00:01:50.000It is I, George Santos, filling in for Tim Pool today, who is busy or busy ish, or I don't know, but it's always great to be here with you guys and antagonize the crap out of the chat.
00:02:05.000Well, I just wanted to say, you know, lots of stuff going around today, and it has been a wild, interesting news day.
00:02:13.000We can, we're going to have fun today because, I mean, from Trump meeting with Mandami in New York City at Gracie Mansion and suggesting potentially he can be a great mayor to the White House correspondents, all now up in arms on pool duty.
00:02:31.000No one even knows who pool is unless it's Tim Pool.
00:02:34.000And then on top of that, there's like this major freaking revolt over what's his name?
00:03:26.000I. Basically, I do White House hits for Steve Bannon's War Room, but also I write a groundbreaking column for the South Shore Press, which is based in Suffolk County, Long Island.
00:05:17.000Anyway, all right, let's get to this because, Neil, you're the perfect guy to have this conversation with because major TV networks are declining White House pool duties in solidarity with CNN, MS Now, and Politico.
00:05:30.000Now, President Trump has, in a very bold fashion and in a very Trumpian fashion, decided it was time to call out the Garbage from these outlets and say, you know what?
00:06:56.000As much as people think it's grand, it's a small house.
00:06:58.000So you basically have a rotation where, say, CBS has the duty and they will shoot video for everything and they will mic everything and then everyone has access to it.
00:07:09.000And it's a great system and it was working up until today.
00:07:15.000And the White House will figure it out.
00:07:17.000Does this affect reporting in general?
00:07:19.000I mean, I don't see how this affects reporting.
00:07:50.000They can go ahead and they can say, Oh, all good Americans believe in the Constitution and the First Amendment is vital to our liberty and blah, blah, blah.
00:08:00.000Nobody's preventing them from reporting a thing.
00:08:02.000The only thing is they're not allowed to go into the White House.
00:08:05.000They can still report on what the president says, they can still report whatever they want.
00:08:08.000There's absolutely no limit to what they're allowed to report or what they can or can't say.
00:09:28.000For tad, it's typical, it's BS stuff that Trump does, but it's in no way, you know, some assault on the First Amendment.
00:09:36.000It's an assault on their ego, and they're using the First Amendment argument because it's functional, not because they actually believe that it's an assault on the First Amendment.
00:11:57.000But, like, broadly speaking, I think the legacy media has behaved a little bit better in the second term, at least in the White House.
00:12:04.000I think the Pentagon ban made a lot more sense because they were just like phishing for information from disgruntled Pentagon reporters.
00:12:11.000And that was a national security threat, where again, you're seeing these like salacious stories come out, specifically in Axios, and you never really see them denied from the Trump administration.
00:12:21.000They're just simply upset that it got out and they're wondering who it was that reported.
00:12:24.000Oh, it's planted by someone at the White House, usually if it's an Axios.
00:12:45.000From my perspective, I'm just like, I think this antagonizes them where it's like, at least there was some sort of working relationship occurring where I'm like, now they're going to have a chip on their shoulder.
00:12:55.000And as we know, President Trump cared a lot more about these outlets in the first term.
00:13:00.000Now that he's kind of in his bubble on Truth Social, he doesn't care as much.
00:13:04.000And I'm like, I don't even know if he's going to be able to combat a lot of these narratives now coming out of CNN because they reported a bogus story in 2018.
00:13:12.000He's on Twitter immediately explaining the situation, calling them retarded or whatever.
00:13:16.000In the second term, he's not going to see that stuff.
00:13:18.000So you're going to have to depend on his guys on Twitter that are going to bat for him to dispel a lot of the stuff.
00:14:53.000I'm just telling you how they're biased and how they're contradictory.
00:14:57.000Operation Warp Speed was, you know, as President Trump likes to say, a great accomplishment for him, which I think we can all agree.
00:15:03.000Like, as far as efficiency and speed, don't really like the results of what came out of Operation Warp Speed, which is now we're seeing the results of it.
00:15:11.000But CNN initially reported it as irresponsible.
00:15:15.000I'm premature that people shouldn't take this.
00:15:17.000Kamala Harris certainly went out there at the time and says, I'm not taking anything that's coming out of this administration to then take that body of work a few months later when Biden and I was going to say Obama, technically, when Obama had his third term in office with Kamala Harris, they went and started talking favorably about the vaccine and how amazing everything was.
00:15:39.000So it's very frustrating to be there every single day.
00:15:43.000And, you know, I think President Trump wakes up and does his.
