Uncle Buck was the first person we know who voted for Donald Trump in 2015, and later voted for Trump three times, and all along that period, supported Trump in public, not on TV, but in his own neighborhood, which was 100% Trump-haters. And so we thought we d sit down and ask him, are we imagining this? Did the guy you supported from 2015 in the face of social sanction betray everything you believe in the first place?
00:00:00.000For at least 10 years now, hating Trump has been the surest possible indication of liberalism.
00:00:11.420If you really hate Donald Trump, probably filled with hate for the United States, probably0.98
00:00:17.520hate whites, probably anxious to give kids the COVID vax and castrate boys and put non-binary0.99
00:00:27.020people on the swim team or whatever. But there was a pretty much for about a decade, a one to0.97
00:00:31.740one correlation between disliking Donald Trump, hating Donald Trump, Trump derangement syndrome
00:00:37.440and liberalism or it's sort of a weird American manifestation. But now we're in a weird moment
00:00:42.980and even stranger moment where a lot of people who really like Trump are very disappointed in
00:00:49.060Trump. In fact, more than disappointed, feel betrayed or enraged, feel like suckers, feel0.68
00:00:54.320like they've been taken for a ride. How could I possibly have supported that given what it became?
00:00:59.320A lot of people seem to feel that way. But do a lot of people seem to feel that way? Do they
00:01:05.720actually feel that way? According to polls on CNN, 100% of MAGA voters still support Trump.
00:01:14.760Is that real? Well, it's really hard to know given how fraudulent so much polling is.
00:01:19.820So we thought we would speak to the one person we know who sincerely supported Trump from the very beginning, wrote speeches for Trump in 2015, voted for Trump three times, knew people within the Trump White House, worked with the Trump White House.
00:01:38.340And all along that period, 10 years, supported Trump in public, not on television, which
00:01:45.700is easy, but in his own neighborhood, which was 100% Trump haters.
00:01:50.400That person is my brother, it turns out, Buckley Carlson, Uncle Buck, as he's known to us.
00:01:55.520And so we thought we would sit down and ask him, are we imagining this?
00:01:58.760Did the guy you supported from 2015 in the face of social sanction like you wouldn't
00:02:04.860believe, did that guy just betray everything you believe and the reasons you supported him
00:02:12.960in the first place? Are we imagining this? Is it real? Here's the conversation we had with Uncle
00:02:19.040Buck. You were the first person I knew personally who supported Donald Trump. And I remember
00:02:25.600thinking later when I thought about it, I was like, you're a lifelong resident, 40-year resident
00:02:32.000of Washington, D.C., which voted for Trump in 2016 at 4.1 percent. So you were in the 4 percent
00:02:40.760of district residents who supported Trump, and you're a WASP, and that's the group that hated0.95
00:02:46.680Trump most. How did you wind up supporting Trump in like 2015? The departure, Trump represented a
00:02:57.240departure that I had never seen in Washington.
00:03:27.220story which on the one hand was disgusting because he was a man of obvious uh faults i mean he was0.97
00:03:34.820gross and loud and brash and crude and a serial adulterer and all the things that you probably0.95
00:03:42.580wouldn't want to be and certainly wouldn't want your children to be well that's why the wasp0.97
00:03:46.340didn't like him because he bragged about himself yes which is like you know rule one you can't do
00:03:50.580that that's why my children didn't like you know it's like very much so yeah so that was a massive
00:03:55.620hurdle and i mean they already had a candidate called jeb bush i was aware i was compelled
00:04:00.380actually for the first time ever by some of my clients to actually contribute to jeb bush
00:04:04.300but he was the consensus choice of his people i mean he converted to catholicism but no one
00:04:10.500really took that seriously he was a birthright episcopalian like everyone knew this is our guy
00:04:14.940it was his time it was yes he was the adult in the room i remember early on actually he raised
00:04:21.280a hundred million dollars famously, obviously, and he was just the guy that was going to take us.
00:04:25.560But did you even know anyone who didn't support him?
00:04:28.020I didn't know a single person who didn't support him. No. But he had his domestic policy,
00:04:34.240his foreign policy, everything about him, nothing about him was exciting. All of it was poll tested
00:04:38.780as everything in Washington had been up until the moment Trump came on the scene.
00:04:42.960And Trump was very, if not articulate, he had baseline messages that were unassailable and that he repeated with great repetition.
00:04:56.260And the things that he espoused and talked about endlessly were things that I believed in and things that most Americans, when they actually took the time to separate Trump's policies from Trump the man, were super attractive.
00:05:09.600And it was such a departure from what we'd seen from every other elected official, especially, obviously, it was the end of the Obama years, which were such a disappointment, but also the destruction of weak, poll-tested, you know, very well-packaged candidates like, who's that forgettable Utah Senator Mitt Romney?
00:05:36.200And, of course, so Trump talked about actually focusing on America, repairing the problems that this entire class of people had brought upon us, the American citizens.
00:05:47.960But you were in that class of people, and you literally worked for a polling, the most famous polling company, and you were in politics, and you live in northwest Washington, D.C., and, like, basically Trump is calling for the destruction of your world.
00:06:01.740I didn't see it that way because I think these people had already destroyed our world and I'd seen it up close and personally, not only in the education system, but in the environment around me.
00:06:12.080We lived in a country that wouldn't even embrace any of the things that were great about America that I had grown up embracing.0.98
00:06:18.160Not just freedom, not just individuality, but cleanliness and Christian principles.
