The Michael Knowles Show

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00:00:30.000 why are we on the air by the way what was that why are we on the air

00:00:35.340 why aren't we are we still we're waiting we're waiting for knolls i mean knolls is is like

00:00:42.620 i don't know he's smoking a cigar i don't know waiting for why are you asking clavin if you

00:00:47.700 had not brought knolls to a dinner party 15 years ago none of this would have been a problem

00:00:51.520 it is my fault it's just it's such a good invitation 100 percent your fault

00:00:56.300 I'd say everything.

00:00:57.180 Everything winds up being my fault.

00:00:58.760 It's funny, you know, whatever happens, it all comes back to me.

00:01:01.900 Yeah, well, that's true.

00:01:08.380 Fine, let's just do that.

00:01:09.460 I don't care.

00:01:09.720 No, I think it's an improvement.

00:01:10.700 Yeah, no, I think it raises the level of the conversation.

00:01:14.400 Okay, fine.

00:01:16.880 Okay, so what are we going to talk about?

00:01:18.220 Are we going to just start talking about pine cones or what?

00:01:22.040 I'm sorry.

00:01:22.840 I hate to admit this.

00:01:23.640 I don't know what the pinecone thing is about.

00:01:25.840 Oh, okay.

00:01:26.440 I'm going to have Baya explain this to you so that I don't get in HR trouble.

00:01:29.820 Baya, explain the pinecone thing to Clay Vane because I prefer not to be sued.

00:01:34.380 Well, I don't know.

00:01:35.240 Like, I don't want to get sued, but all right.

00:01:37.180 And also, the reason I bring this up is because, are we actually recording already?

00:01:42.180 We're all recording all this, but we'll cut out anything that is unpleasant.

00:01:45.500 Which is to say three quarters of the show will be cut out.

00:01:47.660 No, no, no.

00:01:47.960 So I want to give Laura Loomer credit because I feel like she often has great reporting

00:01:53.740 and she never gets credited for it, but she will go into the gutter and get the people

00:01:59.040 and find the people.

00:02:00.780 And like last night was really Laura Loomer's night.

00:02:03.360 And what she did was she found a woman who claims to have had an affair with Thomas Massey

00:02:09.480 two months after his wife died.

00:02:13.320 And the things that she claimed he asked her to do, they're perverse.

00:02:18.540 I will not repeat them.

00:02:19.900 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. 0.94

00:02:31.080 And in text messages would refer to his genitals, specifically his male member, as his pine cone.

00:02:40.020 and i truly want to know i know i know it's horrific but i truly want to know like i i'm 0.72

00:02:47.760 sure a lot of us feel that like the downfall of thomas massey was sort of of a piece with the

00:02:52.680 downfall of the podcast stereotype and the influencers with no influence and these people

00:02:57.000 who have turned rabidly anti-semitic on the right who pretend to have influence there's that there's

00:03:02.300 the fact that you know he really pissed off trump is the kingmaker but to me i really do want to

00:03:09.120 know like did pinecone gate make a difference to the people of kentucky no i'm gonna go know that

00:03:17.100 the pinecone gate really didn't make a difference if it had been cactus gate that would have been

00:03:20.660 a completely different thing i mean i'm just i honestly like what what what other parts of the

00:03:27.200 the natural world would be worse to label your member than a pine really you're running into

00:03:32.780 like a sea anemone gate like i i don't i don't know coral gate like what are we talking here

00:03:38.980 And apparently he was texting with women using this name, right?

00:03:44.120 I mean, I think that's where the text came from, is in a text with a woman,

00:03:47.060 he was referring allegedly to his member as a pine cone.

00:03:50.580 And by the way, I know I entered a little bit late here,

00:03:54.020 but I do want to tell the audience, we have the pine cone coming on actually later in the show.

00:03:58.580 So be sure to stay tuned, because this is Friendly Fire. 0.91

00:04:02.140 Friends like these coonies, enemies are friends like these coonies, enemies. 0.98

00:04:08.260 That's pornographic.

00:04:10.140 Is that?

00:04:10.640 Yeah, well, that's for behind the paywall.

00:04:13.340 Obviously, you know, you've got to subscribe for that.

00:04:15.480 You don't get to put the pine cone onto YouTube.

00:04:17.640 Only pine cones.

00:04:18.280 I want to ask a question about this, though,

00:04:20.420 because the only part of this I actually heard,

00:04:22.620 and maybe this is selective deafness on my part,

00:04:25.080 but the only part of this I heard was the part that he had an affair

00:04:27.340 with a woman two months after his wife died,

00:04:29.920 which I didn't think was so bad.

00:04:31.600 I mean, what was she going to do, come back?

00:04:33.660 I mean, she died, he moved down.

00:04:36.680 Whoa.

00:04:37.040 So it is interesting, you know, like on all, on all of the dirt that they were digging up on Massey

00:04:41.960 right before the election. Yeah. It is interesting that look, I mean, a lot of it was like raised a

00:04:46.720 lot of eyebrows and probably didn't represent good judgment if, if it was true, but yeah,

00:04:51.240 right. You're right, Drew. It wasn't, they didn't allege that he cheated on his wife. They didn't

00:04:54.840 allege that kind of impropriety. Uh, so, you know, it was kind of typical political stuff. Some of it

00:04:59.480 was kind of weird, like the pine cones or whatever, but it, it, all of it together, it, I was

00:05:05.000 confident. I'd be curious to know what you all were thinking yesterday. I predicted Massey was

00:05:10.100 going to go down. I didn't know it was going to be a nine point swing, but I predicted he was going

00:05:13.300 to go down. And the reason why, it wasn't just because of the big beautiful bill. It wasn't just

00:05:18.060 because of the pro-Israel donors. It wasn't just because of this, that, or the other thing. It was

00:05:22.460 because he was acting like a guy who was about to lose. This is correct. Right. Yeah. All right.

00:05:27.900 Thanks. Yeah, no, this is totally right. Okay. So first of all, like you don't run a campaign

00:05:33.020 in Northern Kentucky, in which your chief issue is Israel and the Jews. That's the dumbest thing 1.00

00:05:39.160 you can do. Because if you think that the voters in Northern Kentucky are thinking about that, 1.00

00:05:43.280 you're out of your mind. His district has 780,000 people and he has less than 500 Jews.

00:05:48.140 And so if you actually want to know what happened in that election cycle, it's very easy.

00:05:51.220 Watch the local TV ads. The local TV ads were Massey trying to hump Trump's leg. 0.91

00:05:56.100 And then the rest of the campaign was Trump saying, get off my leg. That was the entire 0.81

00:05:59.620 campaign. The entire campaign was saying it was Ed Galrein being like, dude, Trump doesn't like

00:06:04.440 you and you're not going to make it happen. You're trying too hard. And Massey being like, no, no,

00:06:08.840 we're best friends. We're super best friends. And Trump tweeting, I don't even like him. I want him

00:06:13.020 gone. He's the worst. And so we can't paper over the fact that what's kind of funny with Massey 0.99

00:06:18.840 is he had a super pro-Israel billionaire donor who was backing him. But there's no doubt pro-Israel

00:06:24.880 donors and, you know, sort of commentators. Yeah, for sure. But that's because he was vulnerable.

00:06:30.440 Yes, it's because he was vulnerable. And the other thing is, though, because a lot of the

00:06:34.720 Massey supporters are basically trying to peg the whole thing on Jews for the reason he went down.

00:06:39.080 But within the context of Brad Raffensperger going down, Bill Cassidy going down, the five

00:06:45.120 state legislators in Indiana going down, within that context, I think you got to say the reason

00:06:50.300 he went down, even if the Israel donors played a role in the race, the reason he went down is the

00:06:54.620 Same reason all those other guys went down.

00:06:56.320 And it's because they opposed Trump and Trump owns the party.

00:06:59.740 That's 100% right.

00:07:00.620 Libertarians are inherently annoying, though, because they're constantly saying, I'm standing on principle.

