:32:53.840And as soon as I think of one, I'll tell you what it is.
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00:33:48.760So there's no guesswork, just clarity.
00:34:57.580As long as I don't have to have a health checkup because I never blast those for some reason.
00:35:02.940So 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.
00:35:19.540Over the course of the past couple of months, we've seen Democrats prevail in multiple primaries.
00:35:24.560We've seen the situation play out in Maine.
00:35:46.780The fact is that they're only united by the fact that they all loathe Trump.
00:35:51.420And it's just a contest of how much they loathe him between them.
00:35:54.740And 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.
00:36:03.060And it's clear that unity really is a political virtue.
00:36:06.400You 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.
00:37:16.360And in the face of that, we need party unity.
00:37:19.100Not 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.
00:37:28.680And to your point, Ben, I think that that really comes out pretty cleanly last night.
00:37:32.760There is a clear leader of the political party.
00:37:34.660There 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.
00:37:45.060I mean, I agree with that, but I think that what happened here and what's been happening is that there are lines drawn, right?
00:37:52.020Right now, the unity in the Republican Party is around the thing of the Trump administration, right?
00:37:57.140And 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.
00:38:03.080I was very praiseworthy of Massey's positions for most of his career when it came to the role of the federal government, for example.
00:38:08.260but but the reality is that there were lines that were drawn and then trump is legitimately excising
00:38:13.400people from those lines he's not just saying blanket unity come hug me he's saying listen
00:38:17.640here's where the line is and if you're on the other side of that line you're on the other side
00:38:20.600of that line the point that you're making about the democrats is is a good one it also is demonstrative
00:38:25.900they have embraced the worst parts of themselves i mean legitimately the worst parts of themselves
00:38:30.480hassan piker talking about social murder with the new york times about brian thompson and then
00:38:35.840Hassan Piker, no shock, endorsing people like Abdul El-Sayed, the Senate Democrat would-be
00:38:41.500nominee in Michigan, who's probably going to end up with the nomination, who's like a full-scale
00:38:44.860terrorism supporter. And by the way, Hassan Piker endorsing, wait for it, Thomas Massey.
00:38:49.300Again, so there is this horseshoe that has taken place. But I think Baia's earlier point is right.
00:38:54.380The part of the right-wing horseshoe that is horseshoeing is being actively excised from the
00:38:58.800party by President Trump, which is a pretty amazing thing, actually.
00:39:02.520You 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.
00:39:11.440The Democrats are going to test that theory.
00:39:54.560But Plattner is, again, another guy who's being fully endorsed and legitimized by the entire Democratic Party infrastructure.
00:40:00.900You 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.
00:40:11.120I mean, he is ā Plattner is disgusting, disgusting.
00:40:14.240And the Democratic Party is hugging him with both arms right now.
00:40:17.960I mean, legitimately saying ā I mean, there are people who are saying that he should run for main senate and then he should run for president.
00:40:23.120and the only saving grace of mom donny is he wasn't born in america so he can't run for the
00:40:27.420presidency but graham plattner can and there are a bunch of people in the democratic party who are
00:40:31.640rising and the next generation of the democratic party is psychotic i mean fully damned crazy like
00:40:37.080they are not remotely anywhere in the neighborhood of the same and so you know i get asked the
00:40:42.100question a lot do we think that there's going to be a reversion to a sort of normal politics after
00:40:46.240this i mean the only way that that happens if the democrats get absolutely shellacked and i think
00:40:50.980that unfortunately because of the polarized nature of the political system right now the chances that
00:40:55.260they get totally shellacked pretty low actually yeah i agree the demonization they don't have to
00:41:00.320get shellacked in the midterms they just have to do badly yeah the demonization thing that michael
00:41:05.340was just talking about i think we need to really consider and take it seriously i think people
00:41:11.080have kind of they've joked about it's starting to turn because of luigi and gioni because of the
00:41:16.340a number of attempts on, on Trump's life. And of course, because of, of Charlie's assassination,
00:41:20.320but I think like, I don't know why it hasn't gotten more attention that there have been
00:41:24.580multiple attempts on Sam Altman's life that like the, that the AI phenomenon is now creating
00:41:30.480and the, and the demonization of billionaires that Bernie Sanders talks about, uh, that is
00:41:35.640echoed by so many, uh, just not just on the DSA left, but just on the left generally, uh, that