00:06:23.680And we had such a wonderful country when I was growing up, and it had been transformed.
00:06:31.860You could see it in Washington probably better than you could see it even in border states, the disconnect between what people had voted for, what people wanted, what they continually expressed that they wanted from their Republican leaders.
00:07:21.300He had actually contributed to the economy.
00:07:24.940He had been saying a lot of these financial, I wasn't really steeped in the financial world and didn't understand our trade policies.
00:07:31.500But when Trump explained how beneficial it was to the rest of the world rather than America, our trade policies, I actually paid attention and read up and realized that he was telling the truth.
00:07:43.120And then everything he said about the border, which you could see if you traveled around America, which I certainly did, the degradation of America was obscene.
00:07:53.700And the destruction of things that I had held dear my entire life, and I think most Americans did, it was Trump represented a return to normalcy.
00:08:08.440And then, of course, I was totally enamored of his personal strength and his ability to.
00:08:16.000There's no one who has been more attacked than Donald Trump, obviously, over the last decade, but nothing more aggressively than when he first came down that escalator and announced for president.
00:08:24.380Like he was attacked by absolutely everybody in the world, not just the left, not just the media, but as you said, everybody on the right took him as a joke.
00:08:33.260It's like, actually, we're not electing individuals, we're electing the policies that they will defend and put forward when they're in office.
00:08:43.020And Trump articulated a very small set of priorities that I really found attractive and did so with calm and repetitiveness that seemed legit and sincere, especially the more he was attacked, because he never bended.
00:08:59.520And I'd never seen that in American politics, ever.
00:09:05.480And actually, you know, jumping forward a decade and Trump has expanded, had expanded the coalition so aggressively.
00:09:12.520Back when he started, the ideas in the Republican Party about expanding the coalition were not harnessing the things that were great about America.
00:09:19.880It was actually surrendering to, you know, speak Spanish if you want to appeal to new voters.
00:09:27.800Don't talk about the cultural degradation of America because that will turn people off.
00:09:32.080Well, Trump flipped that over, flipped that on its head completely and said, actually, there's a lot about America we should and will be defending.
00:09:40.020And so that attracted me to him. I love that about him.
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00:10:52.380It never stopped being a media campaign.
00:10:53.400It never stopped being a media campaign.
00:10:54.980But there were a few, you know, a few people around him who were actually producing work.
00:11:01.860So I got in touch with them or through, I got connected through a common friend of ours and ended up writing some early speeches for Trump and Stephen Miller.
00:11:13.560I was corresponding with Stephen Miller and writing some early speeches for Trump.
00:11:19.900I don't think I took Trump seriously at all until the summer of 15, probably, when our friend Patrick Feeney in Maine told me that he was thinking about voting for Trump or Bernie Sanders.
00:11:48.060I mean, it's a lot to ask anybody to understand his own motives, but why do you think, at least
00:11:55.160that you can analyze it, why do you think you living in a political world with a political
00:12:01.800job, being from a group of people who hated Trump, living in a neighborhood that hated Trump,
00:12:06.520why were you uniquely able to see the things that your neighbors couldn't, like the degradation of
00:12:12.400America and connect that to the policies that produced it? And why could nobody else?
00:12:16.840Maybe it was because I had actually worked in Washington for so long. I hadn't been born in Washington, but I moved there as a teenager and then had worked in politics, elected politics, and then corporate America, but very much adjacent to political world and worked with pollsters and people who message tested.
00:15:55.440It demonstrates, one, obviously, not only a high intellect, but a certain comfort with people.
00:16:00.200And if you can talk to your constituents, or I wasn't really a constituent of his, but I was, you know, a 23-year-old, and I was an American.
00:16:08.020And he made me feel like my opinion mattered, and he wasn't self-conscious.
00:16:25.440and was, and really liked him, as I said, but the tobacco thing, tell me what, why that was
00:16:30.840significant to you. Cause I agree with that. Well, tobacco represented, first of all, not only like
00:16:35.760one of the biggest, um, commercial products that we have in America. I always thought it was sort
00:16:40.860of entwined with American freedom. In history. 100%. We had all these tobacco producing states
00:16:47.640all around DC, of course, but in the South. That was the point of the colony. 100%. Absolutely.
00:16:52.840they fought. I mean, they threw the tobacco bales and the coffee bales, but tobacco as well.
00:16:58.640Tobacco was a great American heritage product. And as a consumer who enjoyed tobacco, I always
00:17:06.220sort of respected it. But it tied in also with a sense of personal responsibility,
00:17:12.160which we never see now, is there was a, you know, you had the freedom to smoke. May it be bad for
00:17:17.060you? Yes, I think every smoker knew it was probably bad for you. You have the obvious,
00:17:21.320You cough, you get pneumonia every year, you smell bad, your teeth turn brown, whatever.
00:17:27.160No one was surprised when the attorney general came out and said smoking's bad for you.
00:17:30.920But the hypocrisy, first of all, the overreach of someone in the Republican Party, supposedly champion of free markets and freedom and personal freedom, would go after and grandstand about the tobacco companies and how they had lied about the addictive properties of tobacco.
00:17:49.460when everybody knew they were addictive.
00:17:52.140The majority of countries smoked at that time.
00:21:35.080He refused to, I mean, on the heels of 9-11, he refused publicly and excoriated people for saying, pointing out Barack Obama's real name, Barack Hussein Obama, or Barry Sator, or talking about his early years in Indonesia, talking about his church that he went to in this anti-American, anti-white church, talking, refusing to talk about any of his heritage, which was obviously fabricated and dishonest.