00:07:06.640 I'm not going to play politics.

00:07:08.240 And I keep thinking, you're a politician.

00:07:10.420 It's like Aaron Judd saying, I'm not going to play baseball.

00:07:13.080 You know, it just doesn't make any sense.

00:07:15.520 The guy would not compromise over anything.

00:07:18.220 They're all the same.

00:07:19.380 I mean, Rand Paul, who I kind of like, is like this too, though.

00:07:21.740 They will not play the game, part of which is getting the president's agenda done, you know?

00:07:26.660 And so I just think Trump was like, be gone, you know?

00:07:31.000 Yeah, 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?

00:07:38.740 And I'm not joking.

00:07:39.540 I mean, it was literally people wearing sweatshirts that said American Reich on them.

00:07:42.900 Really?

00:07:43.220 He wasn't really trying to.

00:07:44.960 Yeah, no, that was real.

00:07:46.060 That was real.

00:07:47.080 And so it was like that is not the move of a person who thinks he's long for the Congress.

00:07:50.880 That is a person who is trying to steer into the dollars and sends a podcast and and making a future for himself.

00:07:57.120 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.

00:08:13.000 It is not about resistance to Trump.

00:08:14.400 You know who is more resistant to Trump than Thomas Massey?

00:08:17.180 A guy named Bill Cassidy who voted for his actual impeachment in 2021.

00:08:21.600 You think Bill Cassidy is going to be on MSNOW anytime soon as a resistance hero?

00:08:25.500 There's no way in hell. 0.97

00:08:26.620 But Massey will, and so will MTG, and so will Joe Kent, and so will the rest of these clowns. 0.99

00:08:30.760 And that is because, again, the anti-Semitism of the left is now baked into the cake. 0.97

00:08:35.540 I mean, that is a very real thing.

00:08:36.780 From Graham Plattner up in Maine to this insane House Democrat down in Texas, who is literally calling for me to go to an internment camp, like to be sent to an internment camp, and I have to be sent to an internment camp.

00:08:48.340 But he has some bad policies, too, though.

00:08:51.540 Drew, you may be there, too, Drew.

00:08:53.300 It depends on her classification of jury or not.

00:08:56.300 I don't know if your conversion was effective.

00:08:58.400 So, you know, it all depends.

00:09:00.780 But, you know, what that says is that Massey, at a certain point here, I think when Trump came out against him, realized that he was going down and he was like, well, I'm going to launch a new movement that is that is sort of, you know, the horseshoe right and the woke left all together.

00:09:13.840 And we will be best friends. And I think that that's that's really what the campaign became as far as the Jewish American money that came in.

00:09:20.040 And it was not Israeli money. That's illegal. It was Jewish American money that came in to that race via APAC and via other super PACs.

00:09:27.040 Well, yeah, the guy's wildly anti-Israel, and it turns out that a lot of donors would like to see him go because he opposed things that they like. 0.98

00:09:33.960 That's what happens in every race, but you'll notice that it was not until Trump actually started the process of kicking his ass out of Congress that that happened,

00:09:40.000 because he won over 75% of the primary vote in 2020, 2022, and 2024, and it was only when he went up against Trump that things started to get really squirrely for him.

00:09:49.040 Yeah, no, this is the key, Ben, I think, because, like, I don't mean to paper over it or gaslight.

00:09:53.220 Obviously, there were a lot of pro-Israel donors who didn't like Massey, and Massey kind of earned

00:09:58.100 their ire in many ways in a lot of his comments. But first of all, he's not the only congressman

00:10:02.420 who voted against funding for Israel. The hypothetical I think of here is, had Massey

00:10:09.240 voted for the Big Beautiful Bill, had Massey gone along with the White House and not liked Israel,

00:10:15.960 voted against funding Israel, even made comments that were anti-Israel, if that were the case,

00:10:20.360 I think he would still have his seat. In other words, it's not that the pro-Israel donors would

00:10:25.240 like him or anything like that, but it's that Trump was this sort of catacomb figure. And it

00:10:29.460 was when Trump said, hey, buddy, you're out. That was when all of the other political machinations

00:10:35.160 really started to play out. And to be fair, Massey doesn't send anybody money.

00:10:39.480 Yeah. 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.

00:10:54.980 I think Americans, especially young people on the right, people on the right, people

00:11:00.000 on the left are very comfortable criticizing Israel right now.

00:11:03.260 But there is a line in the sand when it becomes obvious that it's not just Israel you have

00:11:08.760 a problem with, which, you know, Rand Paul doesn't, you know, want to fund Israel.

00:11:13.300 I don't ever feel like he's being anti-Semitic.

00:11:16.420 There's a line where you cross that it's not just Jews and it's not just pro-Israel people.

00:11:20.680 the American people have very little tolerance for anti-Semitism. And when you start saying

00:11:26.840 that the Republican Jewish coalition, just Republican Jews are somehow undermining American 0.69

00:11:33.760 interests because they're trying to whip up support against you, that reads, I think,

00:11:40.400 to average Americans as really anti-Semitic. And I think it's really off-putting. I think the fact

00:11:45.900 that he, you know, the Trump piece obviously is a really big deal, but he won before against

00:11:51.000 a Trump-backed candidate. I really think it was the tonal shift, the way that he talked about

00:11:56.660 Israel. It stopped being the same as the way he talked about Ukraine. It stopped sounding like it

00:12:02.060 was a principal opposition to funding and to war and started sounding like he was attacking American

00:12:07.500 Jews. And I feel like average Americans, they're not so into Israel right now, but they are very

00:12:14.160 protective of their Jewish neighbors. And I think that that just came off as so gross,

00:12:19.220 like his opening to his concession speech where he said, I had to go find my opponent's phone

00:12:25.960 number and he's in Tel Aviv somewhere. I think we have the clip. Do we have the clip?

00:12:31.220 I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede. And it took a while to

00:12:37.040 find Ed Galrine in Tel Aviv.

00:12:44.160 I did get the call. I have called and conceded the race. We've been honorable the whole time 0.99

00:12:54.620 and we're going to stay that way. He's been honorable the whole time.

00:12:59.180 I wish you were right, but I don't think that's true. I mean, I think that people in America,

00:13:11.260 People tend to be tolerant. They tend to be fairly accepting as long as you leave them alone.

00:13:16.300 But I don't think that that's what brought him down. I mean, Trump stomped on the guy.

00:13:20.160 It was a curb stomping. And it was kind of unfair. I mean, I don't think Massey has actually been

00:13:25.360 that bad. If you just consider him as a series of votes, I don't think he's been that bad.

00:13:29.520 No, he's been quite good in a lot of ways.

00:13:31.240 Yeah, no. Yeah, a lot of ways he's fine. I mean, I just think he got up Trump's nose.

00:13:35.560 People are just really sick of a Congress that cannot accomplish anything. And I think that

00:13:40.800 i think there's something else way it's going to be yeah i think there's something else there

00:13:44.240 with massey too uh one is yes he is the most obstructionist congressman on the right i mean

00:13:49.160 there's no question he was a consistent no vote for every major agenda item that trump was pushing

00:13:53.920 which pissed trump off but there was something else that we're ignoring here which is that

00:13:57.040 massey decided to make it his chief goal in life to drag trump through the mud with a bunch of 0.92

00:14:02.320 bullshit about jeffrey epstein right he and roe connor decided that they were going to run an op 0.90

00:14:06.680 going after trump right he was going to reach across the aisle and suggest that trump was 0.99

00:14:10.460 covering for a child sex trafficking ring and there he was he was on video i mean naming people

00:14:15.620 in the files who were guilty of nothing which they then later had to admit and he decided he

00:14:20.020 was going to ramp this up so i i think that actually the anti-semitism as always is the

00:14:24.120 symptom not the cause i think that that he started thinking in very conspiratorial ways about american

00:14:28.580 politics and grievance-based ways about american politics he started attributing that to weird

00:14:33.680 cliquish conspiracies like the the quote-unquote epstein class and all this stuff and trump read

00:14:38.260 that. And he's like, listen, it's one thing for you to vote against me sometimes. It's another

00:14:41.580 thing for you to vote against me always. It's another thing for you to go on MSNL and talk

00:14:45.560 about how I'm covering up child sex trafficking. The answer here is no. And it just turns out that

00:14:51.000 the crossover between believing all of those former things and also believing that the Jews 0.74

00:14:55.340 are deciding on your fate at their Friday night dinners, the crossover there tends to be almost 0.59

00:14:59.860 100%. If you're a conspiratorial thinker who does grievance-based politics and also opposes

00:15:05.580 every element of Trump's agenda, the chances that you are going to, you know, be wandering around

00:15:11.540 outside in the rain, ranting about the Uden is pretty high. Yeah, no, you know, there was this

00:15:16.740 clip that was going around. It was one of the last real knocks on Massey, you know, 11th hour.