00:41:40.980that's going to create a climate in which these people, they're, they're not going to be able to
00:41:45.360live and work and have the kind of roles as captains of industry that they've had in the
00:41:49.260past without having the fear of the kind of backlash that these radical demonizing elements
00:41:55.960of the left really, I think, believe in truly in their hearts. And that's something that is so evil
00:42:01.680and so atrocious in terms of American history. We've seen things like this happen in the past,
00:42:07.480and it led to bombings, it led to assassination attempts, it led to things that were absolutely
00:42:11.320terrible for fabric. And to see this happening in the 250th anniversary of America really is
00:42:16.500depressing to me. Well, one of the things that actually is unique, and Ben, you're pointing it
00:42:20.420out here, is that in the history of the United States, when there are assassination attempts,
00:42:25.080typically it is people who are involved directly in the business of politics, right? It's RFK
00:42:29.340getting shot or MLK getting shot, or even Charlie in the line of MLK, right? Just being a political
00:42:35.080activist and not to say they were saying the same thing or anything. But the reality is that it is
00:42:40.900now extended out to almost Russian Revolution style violence, like going after people who are
00:42:46.920just captains of industry, as you say, people who are running companies, people who are just engaged
00:42:51.260in the marketplace, like the actual marketplace. If you had said to me 15 years ago that there
00:42:56.340would be an assassination attempt on the president, I said, OK, that's kind of like,
00:42:59.280unfortunately, a relative norm in American political life. Even if you had said to me
00:43:02.720there would be an assassination of a high level political activist like Charlie, I said that
00:43:06.620that's unique and horrifying, but not totally unexpected. If you would say to me that we would
00:43:12.120be at a point where, you know, people like a Jeff Bezos or a Mark Zuckerberg or a Sam Altman,
00:43:18.620that these are people who have to walk around with 24-7 security for the crime of creating
00:43:22.400products and services that people want to buy. And these are the bad guys now. The United Healthcare
00:43:26.300CEO is now considered the bad guy, engaged in quote-unquote social murder. You're talking about
00:44:01.180shooting up or setting off a bomb in the Capitol. You did have these kinds of anarchist bombings
00:44:06.240about almost exactly 100 years ago. You're seeing them begin to crop up again. The last time that
00:44:12.160that happened, the federal government came in and curtailed civil rights and put these people in
00:44:17.020prison, deported these people, got them out of our country. Whether or not we have the ability
00:44:22.700to actually exert that kind of political authority or the desire to do so right now, I'm not so sure.
00:44:27.300But 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.
00:44:39.840And if we don't do that now, I fear that the problem won't resolve itself on its own.
00:44:45.580Well, 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.
00:44:52.620And one of the weirder financial habits people have is you'll spend hours comparison shopping
00:44:56.560for a plane ticket that saves you like $12, and then you'll continue paying $80 or $90
00:45:00.280a month for wireless service without any question.
00:45:02.540And at a certain point, you have to ask yourself, why am I doing that?
00:45:04.840Especially now that companies like PureTalk exist.
00:47:04.700I 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,
00:47:13.120but also rooting out all of that terrible fraud, which we have not talked enough about.
00:47:18.900Well, maybe I can put it in the context of affordability, because I think for a lot of
00:47:22.280Americans, it's what they're most concerned about. And if you just took the fraud out of
00:47:26.460Medicare and Medicaid, and we estimate there's probably $100 billion of fraud on the programs
00:47:31.820that the government pays for you to get better health, that would allow us to double the life
00:47:35.940expectancy of the Medicare Trust Fund. To put that in context, if you're working your tail
00:47:40.360off right now and watching the show, and you're worried Medicare is not going to be there for you
00:47:44.420when you reach the ripe old age of 65, it's the parachute that's going to catch you and deal with
00:47:49.260your health issues without costing you an arm and a leg, so you can keep your arms and legs,
00:47:53.280then you should be pretty much with us on this fraud issue. Because by doubling the life expectancy
00:47:58.260of the program, we'll make sure it's there for you and for your grandkids. And that's the kind
00:48:01.960of discussion we need to be having in earnest with each other, because the fraud is so large,
00:48:06.120is so weaponized that we have to start asking ourselves, is this really a flaw for state
00:48:11.720leadership, for governors? Or maybe there's a feature here we had not noticed before,
00:48:16.120which is why they've allowed it to go unimpeded for so many years.