00:22:02.840It was the first time, I think, in American history that a presidential candidate was not only not vetted at all, but you were excluded from knowing anything about him of any relevance.
00:22:14.820And John McCain, who was the standard bearer of the Republican Party at the time, had an obligation actually to be the top watchdog about his opponent.
00:24:22.140um so then we have eight years of obama and it becomes pretty clear in the second term that like0.54
00:24:29.280he hates the country he's leading he really hates white people tons of whites voted for him um
00:24:35.780tons of whites voted for him because he was saying we're going to get rid of0.96
00:24:40.120race consciousness in this country and treat people as citizens and human beings and we can
00:24:46.540move past the division of the like disgusting civil rights movement uh thinking and which just
00:24:54.080anti-white zero-sum and uh that grant park speech was like i didn't vote for him obviously but i0.97
00:25:00.160was like i hope this is true it turned out to be the opposite of the truth just like hated whites
00:25:04.340and so by the time that ended in 2016 like it was a different country
00:25:12.200i had never seen anybody be i mean it was a whole new time my son was young he was in
00:25:18.820a private school at the time that embraced all of those anti-white messages separation i mean it was
00:25:24.840literally the new they talked about jim crow while they're instituting jim crow in the educational
00:25:31.020world and all throughout society and people in dc embraced it heavily people i had known
00:25:37.460And all of a sudden, we came from a country that was happy, self-confident, really proud of America, suddenly questioning and apologizing for everything that had come before.
00:25:51.320And obviously, Obama accelerated that to a degree that was disgusting.
00:25:55.740But it also meant you could no longer have an informed discussion.
00:25:59.340I remember I had been in Washington for 20 years at that point, and I had Democratic friends.
00:26:06.280You could have a normal conversation, a normal meal, and it was during the Obama years I noticed that you couldn't even have a conversation with these people.
00:26:13.700They would just cut you off, get instantly angry, obviously born of some sort of cowardice on their part or regret, but they were so vicious against open discourse.
00:26:26.540They couldn't defend their candidate, or in that case their president at that point, but they also couldn't discuss it, and they hated you for it.
00:26:32.940They hated you for pointing out, if you just said simply, as I did to several Democrats, I'm not attacking Obama.
00:26:39.660Just tell me why you support this man as our president.
00:26:42.320Tell me what he's doing to strengthen our country.
00:28:18.360And by the time 16 came around, it really seemed, with the hangover and the depressing anti-American, anti-white, the Obama program was so dispiriting to witness, the wreckage, I felt, socially, that this was the existential election in 16.
00:28:44.420Everybody else, I mean, Jeb Bush's program, I couldn't even tell you what it was.
00:28:47.740It was forgettable at the time, but it was the same talking points they'd been using for two decades, referencing Ronald Reagan, who I was personally impressed by, but it's not really relevant during the Iraq wars and the Afghan war and all that stuff.
00:29:01.940And the degradation that America had experienced that was so overwhelming at that time, it seemed like an existential election and Trump seemed fully committed.
00:29:12.300And by the time it came around to the debates in the end when he finally got the nomination, this is a man who had withstood every single personal degradation you could possibly imagine and every attack from every quarter of the country.
00:29:28.540I was fully committed to his program and thought he was real.
00:29:31.940what kind of speeches did you write for trump mostly about immigration stuff uh rally speeches
00:29:39.500early on yeah or during the middle of the campaign probably not i'm trying to think when it was late
00:29:45.840and 15 that's amazing i didn't even know you were doing that i had a lot of freedom to do that was
00:29:51.040the other thing the stuff that i delivered it was had a lot of freedom to had a lot of license i
00:29:56.820felt like i was writing from my own perspective and that's how much that's how aligned i was with
00:30:29.400So you end up with something that's not even distinguishable from the other side.
00:30:34.040Trump was not just distinguishable from the left.
00:30:36.820He was distinguished himself from the rest of the 19, you know, subpar candidates who were running.
00:30:42.880But they were all representative of that time.
00:30:45.760And so I was, man, I never really, I didn't spend time around Trump.
00:30:50.900I loved his sense of humor, but I loved his consistency.
00:30:54.120And I loved the fact that he never backed down, especially with these people barking in his face and claiming he was the worst man on the planet.0.63
00:31:29.120And a huge departure from what you'd seen, because I'd seen tons of candidates up close whose children were, you know, drunks or drug addicts or suicidal or hated their families, hated their parents, and were losers.0.91
00:34:36.780goes I like Trump and I remember someone and everyone of course likes my wife so but someone
00:34:42.480laughed like oh yeah I like Trump too and she's no no I really do like someone needs to stand up for
00:34:48.180I don't know people who've been shafted and none of them live here but there are a lot of them in
00:34:52.160this country and like I like Trump people were enraged with her like the only time I've ever
00:34:57.440seen anyone mad at my wife it's just like no one's ever mad at her but they were mad
00:35:00.960and embarrassed and like i can't believe there's someone who in the room with me who could like
00:35:06.780trump and she of course like didn't even notice that people did she's like well no what's wrong
00:35:10.420with that but that was the response that she got you were already kind of a more i mean you
00:35:17.660brought your son to episcopal school on a harley davidson so like obviously you're a more
00:35:24.160controversial figure in the neighborhood what kind of response did you get i had the benefit of
00:35:30.040Working, I say for myself, but working from home with a couple of clients that I'd had since 2004.
00:35:35.700So I'd already really enjoyed, have a good relationship with them personally.