00:15:21.380 And it was him being interviewed by a hostile journalist saying, hey, why do you oppose Trump?

00:15:25.720 And why have you voted against the GOP on these crucial votes, whatever? And he said, hey, hey,

00:15:29.140 I vote with the Republicans 91% of the time, but 9% of the time I don't vote for them because 0.90

00:15:34.300 they're covering up for pedophiles. And I thought, okay, hold on, wait, that doesn't even make a

00:15:39.580 coherent political position. So you agree with the pedos and the pedo protectors 91% of the time? 0.96

00:15:45.580 I don't want to agree with them on any percent of the time. And so what he represented to me,

00:15:50.560 if you kind of zoom out from these individual issues or the individual donors or whatever,

00:15:54.560 is he had two problems going for him. One, he voted a little over 77% of the time with the GOP

00:16:01.360 in Congress this term, which is way below the median GOP congressman who voted 95% of the time.

00:16:07.680 This was also down from Massey last term, who was voting 91% of the time GOP, which itself was down

00:16:12.960 from the previous term when he voted 95% of the time GOP. So you can say, look, I hate the GOP.

00:16:18.000 I'm glad he bucked the party. I like that he's independent, whatever, but that's not going to

00:16:21.460 win you support with the party. And then the other issue was, and this gets to your point, Ben,

00:16:26.040 you know, when you're palling around with Ro Khanna, one of these unctuous left-wing figures

00:16:31.180 who's just constantly taking shots at the right, when you're calling your colleagues and the people

00:16:36.440 who are supposed to be on your team pedophiles, essentially, I mean, what you're expressing

00:16:40.580 is not just independence from the party, you're expressing a kind of contempt for the party and 0.74

00:16:45.880 a contempt for the leader of the party. And it just, at that point, the vice president put it

00:16:49.240 very well. He said, look, I've gotten along with Thomas in the past. We've agreed on a lot of

00:16:53.740 things, but if you're going to go against the party in such a brutal way, you can't expect the

00:16:59.360 party to back you. I think that kind of backs what Ben was saying. Sorry, go ahead, Drew.

00:17:06.440 No, I think that kind of backs what Ben was saying, that the Jewish issue is really part 0.53

00:17:11.860 and parcel of this horseshoe where the right meets left. I mean, I cannot see the difference 0.83

00:17:17.520 between most of the people who are spouting this stuff. I can't see the political difference.

00:17:21.760 They all seem to be on the same side. 0.58

00:17:24.200 And the worst of the kind of hatred and the Jew hatred that comes out is in the New York Times, you know, which has always kind of been in that position. 0.54

00:17:31.940 So I do think that there is this way that this guy just drifted out of the mainstream of the right, which actually doesn't adhere to a lot of that stuff.

00:17:39.740 Well, you know what I like to do is drift out of consciousness so that I can go take a nice sleep on my Helix mattress.

00:17:45.320 Hold on one second, Boccia. 0.97

00:17:46.720 Hold on.

00:17:48.020 Hold on.

00:17:48.560 Hold on.

00:17:49.200 I had a great transition.

00:17:51.040 I'm going to do it again. You know what I like to do is drift off to sleep on my Helix mattress.

00:17:56.920 What you got to do right now is go to helixsleep.com slash friendly fire, which it will feel a lot

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00:18:18.940 reviewed by outlets like Forbes and Wired. Gentlemen, and maybe Bhatia, you too, I'm not

00:18:23.980 sure. I know you, Drew, and Ben, you guys love your Helix mattresses. We do. I do, but I get to

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00:19:00.640 they know that we sent you. Helixsleep.com slash friendly fire. Now, before Bhati was so rudely

00:19:06.700 interrupted by that advertisement, we can get back to her point. What I was going to say is,

00:19:12.740 yes, on the far right and the left, you see a similar kind of blame the Jews for everything. 1.00

00:19:18.260 The Jews are all pedophiles. The Jewish state is undermining American interests, et cetera, 0.99

00:19:21.940 et cetera. But I really kind of dispute this horseshoe theory because a horseshoe suggests 0.98

00:19:27.620 that they're equal, but they really aren't in terms of the mainstream, which is, I think,

00:19:31.200 what Drew was just pointing to. The right has done, in my view, an admirable job of telling

00:19:37.700 these guys like Massey, this party has no place for you. Trump kicked Tucker and Megyn Kelly and

00:19:44.740 Candace Owens out of the party, basically. They have all been excised on my show. You've had

00:19:49.780 congressmen, senators, members of the cabinet saying what happened to Tucker Carlson. I would

00:19:55.060 be surprised if Tucker Carlson is at the next RNC. And while they're doing a really good job on the

00:20:00.780 right of excising this, the left is just allowing it to metastasize. They're turning the very same

00:20:06.080 people into celebrities and really elevating their profile, campaigning with them, mainstreaming

00:20:12.740 their views. So if I may just do a short plug for my book, The Jews and the Left. They're not the

00:20:19.660 same. These are not the same. You've got one side that is deeply committed to saying we stand

00:20:24.180 against anti-Semitism. You're allowed to criticize Israel, of course, but we are not going to allow

00:20:29.660 Jew hate to infiltrate and become mainstream. And the other side, which is saying, actually, 0.56

00:20:34.800 no this is the price of entry now like the word zionist is a full-on slur i agree with that you

00:20:41.660 know i think that's true i think the republicans have been much better about this than they

00:20:46.840 definitely have so speaking of brutalizing the left uh are we about to uh just take out a 150

00:20:53.040 year old communist dictator in cuba has anyone been i actually i'm kind of out of the news

00:20:58.100 could happen yeah i mean they're threatening to prosecute raul castro right i mean that's i think

00:21:04.160 that that's so presumably that's the the precursor to maybe we go in and kidnap him and fly him in a

00:21:09.160 tracksuit and you just hope that you know whoever sponsors that tracksuit has really paid top dollar

00:21:13.800 for it because nike made bank off of that maduro tracksuit so if we're going to do this in full

00:21:18.340 capitalist fashion we don't just go and take raul castro we get an endorsement deal and then we put

00:21:22.720 him in a reebok tracksuit and really make some money back for the american people spread it out

00:21:28.920 Well, listen, before we get into it, even though Batia, I'm certain, would look much

00:21:34.600 better in a tracksuit and really anything else than Ben Dominich would, we unfortunately

00:21:38.680 have to say goodbye to Batia.

00:21:39.760 We have to bring on Ben Dominich.

00:21:41.220 I have no say over it.

00:21:42.640 The producers make me do it.

00:21:43.800 Batia, wonderful to see you, as always. 0.51

00:21:46.820 Everybody should go watch Batia's show and follow her all over the place.

00:21:49.740 Thank you.

00:21:50.000 Thank you for having me.

00:21:51.140 God bless and protect you all.

00:21:52.560 Take care.

00:21:53.120 Good to see you.

00:21:54.120 So, you know, we're talking about Tom Massey's future prospects.

00:21:57.160 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.

00:22:09.900 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.

00:22:19.700 and it's not going to be, I think, Joe Kent or Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Massey MTG ticket,

00:22:25.900 man, that could do serious double-digit numbers of voters.