00:48:21.100Can you explain what kind of fraud is taking place exactly?
00:48:25.760I'll give you three examples. So South Florida, where you guys have some affinity,
00:48:29.300is a state that has generally done okay on fraud, waste, and abuse. But in the area of
00:48:34.440durable medical equipment where, you know, the wheelchairs and canes, these companies have now
00:48:40.800grown so quickly that we have twice as many of these durable medical equipment suppliers as
00:48:46.420McDonald's in South Florida. It's impossible that that many people want to sell you wheelchairs.
00:48:51.400But that's the norm. We think the Cuban government's involved because many of the
00:48:55.060perpetrators actually flee back to Cuba. Even worse, one third of all hospices in the entire
00:49:00.740country are in Los Angeles, not California, and actually specifically the city of Los Angeles.
00:49:06.400Now, that would imply a very high death rate in LA. And no matter what we might say about Los
00:49:10.660Angeles, that's just not the truth. And so if you have one third of all of the hospices taking care
00:49:15.660of people at the end of their life with dignity in one city, then we would have to assume most
00:49:20.480of those folks are fraudulent. In fact, half of the people in Los Angeles, the hospice centers,
00:49:25.600we do think are fraudulent, and we have stopped paying almost half of them already.
00:49:29.920and here's the craziness of all things, 800 of these hospices we've stopped paying.
00:49:34.300We've had maybe two dozen complain. So most of these guys say, all right, the gig's up.
00:49:38.880You know, they came looking for a man. We know one day we'd be out of business. We're going to
00:49:41.620go defraud somebody else. But the fact that that could have occurred under the watch of Gavin
00:49:45.360Newsom, even though he was warned four years ago by the state auditor general that there was
00:49:50.660widespread fraud and really just did performative things to pretend he was dealing with the crisis.
00:49:55.920Why should the federal government have to come in and clean up the mess? Well, unfortunately,
00:49:59.420it's federal dollars they're spending. So literally New Mexico, another blue state and
00:50:03.960Mississippi, a red state, their tax bills are higher because those folks who don't have the
00:50:08.920income of people in California are paying extra federal taxes. So we can transfer it right to Los
00:50:13.840Angeles where the unmitigated disaster of fraud, not just in hospice, but in other programs exist.
00:50:19.760Let me give you a third example. And then we can come to the why question, which is always the
00:50:23.260most important one. New York City, New York State, these are big, prosperous areas. The number one
00:50:29.940job growth, in fact, the number one job of all in New York State is a personal care service
00:50:35.720attendant. Now, what does that mean? That means we're paying someone to carry your groceries up
00:50:39.800the stairs to your kitchen. That person is often your child or the neighbor's kid, and your neighbor's
00:50:44.680kid's driving you to the doctor's office. So all these services that historically your family would
00:50:49.700do for you. We're not paying someone to do for you. It's become a jobs program. Let's take it
00:50:55.500to the why question. Why would it be that you would allow that much growth? Why does California
00:51:00.380have twice the amount of money being spent on these same personal care services than the national
00:51:05.080average? It's because if you're not making jobs yourself and you want to pretend like you're
00:51:09.200creating jobs and you want to be able to get federal tax dollars to pay for those jobs and
00:51:13.580then tax that income so you have more state revenue, well, you'd create personal care services.
00:51:19.420It's literally exactly what they have done in New York and in California.
00:51:22.760And here's the part that's really getting me.
00:51:24.180They'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.
00:51:33.040All 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.
00:51:43.900So, 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?
00:51:55.060I 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.
00:56:03.620If 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.
00:56:16.540And what we have allowed to happen is it got worse during COVID, when there was a general
00:56:20.040belief you could just throw money at the problem and hope it worked out, and then a lack of
00:56:23.680policing of program integrity over the last administration's tenure, you're left with
00:56:28.400a system where fraud is normalized, where corruption is what's always out there.
00:56:33.020So you're looking for your little handout.
00:56:34.620Like many countries that have fraud, it's systemic.
00:56:38.180Everyone gets a little piece of the action.
00:56:39.540Everyone dips their beak into the equation.
00:56:42.260But I was told this by a friend of mine, and this is a profound statement that he made.
00:56:46.220They said, when Republicans win the White House, everybody wants to be the Secretary