00:35:39.820And I worked on issues that mean something to me that I could defend.
00:35:45.060And I had a lot of license to speak my mind if I had an opportunity to do so.
00:35:49.340So I never, I just didn't live in a world where I was subservient to the machine.
00:35:54.960And I hadn't been like that my entire life because we grew up in a different America where you could express yourself and people expected you to and there was never any apology.
00:37:34.260Like, how is it that we suddenly, we are in a country now where it's embarrassing to say that the reason you have elected officials is so they can take care of America and Americans?
00:37:44.240To this day, I didn't understand it then.
00:38:40.500I mean, I lived in a neighborhood that, you know, had a lot of rainbow flags, a lot of anti-war signs, which I'm totally anti-war.
00:38:49.620But the idea that you're displaying your political views on your car or your lawn, I just find kind of reprehensible.
00:38:56.900Well, when you live in a city that voted, you know, 4.1% for Trump, it kind of gives you license to, because you know everybody agrees with you.
00:40:44.800But, no, I also lived on kind of a, I lived on a cul-de-sac with a lot of like-minded people just sort of by accident.
00:40:52.140And also the kind of people that would be averse to those messages, which, again, I think are foundational to life and certainly life in this country,
00:41:01.060don't have the courage to attack you for it
00:45:00.100It was an indictment of American culture.
00:45:02.160It was an indictment of the kind of culture actually that Trump had perpetuated so aggressively over two decades.
00:45:08.700The look-at-me culture, the facade of success, the very shallow idea that you are, you know, that your worth is caught up in your bank account and your display of wealth when that is such a total corrupting dead end.
00:45:25.700And it really has hurt the women in this country.
00:45:28.800It's been to their detriment, obviously.0.99
00:45:30.520We could have a long conversation about the failures of feminism, but one of them is that women tried to aspire to a male sexual voraciousness that isn't conducive to them and also isn't beneficial to them because no man wants a woman who's been with a bunch of men.1.00
00:45:50.900That's a law that's been around forever, a human law, and no celebration of supposed freedom is going to obscure that fact.
00:46:05.060Sorry, but that is exactly what Trump was talking about when he said, when you're famous, they will allow you to do that.
00:46:11.700And I noticed that everybody cut that part of the quote out, even though I thought it was the most interesting part of the quote.
00:46:17.580He said that to a childhood friend of ours.
00:46:20.900Who was interviewing him and who was destroyed just for being there, which was kind of crazy.
00:46:28.620Destroyed by his own employers and their friend was the NBC and Washington Post colluding together to their detriment, but also to the detriment of their employee.
00:46:38.100It was the most disgusting demonstration of disloyalty.
00:47:46.740He's willing to subject himself to that kind of attack and not, like, fold up and crawl off in shame.
00:47:53.560Do you think Jeb could have withstood the pressure?
00:47:58.620Apologize to my wife, I think is what he's—I think that was, like, his refrain, wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning every night sweating and apologize to my wife.
00:48:39.320I may have voted for him if he had done something like that.
00:48:41.540If he'd been capable of doing something like that, otherwise he—
00:48:45.540Actually, I don't ever revel in other people's misfortune, but one of the great things about Trump was his dynasty bashing, destroying.
00:48:56.060The fact that he had destroyed the Bush hold on the political world on the right was one of his greatest accomplishments, even more so, I think, than destroying the Clintons.
00:49:07.080because he's never really followed through with that
00:49:09.100and either he's never prosecuted these people
00:51:27.820But, you know, you get what you put up with, and they put up with it, and like, oh, okay, you have a good point.
00:51:34.700Anyway, but yeah, no, he wanted to destroy the Bushes because, you know, he didn't agree with their program, I guess.0.68
00:51:42.800He said he didn't agree with their program, but the real reason he wanted to destroy them was, you know, they go to the BNT and he doesn't.
00:51:49.540You don't think it was his anti-war position?
00:57:38.200Two dinners, went to this wonderful French restaurant that no longer exists in New York, showed up at this very sparsely attended victory party.
00:57:47.900And the best thing about it is it had a wall of televisions from floor to ceiling behind the stage.
00:57:53.360And it was an up-close picture of all of the assembled people in the Javits Center, which is where all the Democrats and the victory Hillary party was taking place.
00:58:07.100No one seemed to think Trump was going to win until, of course, he flipped Florida.
01:01:26.000But once it was clear that he had won, and the best part of this celebration was seeing in real time, floor to ceiling, all of the self-assured, really vindictive celebrities and other elected officials who had assembled to cheer on Hillary in tears.
01:06:31.280This past year, actually, something like 60% or something were demonstrably sociopathic.
01:06:37.720Yeah, I mean, if you wake up every morning and say, I am the wisest, I am the toughest, I'm the leader of all men, and I can make decisions for other people, there's something wrong with you.
01:06:48.120I've never thought that one time in my life.
01:06:52.320I've never looked in the mirror and said, you're a leader of men.
01:06:56.660I've suffered some delusions, but not that one.
01:13:19.980He was a businessman, and he was there for a very specific purpose.
01:13:23.520And yet, he came in and not only didn't understand how Washington works, he didn't take the appropriate measures to protect himself and his agenda.
01:13:36.340Instead, he reverted to type and hired a bunch of Goldman Sachs people and billionaires and empowered his son-in-law, who had been a Democrat until the day before.
01:13:47.760I think through the election, he had been a Democrat and a globalist.
01:13:52.340And so that was concerning and upsetting.