00:22:29.600 Well, there's also just-

00:22:30.600 I think that'd be huge.

00:22:31.420 Look, just on the libertarian point, I mean, put all the other controversy aside.

00:22:35.740 If Massey's going to be Mr. Libertarian, there's always some guy doing that.

00:22:39.420 You know, Ron Paul would run for president.

00:22:41.380 Rand Paul has already signaled he does want to run.

00:22:43.380 And Massey would have some juice to do that.

00:22:45.720 So there is that lane.

00:22:46.940 The other thing that's kind of interesting, because Massey's now a Republican, I think he's still a Republican, who's in opposition to Trump, is if Trump is doing really, really well, you saw Rubio once again saying he would back J.D., Trump reasserting control over the party, if it's like J.D. Rubio, if that ticket, they keep floating from the White House, if that's the ticket, if Trump's doing really, really well, there you go, you got it.

00:23:08.740 But if the Trump administration does collapse for whatever reason, then the Republicans who are going to have a better shot are the ones who are not tied to the administration.

00:23:16.880 So all of a sudden then, the Ron DeSantis candidacy starts to look pretty interesting, assuming he doesn't join the admin.

00:23:23.480 Or, I'm not saying Thomas Massey or Rand Paul are going to be president, but all of a sudden, they actually do get a little boost to their prospects.

00:23:30.120 Yeah, but this is the place where AOC comes in.

00:23:32.160 This is my nightmare, that if the Trump administration really tanks, which I don't think it's going to do, actually.

00:23:36.720 I think it's going to come out of smelling like a rose.

00:23:38.920 But if it does, I think AOC is the most dangerous person in the country. 1.00

00:23:42.460 A woman is a pretty, an idiot, and a fascist. 1.00

00:23:46.140 I mean, it's an almost perfect combination to win over the left. 1.00

00:23:49.820 Mr. Dominic, you're in, and we turn back to the other Ben.

00:23:52.800 Why are you bringing me on?

00:23:54.200 You could have kept her.

00:23:55.260 I know.

00:23:55.680 I know.

00:23:56.220 She's so much nicer than you are, Ben.

00:23:58.120 She's like, I'm so much nicer.

00:24:00.320 Can I make one more point about the Massey thing before we turn to Cuba?

00:24:03.560 Because, frankly, I'm much more interested in the Massey thing than the Cuba thing.

00:24:06.440 to be honest with you, because nothing's happening in Cuba until it actually happens.

00:24:10.100 So I want to get your guys' take on this. It's very weird that Thomas Massey decides that he's

00:24:15.620 going to steer directly into crazy land. He was hanging with Cenk Uyghur and Anna Kasparian the

00:24:20.240 day before a Republican primary in a bright red district in Northern Kentucky, which is 0.76

00:24:25.080 political dumbassery of the highest order. Libertarians are like this. They just swing 0.96

00:24:29.680 left sometimes. Oh, no, no. They're totally psycho. I mean, this is why their convention

00:24:33.800 is the best watch in TV, right?

00:24:35.380 I mean, like every four years

00:24:36.580 at our convention 0.95

00:24:37.040 is some fat dude 0.96

00:24:38.400 with an iron cross 0.96

00:24:39.380 dancing around without a shirt, 1.00

00:24:41.020 followed by some naked chick 1.00

00:24:42.660 talking about how pornography 1.00

00:24:43.880 is the most American thing.

00:24:45.400 It's an amazing place,

00:24:46.620 the Libertarian Convention.

00:24:47.560 But in any case,

00:24:48.400 here's the question.

00:24:49.620 I had three possible theories 0.99

00:24:50.940 as to why Massey did this.

00:24:52.320 Theory number one

00:24:52.980 is the most obvious,

00:24:53.920 which is Trump decided

00:24:55.120 that he was going to punch Massey 0.98

00:24:56.200 as hard as he could in the face. 0.95

00:24:57.520 Massey did not want to blame Trump, 0.73

00:24:58.860 so he blamed the Jews, right? 1.00

00:25:00.080 Which is a typical thing.

00:25:01.420 You see Tucker Carlson

00:25:02.180 do the same thing

00:25:02.780 where he says, well, you know,

00:25:03.800 It's not Trump that I'm upset with.

00:25:05.400 It's his puppeteers.

00:25:06.420 It's the marionette masters who are really doing it. 1.00

00:25:09.380 And those marionettes, the people who are handling all the strings, that's the Jews. 0.96

00:25:12.400 So a great way to avoid hitting Trump in a race where Trump is hitting you is to say 0.97

00:25:16.280 it's really not Trump.

00:25:17.380 It's people who are being manipulative of Trump.

00:25:20.400 So that's theory number one.

00:25:21.580 Theory number two is he knew he was toast.

00:25:23.180 So he was going to steer directly into podcastistan and try to make himself his next career.

00:25:27.760 And again, we talked about that before.

00:25:29.200 I think that's quite plausible.

00:25:30.040 And then theory number three is that people like Massey spend an awful lot of time online and you just get brain worms.

00:25:35.700 And once you get those brain worms online, it is very difficult to excise them in real life because, let's be real, again, this was a district in northern Kentucky in which Thomas Massey made his number one issue a small Middle Eastern state halfway around the globe, which is, again, only understandable if you have brain worms or if it's on purpose or if it's on purpose a different way.

00:25:56.400 So I kind of want to know which theory of those three you buy.

00:25:58.540 I'll give a more charitable view, which is, how did it start? It could have started from a real

00:26:05.160 principled opposition to wars in the Middle East. I actually think it might have started a little

00:26:10.180 earlier than that. But let's say it started there. There's no doubt that a ton of pro-Israel Jews

00:26:16.320 really wanted to get Massey out. And Trump, again, we were talking about it earlier, but I think

00:26:21.780 Trump was really the factor that made the difference. But nevertheless, it could well be

00:26:26.660 the case that even if Massey didn't start out like smacking at the Jews or, you know, he obviously

00:26:32.120 had his Tel Aviv comment last night. It might just be the case that when he saw that his big

00:26:37.920 opposition was going to be coming from pro-Israel Jews, it just accelerated whatever trend was going

00:26:44.340 on there. You know, in other words, like he had a problem. So it wasn't strategic, it was emotional.

00:26:48.540 Basically he saw a bunch of Jewish money coming in. Can I make a vote here for brain worms? Can I 0.99

00:26:54.000 make a vote here for brain worms because i know i know who thomas massey used to be and he basically

00:26:59.020 was this like hippie libertarian who was also uh somebody who would you know build these chicken

00:27:04.940 coops and and make them controlled by bluetooth and stuff like this he was just sort of uh weird

00:27:10.400 and eccentric but he really was not leaning into any of the crazy stuff that he leaned in all the

00:27:16.020 way up to this and that's why it doesn't really it makes it makes no sense that he would you know

00:27:20.440 steal the rocket ship directly into the sun, you know, based on prior behavior and the way that he

00:27:25.960 was just kind of this, you know, this loner who was kind of off on the side, you know, and the 0.97

00:27:30.240 fact that he would pair up with Ro Khanna to deal in all of this bullshit going after Trump. Look, 0.98

00:27:36.560 there are four things on my Mount Rushmore of hate. It's communist, it's anti-Semites, 0.64

00:27:43.080 it's Karens, and it's hippies. And by the end of the day, he was hanging out with three or four of 0.68

00:27:47.980 those and and doing it all the time so who does that you know someone who was a libertarian who

00:27:53.700 has any kind of rural libertarian principle or something like that who has the kind of pro-life

00:27:58.040 record that massey had the kind of pro-gun record that he had in the past stuff like that you just

00:28:02.900 don't anticipate him going in that direction and so i think the last couple of years of him he just

00:28:07.300 went crazy and he started hanging around with the worst of the crazies i think my vote is for a

00:28:12.700 combination of the two theories that one is the brain worms that he went crazy it was exacerbated 0.97

00:28:17.140 by the fact that Jewish money was pouring into the campaign against him. But also, people do tend

00:28:24.200 to look for an exit strategy. And it wouldn't surprise me whatsoever is as he started to go

00:28:28.860 nuts, he started to see that little light at the end of the tunnel that ends up in Podcastistan

00:28:33.340 and making good money and with a big audience. So I think there might be a combination of the

00:28:38.420 passion and the greed, because he did seem to really lose his whole personality.

00:28:43.820 You know, if it is the greed, I think that that does speak to kind of where the Republican Party is.

00:28:47.620 In other words, the anti-Semitism and the conspiratorial muddiness and sort of the Tucker wing of what's going on, that is an excellent exit strategy, and it's a very poor entry strategy. 0.91

00:28:57.800 And I think people are mistaking an exit strategy for an entry strategy, 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.

00:29:06.900 whether it's Casey Putsch against Vivek Ramaswamy up in Ohio, James Fishbeck is about to get crushed 0.65

00:29:11.960 by Byron Donalds down here. You have Massey, who's now lost his seat. MTG has lost her seat.

00:29:17.640 You're seeing this happen over and over and over and over. And so you're seeing people exit and

00:29:22.560 presumably make more money and get the strange new respect on the other end. But if you're a

00:29:25.980 politician who is looking to get into a position of power in the Republican Party, is your best

00:29:31.080 way of doing that, as an elected official, to steer into crazy land? Or does it turn out that

00:29:36.180 actually normie land is the way that you get in and crazy land is the way that you get out with

00:29:39.760 money. No, that's a good observation. There's also one, uh, sort of emotional aspect here

00:29:44.840 because my theory is still like a lot of this was exacerbated emotionally and kind of understandably,

00:29:49.880 but the part that we haven't talked about is he, he started to fall afoul of Trump and get a little

00:29:55.820 bit more eccentric than usual right around the time his wife died. I mean, to what degree is

00:30:00.900 this just his wife of decades died and he got kind of emotionally unmoored and it upended his

00:30:06.000 political career. Is that too much psychobabble for political analysis? I don't know him well

00:30:10.920 enough to know that. I just know that he became unrecognizable to a lot of us who interacted with

00:30:15.740 him over the years. He, again, went from being this kind of country libertarian type who was

00:30:22.560 always smiling and kind of happy and knew that he was basically irrelevant to being someone who was

00:30:27.080 aggressively going after the most important person in politics in America, not just in his party,

00:30:33.020 and doing so in ways that repeatedly involved him lying blatantly about all these sorts of things

00:30:39.140 related to the Epstein files, as Ben was saying earlier. So I think that there is something to

00:30:45.340 that, Michael, but I haven't had him on the psychoanalysis couch personally.

00:30:51.220 You're right. It's interesting, though, that Tucker's lack of influence is the exact opposite

00:30:56.800 of what Tucker himself predicted, and that almost everything that Tucker predicts turns out to be 0.87

00:31:01.120 the opposite, which I think is, is proof that God is a gigantic, invisible Jewish man with a long

00:31:05.960 white beard. I think he's just screwing with Tucker. It is just the demon. I actually like 1.00

00:31:13.340 looking at the way these, these things have shaken out here. One, there are two things that make me

00:31:18.300 feel really good about it. One, even again, it's like, I'm not, I'm not a huge Massey hater. I

00:31:22.300 think for a lot of his career, he was great. It just irritated me when he was really turning away

00:31:26.640 and kind of, I don't know, opposing the party and the president. But nevertheless, the two great

00:31:32.780 affirmations are, one, Twitter's not real life. Sometimes I worry about that. Sometimes I think

00:31:36.760 maybe Twitter is becoming real life or it's obviously, but no, there's a huge distinction

00:31:40.200 between those things. And there's a big chasm between the hardcore politics on the ground

00:31:45.740 and the political media. And so, you know, if the podcasts conducted the election, the results would

00:31:50.860 all be different, but they didn't. You know, it was conducted by voters in districts around the

00:31:54.940 country. And we have so many data points. We have the Indiana data point, which again, that issue

00:31:59.160 was redistricting. We have the Georgia data point. That issue was really the election of 2020. We

00:32:05.340 have Bill Cassidy. We have that data point. We now have Massey. So it just, it seems to me that

00:32:10.680 the guardrails hold and politics is actually a little different than the entertainment products.

00:32:15.280 I have to break in here. I'm sorry. I have to break in here. I have to break in here with a

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00:34:28.120 As long as I don't have to have a health checkup because I never blast those for some reason.

00:34:32.160 So I just wanted to add, 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.

00:34:49.420 Over the course of the past couple of months, we've seen Democrats prevail in multiple primaries.

00:34:54.460 We've seen the situation play out in Maine.

00:34:56.340 We've seen the election of Mamdani.

00:34:58.240 We've seen all of these different situations where the DSA-backed candidate, the AOC-backed

00:35:03.460 candidate has prevailed over people that the Democrats have actually preferred or the

00:35:08.400 establishment has even anointed on their side.

00:35:11.080 And nobody's talking about that story in the legacy media because it's an inconvenient

00:35:15.160 story and it's actually true.

00:35:16.660 The fact is that they're only united by the fact that they all loathe Trump.

00:35:21.280 And it's just a contest of how much they loathe him between them.

00:35:24.880 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.

00:35:32.940 And it's clear that unity really is a political virtue.

00:35:36.300 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.

00:35:43.840 how they're willing to stand up to their party or how they, I don't know, how special they are.

00:35:48.040 They love that. Individualist political ideologies do that. But unity really matters. It's one of

00:35:54.080 the four marks of the church per the Nicene Creed. And it's important in your home. It's important

00:35:58.320 in your country. And it's certainly important in political parties. And so it's not just,

00:36:02.880 look, you don't want to blindly follow the leader of a party and the Republicans do a bunch of dumb 0.86

00:36:07.500 things that we should try to fight against. But I can't help but going back to this clip that has

00:36:12.760 been going viral, of a journalist with an activist outside New York courthouse talking about Luigi

00:36:18.100 Mangione and the killing of Brian Thompson. And this girl said, you know, his kids are better off

00:36:23.060 without him. It's this guy, you know, he deserved to die. And you know, those kids, they can enjoy 1.00

00:36:27.280 the blood money. And what I keep coming back to, and we've seen this time and time again, obviously

00:36:31.380 with Charlie's assassination and with the near assassination of Trump, is that the left, mainstream

00:36:36.340 swaths of the left have been telling us for over a year now, really for much longer, that they would

00:36:41.080 want to kill us and will mock our kids when they have succeeded. They keep telling us that. And in

00:36:46.580 the face of that, we need party unity, not to be lemmings, not to be blind followers, not to be

00:36:51.780 NPCs, but we need, we can duke it out in the primaries, but then we need to get in line,

00:36:56.200 follow the leader and win elections. And to your point, Ben, I think that that really comes out

00:37:01.360 pretty cleanly last night. There was a clear leader of the political party. There was a clear

00:37:05.180 party apparatus, funding, media, organizing, and looking ahead to the midterms in 2028,

00:37:11.720 the stakes are very, very high. And I'll take unity as a virtue.

00:37:15.240 I mean, I agree with that. But I think that what happened here and what's been happening is that

00:37:18.580 there are lines drawn, right? Unity has to be around a thing. Right now, the unity in the

00:37:23.260 Republican Party is around the thing of the Trump administration, right? And so you can say, well,

00:37:28.620 you know, Massey was more of a principled conservative when it came to spending, which,

00:37:31.920 by the way, I agree with. I was very praiseworthy of Massey's positions for most of his career

00:37:35.660 when it came to the role of the federal government, for example. But the reality is that there were

00:37:40.180 lines that were drawn, and then Trump is legitimately excising people from those lines.

00:37:44.360 He's not just saying, blanket unity, come hug me. He's saying, listen, here's where the line is.