01:13:54.920And then the country got completely overwhelmed by the faux controversy around the Russia stuff, which was on its face absurd.
01:14:05.560If you knew anything about Donald Trump or anything about the campaign, you knew that not only did they not rely upon Russia for help, they had a hard time coalescing their own power.
01:14:15.120I mean, they were not an organized machine, and they were not aligned with any foreign power.
01:14:22.320And so that was insane, but it occupied the country.
01:14:26.140I'm still quite bitter about it, actually, and people don't talk about it.
01:14:29.400We've suffered so many humiliations on the national stage since that people don't focus on it enough.
01:14:36.560But it paralyzed the country and paralyzed the administration.
01:14:40.100And I felt like Trump was responsible for that because leaders need to be able to delegate and they need to recognize where their weaknesses are and they need to account for those weaknesses.
01:14:55.240And he empowered a lot of people he shouldn't have empowered.
01:14:58.120So I was dispirited during the early administration.
01:15:02.400It was clear to me and anybody else who was watching that he was going to win re-election despite all the COVID stuff.
01:15:10.100And at that time, we didn't know the details, how complicit Trump was by empowering the pharmaceutical companies during COVID, how responsible he actually was for that offense, that biological war against the country that he's supposed to lead.
01:15:28.820At that time, I think most people and I was sympathetic to Trump, the position that he was in.
01:15:34.280um and then when so it was clear that he was going to win re-election i thought it was clear that he
01:15:42.480won re-election on election eve i mean he was over the top i mean the numbers were there for him
01:15:49.360he won until they stepped in and took it away from him so and then i thought he acted crazily i mean
01:15:56.080who is who is they the summer of love with george floyd which was obviously a complete scam uh the0.97
01:16:03.480The man was killed, unfortunately, but he had stuffed a bunch of fentanyl on his ass, and he was upright and forthright with the cops who showed up on the scene.0.92
01:16:13.100The famous video started actually minutes before when he'd come out of the store, and he was sitting in his car with those two other people, and he tried to pass the counterfeit dollars, and he said to the cop, I cannot breathe.0.98
01:16:26.540So it was clear that it was a manufactured crisis from the beginning.0.77
01:16:30.780It was designed to divide America and it was designed to get rid of white cops, get rid of white cops, repertory to whatever's coming next.0.94
01:16:38.860Yes, very much so. And the left's, you know, Antifa hordes took over neighborhoods in America, destroyed statues, killed people, destroyed businesses, ran rampant all over the country, but also in Washington, D.C., where Trump was president.0.93
01:16:55.160He didn't have any natural allies in the media, of course.
01:18:11.820He won re-election and was taken from him.
01:18:14.600But even his efforts to galvanize support throughout the country, to direct the FBI, to investigate, to direct the Department of Homeland Security, to articulate clearly that it had been stolen.0.87
01:18:30.880He just kept repeating silly talking points that weren't that compelling and made him look crazy.
01:18:35.640But he failed to use the power at his hand.0.95
01:18:40.140And then, of course, it was taken away from him and he sulked off into ignominy.
01:18:47.620And then he went off into the wilderness where he soon started raising an enormous amount of money.
01:18:53.880And my understanding is that he raised over a billion dollars during those wilderness years.
01:18:59.060And every time he spoke about it, it was all about Donald Trump's personal woes, which were significant because these people were not only trying to crush him legally and abuse the judicial system against him.
01:19:12.580in Florida and Georgia and New York, famously.
01:19:55.700But Trump has the strongest voice in the country.
01:19:57.760Even then, people listened to what Trump said.
01:20:00.380Trump could have an impromptu press conference wherever he went.
01:20:03.200Whatever Donald Trump said was worthy of listening to.
01:20:05.500So he had the biggest microphone in the country.
01:20:08.120And he never once utilized that for the benefit of the Americans who'd supported him, not only in 16, not only throughout the entire Russian nonsense, not only throughout the George Floyd nonsense, but through the election in 2020.
01:20:23.760I was like, what kind of reprehensible human being would not, it's the most basic thing to protect your friends and in politics, your supporters, but anybody who's on your side and your fellow Americans.
01:21:03.66016, 20, and certainly 24 were absolutely existential elections and that there was no other person on the planet who could come in and right the ship, return sanity to our great country to save our country.
01:21:21.060is like the last opportunity on every front.
01:21:23.900Like we're crumbling, we've got these enemies within,
01:21:27.460we've got these enemies all over the world
01:21:29.740who'd taken advantage of us during the Biden years0.93
01:21:31.780because we had such a weak and incompetent0.79
01:21:34.260and obviously joke of a presidency.0.86
01:21:45.020So Trump was legitimately the last hope in 24.
01:21:49.180But before that, in 2021 and 22, when he was raising all this money and it was the Donald Trump, you know, victimhood show, he had failed when it mattered to articulate what Americans were protesting during January 6th, to articulate that it was actually a conspiracy by the federal government, abetted by all of these other big interests.
01:22:15.800Yeah, I'm the one who put those tapes out there.
01:30:09.620And the people who spoke on his behalf were serious people.
01:30:13.320And my entire life, they were serious people.
01:30:16.000So maybe it's inevitable that you get, once the patriarchy has been overthrown as it has been, do you get a president like this who's emotional, all about himself, is perpetually the victim?
01:30:28.480Remember they used to say the president's most valuable commodity was his time?
01:31:00.860Get real and get serious about your responsibilities.
01:31:04.560And no one ever says anything about that.