00:37:48.740 And if you're on the other side of that line, you're on the other side of that line. The point

00:37:51.500 that you're making about the Democrats is a good one. It also is demonstrative they have embraced

00:37:56.680 the worst parts of themselves. I mean, legitimately the worst parts of themselves.

00:38:00.740 Hassan Piker talking about social murder with The New York Times, about Brian Thompson.

00:38:05.020 And then Hassan Piker, no shock, endorsing people like Abdul El-Sayed, the Senate Democrat

00:38:10.580 would-be nominee in Michigan, who's probably going to end up with the nomination, who's

00:38:13.980 like a full-scale terrorism supporter.

00:38:16.040 And by the way, Hassan Piker endorsing, wait for it, Thomas Massey.

00:38:19.000 Again, so there is this horseshoe that has taken place.

00:38:22.000 But I think Baia's earlier point is right.

00:38:24.260 The part of the right-wing horseshoe that is horseshoeing is being actively excised from

00:38:28.480 the party by president trump which is a pretty amazing thing actually you know it's always the

00:38:33.320 theory of the guys on the furthest edge of a party that if they would only allow them to do their

00:38:39.540 thing they would win everything the democrats are going to test that theory i mean they've been

00:38:43.460 testing it and these dsa guys are going to get out there and it's going to be interesting to see how

00:38:48.100 much you know leverage they have because there is a move to the left and a younger cohort of voters

00:38:53.600 usually who usually don't vote so it's we've been safe from them but they do get excited over a guy

00:38:58.380 like mamdani i think i think he is the only politician that i think of as actually being

00:39:02.940 evil mamdani i think he's an actual uh bad guy you know an actual only one well i mean there's

00:39:10.280 a lot of corruption a lot of that stuff but this guy's an actual destroyer platner's

00:39:14.200 platner's legitimately evil i mean some of the stuff that platner is posted

00:39:18.340 the stuff that platner is not in office yet i was talking about office holders oh yeah yeah for

00:39:23.560 sure no i know what you mean but platner is again another guy who's being fully endorsed and

00:39:27.860 legitimized by the entire Democratic Party infrastructure. You have members of the

00:39:31.600 Democratic media who are out there massaging a guy who was saying on Reddit like a couple of

00:39:35.680 years ago about how happy he was to watch a video of an American military member literally being

00:39:40.200 killed. I mean, Plattner is disgusting, disgusting. And the Democratic Party is hugging him with both 0.99

00:39:46.580 arms right now. I mean, legitimately saying, I mean, there are people who are saying that he

00:39:50.820 should run for main Senate and then he should run for president. And the only saving grace of

00:39:55.180 he wasn't born in america so he can't run for the presidency but graham plattner can and there are

00:39:59.720 a bunch of people in the democratic party who are rising and the next generation of the democratic 0.73

00:40:03.560 party is psychotic i mean fully damned crazy like they are not remotely anywhere in the neighborhood

00:40:09.120 of the same and so you know i get asked the question a lot do we think that there's going 0.98

00:40:13.240 to be a reversion to a sort of normal politics after this i mean the only way that that happens

00:40:18.200 if the democrats get absolutely shellacked and i think that unfortunately because of the polarized

00:40:22.260 nature of the political system right now, the chances that they get totally shellacked

00:40:26.180 are pretty low, actually.

00:40:27.860 Yeah, I agree.

00:40:28.800 The demonization way that Michael was just talking about.

00:40:29.480 They don't have to get shellacked in the midterms.

00:40:31.360 They just have to do badly.

00:40:33.280 Yeah, the demonization thing that Michael was just talking about, I think we need to

00:40:37.520 really consider and take it seriously.

00:40:40.360 I think people have kind of, they've joked about, it's starting to turn because of Luigi

00:40:45.140 and Gioni, because of a number of attempts on Trump's life, and of course, because of

00:40:49.320 Charlie's assassination.

00:40:50.200 But I think, like, I don't know why it hasn't gotten more attention that there have been multiple attempts on Sam Altman's life, that the AI phenomenon is now creating, and the demonization of billionaires that Bernie Sanders talks about, that is echoed by so many, not just on the DSA left, but just on the left generally.

00:41:10.680 That's going to create a climate in which these people, they're not going to be able to live and work and have the kind of roles as captains of industry that they've had in the past without having the fear of the kind of backlash that these radical demonizing elements of the left really, I think, believe in truly in their hearts.

00:41:29.800 And that's something that is so evil and so atrocious in terms of American history. We've seen things like this happen in the past, and it led to bombings, it led to assassination attempts, it led to things that were absolutely terrible for our fabric. And to see this happening in the 250th anniversary of America really is depressing to me.

00:41:47.980 Well, one of the things that actually is unique, and Ben, you're pointing it out here,

00:41:50.920 is that in the history of the United States, when there are assassination attempts,

00:41:54.960 typically it is people who are involved directly in the business of politics, right?

00:41:58.580 It's RFK getting shot or MLK getting shot, or even Charlie in the line of MLK, right?

00:42:03.940 Just being a political activist and not to say they were saying the same thing or anything.

00:42:07.760 But the reality is that it is now extended out to almost Russian Revolution-style violence,

00:42:14.580 Like going after people who are just captains of industry, as you say, people who are running companies, people who are just engaged in the marketplace, like the actual marketplace.

00:42:23.740 If you had said to me 15 years ago that there would be an assassination attempt on the president, I said, OK, that's kind of like, unfortunately, a relative norm in American political life.

00:42:31.860 Even if you had said to me there would be an assassination of a high level political activist like Charlie, I said that that's that's unique and horrifying, but not totally unexpected.

00:42:40.380 If you would say to me that we would be at a point where, you know, people like a Jeff Bezos or a Mark Zuckerberg or a Sam Altman, that these are people who have to walk around with 24-7 security for the crime of creating products and services that people want to buy.

00:42:54.280 And these are the bad guys now.

00:42:55.520 The UnitedHealthcare CEO is now considered the bad guy, engaged in quote-unquote social murder.

00:43:00.300 You're talking about true Russian Revolution-style revolutionary violence directed against an entire class.

00:43:06.240 And that's scary stuff.

00:43:08.100 I mean, that is a completely different thing.

00:43:09.880 And also, these are all soft targets.

00:43:12.060 You know, Ben, we should also point out, this has happened before, and we kind of forget about it in American history.

00:43:17.320 But you think about the Palmer Raids, you think about the early part of the 20th century, you had anarchists and communists who were setting off bombs on Wall Street, who were setting off bombs and shooting people in the Capitol.

00:43:27.980 You had a Marxist professor from Harvard in 1915, of course it was Harvard, shooting up or setting off a bomb in the Capitol.

00:43:33.260 You did have these kinds of anarchist bombings almost exactly 100 years ago.

00:43:38.840 You're seeing them begin to crop up again. The last time that that happened, the federal government came in and curtailed civil rights and put these people in prison, deported these people, got them out of our country. Whether or not we have the ability to actually exert that kind of political authority or the desire to do so right now, I'm not so sure.

00:43:57.180 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.

00:44:09.720 And if we don't do that now, I fear that the problem won't resolve itself on its own.

00:44:15.460 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.

00:44:22.500 And one of the weirder financial habits people have is you will spend hours comparison shopping

00:44:26.440 for a plane ticket that saves you like $12, and then you'll continue paying $80 or $90

00:44:30.160 a month for wireless service without any question.

00:44:32.420 And at a certain point, you have to ask yourself, why am I doing that?

00:44:34.720 Especially now that companies like PureTalk exist.

00:44:37.640 PureTalk is veteran-led.

00:44:38.880 It's backed by 100% U.S.-based customer service and now offers unlimited high-speed data for

00:44:42.960 just $34.99 a month.

00:44:44.160 It's a pretty major shift because unlimited high-speed data at PureTalk used to start

00:44:47.960 around $55 a month.

00:44:49.340 But PureTalk has continued pushing to offer more value at lower prices.

00:44:52.720 So if you looked at PureTalk before and you didn't make the switch, well, that was double

00:44:56.280 view.

00:44:56.500 You should have done that.

00:44:57.180 And now you should probably take another look.

00:44:59.500 One thing people always ask is whether the service holds up compared to the massively

00:45:02.980 overpriced major carriers.

00:45:04.200 The answer is, I mean, it's yes, but you should try it yourself.

00:45:06.900 PureTalk lets you test the service for 30 days with no contract and no cancellation fees.

00:45:10.800 There's really pretty much no downside to seeing whether it works for you.

00:45:14.280 Knowles, I know that you have been using PureTalk.

00:45:15.880 How has your service been?

00:45:16.820 I absolutely love it.

00:45:18.240 I've had my PureTalk phone for about six years now.

00:45:21.640 The customer service is great because they speak English and they speak it in a normal American way.

00:45:25.840 But two, it is actually the best service in the country.

00:45:28.300 A lot of people hear that and they think, oh, you use similar towers, similar coverage.

00:45:31.380 No, no, no.

00:45:31.620 It is the same towers.

00:45:33.040 It's the same coverage as the best places in the country.

00:45:35.060 And you can even take it overseas if you're going on vacation this summer.

00:45:38.900 So it's just phenomenal.

00:45:39.720 I could not possibly recommend it highly enough.

00:45:43.080 Well, take it from Knowles.

00:45:43.880 It's the one issue I trust him on.

00:45:45.040 The switch itself can happen in as little as 10 minutes.

00:45:47.440 And again, if you need help, that U.S.-based customer service team is standing by.

00:45:51.060 Head on over to puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

00:45:53.140 Claim unlimited high-speed data for just $34.99.

00:45:55.680 Again, that's puretalk.com slash Shapiro.

00:45:58.100 To switch to my wireless company and Knowles' wireless company and America's wireless company, PureTalk.

00:46:03.540 We're saying goodbye to you, Mr. Dominic, because you don't have a doctoral degree.

00:46:09.480 And we are replacing you with Dr. Oz.

00:46:11.980 Good to see you, sir.

00:46:12.620 Like all of us.

00:46:13.740 Good to see you.

00:46:14.640 Good to see you, man.

00:46:15.540 I'm an honorary doctor.

00:46:16.900 So if anyone ever, you know, has a heart attack on an airplane, I'll say, hey, hey, hey, who needs a commencement speech?

00:46:22.400 I'm here. I got you. I'm totally recovered.

00:46:24.700 Do we have Dr. Oz with us?

00:46:28.440 Dr. Oz, good to see you, sir.

00:46:31.440 Good afternoon, everybody. How are you?

00:46:33.280 Doing very, very well.

00:46:34.580 I know we're all here just, you know, babbling and cackling and giggling,

00:46:38.640 whereas you are not only helping to lead, you know, health in the country,

00:46:43.000 but also rooting out all of that terrible fraud, which we have not talked enough about.

00:46:48.800 Well, maybe I can put it in the context of affordability, because I think for a lot of

00:46:52.180 Americans, it's what they're most concerned about. And if you just took the fraud out of

00:46:56.340 Medicare and Medicaid, and we estimate there's probably $100 billion of fraud on the programs

00:47:01.700 that the government pays for you to get better health, that would allow us to double the life

00:47:05.820 expectancy of the Medicare trust fund. So to put that in context, if you're working your tail off

00:47:10.400 right now watching the show, and you're worried Medicare is not going to be there for you when

00:47:14.460 you reach the ripe old age of 65, it's the parachute that's going to catch you and deal

00:47:19.020 with your health issues without costing you an arm and a leg, so you can keep your arms and legs,

00:47:23.160 then you should be pretty much with us on this fraud issue. Because by doubling the life

00:47:27.700 expectancy of the program, we'll make sure it's there for you and for your grandkids. And that's

00:47:31.480 the kind of discussion we need to be having in earnest with each other, because the fraud is so

00:47:35.720 large, it's so weaponized that we have to start asking ourselves, is this really a flaw for state

00:47:41.600 leadership, for governors? Or maybe there's a feature here we had not noticed before,

00:47:45.940 which is why they've allowed it to go unimpeded for so many years.

00:47:50.980 Can you explain what kind of fraud is taking place exactly?

00:47:55.640 I'll give you three examples. So South Florida, where you guys have some affinity,

00:47:59.180 is a state that has generally done okay on fraud, waste, and abuse. But in the area of

00:48:04.320 durable medical equipment where, you know, the wheelchairs and canes, these companies have now

00:48:10.680 grown so quickly that we have twice as many of these durable medical equipment suppliers as

00:48:16.300 McDonald's in South Florida. It's impossible that that many people want to sell you wheelchairs.

00:48:21.280 But that's the norm. We think the Cuban government's involved because many of the

00:48:24.940 perpetrators actually flee back to Cuba. Even worse, one third of all hospices in the entire

00:48:30.620 country are in Los Angeles, not California, and actually specifically the city of Los Angeles.

00:48:36.280 Now, that would imply a very high death rate in LA. And no matter what we might say about Los

00:48:40.540 Angeles, that's just not the truth. And so if you have one third of all of the hospices taking care

00:48:45.540 of people at the end of their life with dignity in one city, then we would have to assume most

00:48:50.360 of those folks are fraudulent. In fact, half of the people in Los Angeles, the hospice centers,

00:48:55.460 we do think are fraudulent, and we have stopped paying almost half of them already. And here's

00:49:00.580 the craziness of all this thing, 800 of these hospices we've stopped paying. We've had maybe

00:49:04.760 two dozen complain. So most of these guys say, all right, the gig's up. They came looking for

00:49:09.560 a man. We know one day we'd be out of business. We're going to go defraud somebody else. But the

00:49:13.160 fact that that could have occurred under the watch of Gavin Newsom, even though he was warned

00:49:16.880 four years ago by the state auditor general that there was widespread fraud and really just did

00:49:22.280 performative things to pretend he was dealing with the crisis. Why should the federal government

00:49:26.840 have to come in and clean up the mess. Well, unfortunately, it's federal dollars they're

00:49:30.440 spending. So literally, New Mexico, another blue state, and Mississippi, a red state,

00:49:35.520 their tax bills are higher because those folks who don't have the income of people in California

00:49:40.360 are paying extra federal taxes so we can transfer it right to Los Angeles, where the unmitigated

00:49:45.840 disaster of fraud, not just in hospice, but in other programs exist. Let me give you a third

00:49:50.160 example, and then we can come to the why question, which is always the most important one. New York

00:49:54.900 City, New York State. These are big, prosperous areas. The number one job growth, in fact,

00:50:01.160 the number one job of all in New York State is a personal care service attendant. Now,

00:50:06.200 what does that mean? That means we're paying someone to carry your groceries up the stairs

00:50:10.120 to your kitchen. That person is often your child or the neighbor's kid. And your neighbor's kid's

00:50:14.780 driving you to the doctor's office. So all these services that historically your family would do

00:50:19.760 for you. We're not paying someone to do for you. It's become a jobs program. Let's take it to the

00:50:25.620 why question. Why would it be that you would allow that much growth? Why is California have twice the

00:50:31.540 amount of money being spent on these same personal care services than the national average? It's

00:50:35.900 because if you're not making jobs yourself and you want to pretend like you're creating jobs and you

00:50:40.200 want to be able to get federal tax dollars to pay for those jobs and then tax that income so you

00:50:46.100 have more state revenue. Well, you'd create personal care services. It's literally exactly

00:50:50.420 what they have done in New York and in California. And here's the part that's really getting me.

00:50:54.060 They're unionizing those workers, which means we're going to help the union that's the big

00:50:59.360 service workers union in New York double in size. All that union dues and all the taxes on that,

00:51:06.060 that all flows back potentially for political patronage purposes to support the single

00:51:10.880 dominant party in New York State and California. So, Dr. Oz, other than sort of the rooting out

00:51:17.420 of the fraud that's happening, what systemic changes do you think need to be made to how

00:51:22.220 the federal government deals with Medicaid at the state level? I know there have been a lot of

00:51:25.720 critiques of the block grant program because it basically removes a lot of the incentive for

00:51:29.780 states to actually police their own fraud because if you're just getting a chunk of change, it

00:51:32.840 doesn't really matter to you whether or not you identify the fraud or not. The chunk is the same.