01:31:07.460In fact, these days I find this is a new phenomenon I've never encountered.
01:31:12.800You attack Trump on the basis of substantive policy decisions that he's made, betrayals that are obvious and quantifiable, and you will get people in your face saying, how dare you attack the president?
01:31:39.660And no way am I going to be kowtowed and not saying the obvious, which is this guy has failed in his responsibility.
01:31:48.020He is disdainful towards the American people.
01:31:50.400He's disdainful towards the people who put him in office and the people who sacrificed a lot real physical and economic injury to get this man in office.0.99
01:31:59.380and to witness the vitriol and the moronic, the moronacy and just the never ending me,0.98
01:32:07.900me, me, me, me, and you're not with me.0.96
01:32:10.280I'll define what the program is now once I'm in office.
01:32:27.680So when, what was the breaking point for you as someone who had a Trump bumper sticker, wrote his speeches, voted for him three times, wore the Trump t-shirt, wore the MAGA hat in Northwest DC? What was the point at which you'd, and who also has acknowledged that like for a decade, attacking Trump, hating Trump, being mad at Trump were all kind of markers for attitudes that were anti-American, anti-white, anti-you.
01:34:10.440Oh, he did pardon them. He did. And that represented the first time that he'd ever stuck up for them.
01:34:17.320And what really mattered is when they were, you know, rotting in prison with no constitutional guarantees of a speedy trial or hygienic conditions or ability to eat real food or not being assaulted by cockroaches or, you know, prison guards who used them as sport.
01:34:34.680And it was completely not only allowed, tolerated, but expected and even celebrated in the media and by Republican elected officials, many of whom are still in Congress, by the way.
01:34:50.700But he, yes, he pardoned them once he was in office.
01:34:52.960But my understanding from several people, I remember witnessing it at the time because I was upset that he said nothing on their behalf.
01:34:59.180Again, that's the power he could have wielded when he was in the wilderness.
01:35:02.780He could have talked about them first and foremost.
01:35:04.960He could have informed people about the conditions they were in, and he could have supported them.
01:35:09.160But he also could have supported them with the huge financial cash that had been flooding in to him personally because he never stopped raising money.
01:35:16.580He raised an enormous amount of money in the wilderness years, and he spent not a dollar of it for the benefit of those people.
01:35:42.900There's someone named Suzanne Monks, who was a very active advocate on their behalf.
01:35:48.600I think she's a wife of a fellow who was incarcerated.
01:35:51.540I may be getting that wrong, but she was dogged and persistent throughout all of it.
01:35:57.500And she claims now, and I believe it, she's reminding people at the moment that the Trump we have now that has betrayed his base and well beyond his base, every other American who relies upon him to steward this country with sobriety and concern for them first and foremost and only, that it wasn't easy to get Trump to pardon them.
01:36:20.700that she had to personally rally people,
01:37:19.540I can't really think of many other things that he's done.
01:37:22.540I can't think of anything else, really, that he's done since he's been in office now for a year and a half.
01:37:30.900So he did the right thing eventually under great pressure, and good for him for doing it.
01:37:36.760But he could have done it a lot earlier.
01:37:38.500It could have made a much greater impact for the benefit of those Americans who were not rich, who were not well-known, who were motivated by completely reasonable and constitutionally protected outrage over what had been done to them.
01:37:55.060I mean, they are representative of not just Trump voters, America and Americans, the best kind of people, I think.
01:38:05.700And to see them, by the way, in the background, I know it didn't get a lot of news at the time.
01:38:13.180No time in American history has the FBI been rallied with such vigor and focus and economic empowerment, like, to go in and root out these supposed, you know, criminals.
01:38:34.520And then they'd gone back home to their hometowns to take care of their children and their jobs, and they would have manhunts, like publicized manhunts with, you know, 30 guys in SWAT gear and helicopters in their neighborhoods.0.84
01:38:50.060Meanwhile, all of our cities are crumbling, and Washington, D.C. was like a free-for-all for gangs and carjackers and people walking around with guns in public.
01:38:58.800It's okay for the criminals to have guns, but God forbid there would be some hardworking taxpayer exercising his right in the Second Amendment and the First Amendment.
01:39:06.880So the two foundational freedoms in our country, and Trump was unwilling to protect them in any meaningful manner until he signed their pardons.
01:39:15.640Again, good for him for doing so, but he still failed in that responsibility as far as I'm concerned.
01:39:21.120So what was the breaking point for you?
01:39:22.660really initially it was the the attack on the attack on iran initially last year when i guess
01:39:35.000we successfully eradicated all of their nuclear capability you aware because it was still i'd
01:39:39.960heard that it may still be on the the white house website because it was on there as even when we
01:39:45.200engaged in this latest war with iran this unnecessary what will be probably a forever
01:39:51.480war that will has killed americans and is going to degrade us as a country um significantly already
01:39:58.280has um it was that and then it was his reaction well his complete failure uh the first year to
01:40:06.820hold anybody to account for all of the crimes the obvious crimes all of the things that had been
01:40:13.340exposed from russia to covid policy to the january 6 stuff i mean all of that has been demonstrably
01:40:21.260revealed to be the Capitol Hill pipe bombers, Capitol Hill pipe bombers, all of the the Biden
01:40:28.280era corruption, the auto pen scandals, the preemptive pardons, the the people who had abused
01:40:35.560their national security credentials and their their positions of power to hurt Americans.
01:40:41.280That is all laid out, laid out even by his own intelligence officers.
01:40:45.300Tulsi Gabbard, you know, a year ago revealed that Barack Obama was directly guilty, I believe, of treason.
01:40:54.360I don't know how you could say it in any other way.
01:40:56.180A former president who advocated and financed and allowed his national security apparatus to survey and obstruct and take out a sitting U.S. president, who, again, is not a man.
01:41:10.180He is representative of the power that we invest in him as Americans.
01:41:13.780So it's not an offense against Donald Trump.
01:41:16.440It's an offense against you and me and everybody we know.
01:41:20.400So his complete failure to utilize the information that he had at his fingertips and in Justice
01:41:26.800Department and, by the way, U.S. Congress, U.S. Senate, three levers of power supposedly
01:41:33.220designed at his disposal to enforce the law, to restore sanity, to hold people accountable
01:41:40.260for breaking the rules to the detriment of our country and Americans, and he failed to do that.
01:42:16.100On solving the crime, on using the entire apparatus of the U.S. government to solve this crime in a way that would allay people's fears of a conspiracy or other things going on.
01:42:27.620Donald Trump should have gotten up and given a press conference and said, we are going to find out who's responsible for this.
01:42:33.320It doesn't matter what the end results show.
01:42:36.120We have a responsibility as a public figure who was publicly assassinated, and we're not going to tolerate this.
01:42:43.740And whoever's responsible for it is going to be brought to justice.
01:42:51.440And he failed to use, again, the apparatus that is entrusted to him to do that.
01:42:57.300And it's a huge apparatus, by the way, which while the rest of America is degrading and getting less effective, I think we have a very effective, very clued in surveillance and technology and well-funded U.S. military and law enforcement apparatus that knows every detail about Americans at all times.
01:43:17.420They can reconstruct. They could tell, you know, if you were in the Capitol during January 6th through a whole variety of means, but your cell phone primarily, they know who was there. They know who's everywhere. They know where you are at all times. They can listen in on you, but they can certainly pinpoint where you've been and what you've done. So why wouldn't you utilize that power to the benefit of justice?
01:43:39.780yeah i mean the director of national intelligence the head of the counterterrorism center like
01:43:46.640yeah these are people who are appointed by you to root out corruption um to you know fight back
01:43:54.500against foreign threats make america safer but yeah defend our defend our citizens against not
01:44:00.980just attack but foreign attack if there's any element of foreign involvement here which it
01:44:05.800seems early on there was. And then the fact that he, sorry, can I continue this answer only because
01:44:14.400it makes me so mad. The weird dynamics surrounding Charlie Kirk's death, the investigation,
01:44:24.540the initial press conference held by the supposed head of the FBI, Kash Patel, who said a lot of
01:44:32.180nonsensical things behind that podium, and no one has ever explained it.
01:44:37.420What does it mean to see, I'll see you in Valhalla, Charlie?
01:44:41.180What is the significance of the number 33?
01:45:47.020that George Zinn is going to just immediately erupt
01:45:50.060out of his seat, take his trousers off,
01:45:53.400and run down screaming, waving his hands,
01:45:55.200saying, I shot Charlie, like within the first 30 seconds of it.
01:46:00.200Right. Like you wouldn't if you wanted people to believe feels a little Jack Ruby.
01:46:05.200It does very much. So I was expecting him to Tyler Robinson to be visited in prison by Louis Doyle and West.
01:46:11.900Yes, exactly. I pronounce you crazy.0.99
01:46:15.100And then you have an inexplicable fast acting cancer that kills you within six months.0.99
01:46:19.820Oh, that's normal. But sorry, back to the Kash Patel thing, the fact that he gave this press conference that was devoid of any real detail that you would want.
01:46:29.560in the aftermath of this public execution,
01:46:32.840but then to emphasize things that seem so random
01:48:54.020The Epstein files, the JFK files, the 9-11 files, all things that he had committed to showing to the American people who actually own it and have every right to know the details about that huge terrorist attack and the assassination of our president.0.59
01:49:09.320And obviously the Epstein network, which not only had a ton of victims, but obviously represented hidden power over our elected leaders.
01:49:19.860So Trump had committed to doing all three of those things.
01:49:22.900He's done none of them. But beyond just abdicating his power, he was disdainful of those.
01:49:31.740This is when he first started defining MAGA, Make America Great Again, as Donald Trump the man, like investing within himself in almost biblical fashion.
01:49:43.500Like, no, MAGA is not what I articulated clearly and coherently for 10, 12 years in public life and as president of the United States.
01:49:51.160MAGA is what I say it is today, tomorrow morning, anytime during the day because I'm Donald Trump, so I will determine what is MAGA.
01:49:58.420And further, if you consider yourself to be allied with this political coalition that I created over a decade, then I don't need you.
01:50:10.320If you're insisting upon transparency and the things, you're insisting upon me making good on the promises that I made to you in this, you know, relationship that we have.
01:50:24.220You vote me into office so I can effectuate the change that you voted for.1.00
01:50:28.340Then if you're insisting upon that, then you're a flipping kook and I don't need you.0.95
01:50:33.760So it was really at that moment when that was his response to the Epstein files.0.87
01:50:39.180And then when he engaged in the most ham-handed PR stunt I've ever seen, which was great because it revealed how many fake paid for, you know, supposed influencers there are on the right, brought them to the Oval Office, gave them binders full of Epstein material that had already been in the public domain for a very long time and said that was the entirety of it.
01:51:02.380And then, of course, because he's Donald Trump, he contradicted himself six or seven times.