00:51:37.360 What sort of systemic changes do you think need to happen?

00:51:40.880 Oh, this is very addressable. First of all, you need a federal government that wants to do their job. The prior administration gutted the Medicaid program integrity. And I'm going to be clear about this. There were six people left that we're aware of that were working in Medicaid program integrity for the country at CMS, the agency that I run for the president. And that basically means we're not serious about this.

00:52:01.400 We just want you to enroll as many people as possible into the Medicaid program.

00:52:05.900 We don't want to hear about fraud.

00:52:07.460 And that's what I was told by people who are here, because they were told, listen, just

00:52:10.800 go do something else.

00:52:12.020 Just don't focus on the fraud issue, because you're going to create a narrative, a micro

00:52:15.680 narrative that doesn't agree with our administration policy.

00:52:18.660 But you also have to have states that want to work with us.

00:52:20.920 We need an all-government approach.

00:52:22.580 So what the president did by appointing J.D.

00:52:24.540 Vance to be the head of this White House anti-fraud task force, and we've been doing

00:52:28.460 announcements, as you've been witnessing frequently highlighting these realities, is if I've got a

00:52:32.620 problem at CMS and I'm the insurance company and I see that there's some aberrancy in payments,

00:52:37.560 we've doubled or tripled the payments in an area, it doesn't make any sense. I can go to DOJ, FBI,

00:52:42.980 the Office of Inspector General, and they're going to actually work for me, with me rather, and take

00:52:47.160 charge of this issue to actually investigate crime. Or I can go to Scott Best in the Treasury

00:52:52.160 and he's going to actually use forensic accountants to find out where's the money getting laundered

00:52:56.520 too. Like, who are the big players involved? Because it turns out we have foreign groups that

00:53:02.600 are involved in organized criminal activities and foreign governments, we believe, that may also be

00:53:07.420 involved in these endeavors. These are not mom-and-pop setups. We need an all-of-government

00:53:10.960 effort. And finally, governors have to feel the pressure. Governor Walz stepped down in Minnesota

00:53:16.160 because of pressure over the massive amount of fraud that he was unwilling to take charge of

00:53:20.260 when he was governor. We had the governor of Maine has now stepped down. Others may as well.

00:53:25.160 if your governor's not willing to do their job, you, the people, should be upset because you're

00:53:29.720 compromising your people and your state programs by not taking charge of the fraud. Medicaid has

00:53:35.240 to be run by the states. Medicaid, therefore, should be matured and nurtured and, for good

00:53:41.720 reason, protected by state leadership against this kind of fraud. And if the federal government

00:53:46.060 has to step in because our tax dollars are being abused, it's not going to be a happy day.

00:53:50.320 To what degree is all of this fraud organized?

00:53:53.000 To me, with my political cap on, that's what's most interesting.

00:53:56.320 Not just that some scam artists are trying to bilk the system,

00:53:59.520 but that there is a system of patronage that has politicians not just looking the other way,

00:54:06.040 but really in some ways cooperating with it.

00:54:08.420 You mentioned Governor Walz. There are plenty of accusations there.

00:54:10.920 So how organized is this?

00:54:13.940 and who can we bring to account, not just for stealing some taxpayer dollars, but for setting

00:54:21.140 up a system that's fundamentally unjust? Well, I just interviewed a whistleblower yesterday

00:54:27.300 from Minnesota. She worked in state agency. She's a Democrat, by the way, was raised a Democrat,

00:54:32.620 was a Democrat. And as soon as she began raising concerns about the fact that there was a

00:54:36.500 disproportionate amount of money being taken by the Somalians in Minnesota, she was quickly

00:54:40.740 ostracized and blocked off. And she said the big problem there was they did not want to be 0.69

00:54:45.120 perceived as racist. They want to be Minnesota nice. And that doesn't mean that you literally

00:54:51.120 blind yourself to the reality of criminal activities, but because she was willing to

00:54:55.400 call that out, she was ostracized. And I think that's part of the puzzle, that people aren't

00:54:59.420 willing to just do the right thing. Part of it is they recognize that by doing the right thing,

00:55:03.860 they might actually look worse in the eyes of their voters. Some people may not like the fact

00:55:07.900 that you're going after criminal entities.

00:55:09.500 And these are dangerous groups that intimidate witnesses.

00:55:12.460 If you go to Flushing, Queens in New York, 1.00

00:55:14.660 you're not going to get any of the Chinese folks

00:55:16.340 who live there to talk to you 0.99

00:55:17.740 about the fraud that they're witnessing.

00:55:19.240 But we know there's tremendous amounts of fraud.

00:55:21.340 Human trafficking, by the way, lots of other bad things,

00:55:23.680 because once you tolerate corruption, it spreads widely.

00:55:26.380 But there has to be a change in expectations.

00:55:29.640 Many states have normalized fraud.

00:55:32.440 Now think about this.

00:55:33.300 If it's okay for a doctor to lie

00:55:35.800 about a patient needing hospice by claiming that they're going to die when, in fact,

00:55:40.100 they don't have any problems whatsoever that are mortal or even near mortal. They're selling

00:55:45.120 their soul. And what we have allowed to happen is it got worse during COVID, when there was a

00:55:49.720 general belief you could just throw money at the problem and hope it worked out, and then a lack

00:55:53.380 of policing of program integrity over the last administration's tenure. You're left with a

00:55:58.460 system where fraud is normalized, where corruption is what's always out there. So you're looking for

00:56:03.540 little handout. Like many countries that have fraud, it's systemic. Everyone gets a little

00:56:08.700 piece of the action. Everyone dips their beak into the equation. But I was told this by a friend of

00:56:13.760 mine, and this is a profound statement that he made. They said, when Republicans win the White

00:56:17.620 House, everybody wants to be the Secretary of Treasury. Everybody wants to be the ambassador

00:56:21.480 to England. That's what Republicans seek. When a Democrat wins the White House, they want to get

00:56:25.880 control of healthy human services because that's where the big money is. Our budget's almost $2

00:56:30.520 trillion. And that money flows through many systems where all you need is a beneficiary's

00:56:36.280 identification number to serve as a credit card. You can take advantage of the system.

00:56:40.540 So we have got to create a world where taking advantage of our most vulnerable Americans

00:56:44.760 is no longer acceptable. Yes, we need to do that. Two things I really desire. I would desire

00:56:50.740 to totally clean up HHS with all of this fraud. I would also desire to be the ambassador to England.

00:56:56.040 That sounds like a great job. Dr. Oz, we've taken up enough of your time. Thank you very much for

00:57:00.700 coming on the show. Thank you for everything you're doing. And Godspeed on this very important

00:57:04.740 task. Now we turn to a man who every day goes by will more likely need healthcare coverage.

00:57:11.080 And that is, of course, Andrew Plavin. This Memorial Day, and I remember the first Memorial

00:57:16.220 Day, this Memorial Day weekend, get 45% off an annual Daily Wire Plus membership. That's too

00:57:23.240 nice for these people. God, here's what you get. Exclusive member-only content like Real History

00:57:28.040 with Matt Walsh, which has new episodes every single month. And frankly, we've got a lot more

00:57:31.860 coming. Shows you haven't seen. Content you haven't heard about yet. All exclusive to members.

00:57:36.580 This is the time to join. 45% off dailywire.com. Do it today or else. Do it. Do it right now.

00:57:44.420 That's what I'm going to leave you on. Just go do it. I don't want to put any distraction in

00:57:48.200 your head before then. And I hope everyone has a good Memorial Day. Good to see you, gentlemen.

00:57:54.120 You're going to see you too, Michael.

00:57:55.460 Good talking to you.

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

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