01:51:08.400You know, this was, Epstein wasn't real.0.82
01:51:19.600And then, of course, he turned on Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I think, of all the elected members of Congress, represents in sincere, hardworking fashion what it meant to be a, not Trump fan, but a Trump lieutenant.
01:51:40.580I mean, this was someone who was inspired by Donald Trump and Donald Trump's program to leave her successful business, run for Congress, and thank God for her because she got there and discovered what a captured institution it is, how flawed the individuals there are, how hostile they are to the American people who put them there, and specifically the Republican voters who put them there.
01:52:06.660And then to see Trump turn on her and treat her the way that he treated her was, you know, she's an individual and she's tough and she can handle it.
01:52:19.300But that kind of like repetitive, crazy disloyalty and to treat someone who would actually put themselves to hard work to great effect was unforgivable, I thought.
01:56:55.660I guess maybe it's just a numbers game.
01:56:57.140You get 10 million people in a government,
01:56:59.900like some of them are going to be outstanding.
01:57:01.200But they are, and, like, there's been so little effort to find them, to empower them, and to the extent that they have been empowered, Joe Kent, for example, they get completely destroyed.
01:57:11.980And then you have, like, people like Sebastian Gorka, who I don't even know if he's an American citizen, but he's clearly, like, a highly damaged person, not a smart person, not a loyal American in any sense, and he's still there?
01:57:27.240It's such a daily offense to those people.
01:57:30.340I guess what I'm saying is, and you would just know this because of the life that you've led, you could make a good faith effort at identifying those people.
01:57:38.340Of course, you'd have to go through and be a huge fight.
01:58:27.500And they're all thinking to the ones I have spoken to, which is a lot of them, like, well, you know, I'm here, I can do good on the margins, like, something will pass my desk, and maybe I can have an effect, like, God put me here for some reason, I should probably do my duty, even if I hate it.
01:58:48.060I'm sure they're siloed or whatever, and I'm sure that's some comfort to know that they're being true to themselves and true to the country.
01:58:54.620But at some point, it's going to take those people actually talking to each other and saying enough is enough.
01:59:00.900I mean, I actually think we do have remedies for an out-of-control, megalomaniacal, destructive president.
01:59:09.280I think honest people who have that power should consider taking it.
01:59:13.900The 25th Amendment is there for a reason.
01:59:15.820It's not crazy to talk about it in this context.
01:59:18.500if our country is suffering great and lasting damage,
01:59:57.880But also, if it's shame, if there's blackmail material as there is on so much of our elected officials, if there isn't Trump, it's like, I'm sorry.
02:00:07.440You've demonstrated that you don't have any personal shame.
02:00:10.540I mean, you've demonstrated that a lot.
02:00:12.220You persevered through all of these accusations of disgusting personal behavior.
02:00:16.680How shocking is it, really, if there are pictures of you doing compromising things?
02:00:24.700Like, actually, I hate the term, but sack up.
02:00:28.080Like, really, you, again, it comes back to the obligation that he has, not just to Donald Trump, to everybody else in the country, well beyond Donald Trump.
02:02:58.540But it's still reprehensible and it's still a big question mark.
02:03:01.720Why would someone who has obvious and demonstrated allegiance to a foreign power give Donald Trump $250 million while he's running for president?
02:03:13.800But if Russia had given a PAC for Trump, you know, if the mayor of Moscow had somehow, you know, assembled an enormous amount of money and put it in a 501c3 for Trump's benefit, would that have been acceptable?
02:10:32.160Actually, one job, one job, one job only is to husband the resources that you have that you were given.
02:10:37.120And he's failed on every level, but he's also degraded what we have, what we had, and was already under attack for so long.
02:10:47.760So, it's unclear what's going to happen, but I've never seen, you know, I'm 55.
02:10:54.880I've seen a lot of what could have become unrest.
02:10:58.500I've never seen more fertile ground for real unrest than what we have now.
02:11:03.440Especially with the advent of AI, the current economy, our debt, and the prospect of more Americans dying in a country they can't find on a map and fighting a fight that they can't articulate, don't understand, and don't want.
02:11:19.380You've got to wonder if that's accidental.
02:11:21.700I mean, like if you wanted to destroy the country, this is exactly what you'd do.
02:11:25.080Well, the entire program for the latter half of my life has seemed designed to weaken this country, to divide people, to make them less happy and more enslaved.
02:11:36.380It does seem that way. I, you know, I don't, I don't know that there was like a meeting at Bilderberg or Bohemian Grove or whatever.
02:11:49.080But whatever, it's so precise and so overwhelming and so universal on every front that it could not have been accidental.
02:14:41.680I mean, they didn't engage in any kind of retrospective or they didn't try to figure out how they could represent the country or the party or fix the problems.
02:15:05.280But what they did do was they recognized that their political fortunes were dashed for some time to come because it was obvious.
02:15:14.680It was obvious that Trump had a total mandate to do the things that he had been, which is obviously why people are so upset that he didn't grasp the nettle and do what he said he was going to do because he had such fertile ground to do it.
02:15:26.840And he had both houses of Congress and he could have actually accomplished a lot more than just signing executive orders and closing the border.
02:15:32.640God bless him for closing the border.1.00
02:15:33.880But why hasn't he, you know, expelled the 50 million people who are here illegally?1.00
02:15:38.880Why are we still importing people?1.00
02:15:40.180And they're announcing now we're going to import more people.
02:15:41.860We're going to give citizenship to the illegals that we supposedly were going to deport.0.81
02:15:46.160Now we're giving them citizenship?0.98