00:15:46.000Puts his best foot forward every day and tries to do the best, and then comes in political.
00:15:50.000And is a they're a bunch of miserable.
00:15:52.000You, the thing is, if you look at the political editorial board at this point, it's just a bunch of miserable, over like, like middle aged people who really have nothing better to do with their lives other than to freaking antagonize the life of the president of the United States.
00:16:09.000Well, I mean, wait, well, it's also an a lobbying organization.
00:17:11.000I remember when Sam Stein at Huffington Post said, We're not even going to cover him anymore.
00:17:17.000But the way that the media and the way that the establishment has treated Donald Trump, He's always looking for some way to basically get back at him.
00:17:29.000And I agree with Tate, this is probably counterproductive.
00:17:35.000Well, just, yeah, in general, you know, like if Trump, if the media had, you know, kind of tried to butter Trump up in Trump one, then he would have laid down, shown his belly, and they'd have been best friends, right?
00:17:51.000He's just looking for someone that's going to kiss his butt.
00:18:08.000He's concerned with his perception on the media.
00:18:09.000Because it's like, on one hand, okay, we're making this play here.
00:18:12.000We're booting CNN and MSNBC and all of them from the press pool.
00:18:16.000But he still gives these one on one interviews to legacy media all the time.
00:18:20.000I mean, he just sat down with NBC News like two months ago for like two hours and they released the full unedited interview.
00:18:27.000I mean, I saw one he did with Axios like two weeks ago.
00:18:30.000Again, I mean, that's a slightly different flavor there.
00:18:31.000But again, if he had constantly been rewarding smaller media outlets all the time and then this play happens, that's one thing.
00:18:41.000But it's like, Okay, I think he's again just demonstrated he's mad at their reporting, but he still will give them the interviews when he feels like it's safe.
00:18:50.000I mean, it was good to see he gave GB News like two hours like two weeks ago, but that's like an outlier.
00:18:56.000It's either Fox, GB News, and those are the only two outlets on the right that will ever get any like one on one time with Trump.
00:19:01.000Like if he's sitting down with, you know, and I'm not saying Tim Cass, but if he's sitting down with like distinctly conservative outlets, giving them two hours of their time like he did during the campaign, like he did during the campaign.
00:20:57.000I'm saying, okay, sure, there's problems caused by the.
00:21:00.00060% of Americans right now are not doing well.
00:21:02.000Yeah, well, that's true every single time.
00:21:04.000It's like every year you can say there are people suffering.
00:21:07.000What I'm saying is that on the main, the U.S. economy is strong and growing, and the malls are coming back, the office buildings are coming back.
00:21:17.000It's like people aren't getting, they're calling it a high, no higher, no fire, but the labor market is solid.
00:21:24.000And we were told the labor market would get destroyed.
00:21:27.000We were told the tariffs would cause all sorts of crazy inflation.
00:21:31.000The economy is not going off the cliff the way they keep selling it.
00:21:36.000And it's like if you listen to these guys, you'd swear we were in a depression.
00:21:41.000The problem that you didn't address is because of the inflation in 22, 23, people that are below the median income, right?
00:21:55.000They're making in the lower end of average income, their dollar doesn't go far enough because it hasn't gone back.
00:22:02.000Well, it's not that it's going to go back, but wages.
00:22:04.000You know, inflation comes out of the stack.
00:22:06.000Wages go up to meet the cost, and wages haven't risen.
00:22:11.000And so there's a lot of people, especially young people, that are feeling that right now.
00:22:16.000Young people have a real chip on their shoulder right now because they had a basically, they believed that Donald Trump was going to do something about the Epstein files, and they don't think that anything was done.
00:22:29.000They have a problem with the war in Iran.
00:22:32.000They have a problem paying for gas, and their dollar doesn't go as far as it used to or it did.
00:24:14.000So, what they're gonna say is if I'm gonna go out and vote, I'm gonna go out and vote for the other guys, even though that's the worst idea imaginable, right?
00:24:22.000So, you've got young people that are really, really, really online, and you've got young people that are really, really, really feeling the crunch right now.
00:24:40.000Even if they even understand that the Democratic program is going to kill them, there's they, but they want to, they just want to express that hurt and that regret and that frustration.
00:24:51.000And the only way they know how is to throw the bums out.
00:24:54.000And so the point that I'm making, I again, we're in complete agreement about that.
00:24:58.000But to this particular point, Donald Trump kicking out the media doesn't help him get the message that he wants to get out, out doesn't hurt him either.
00:25:26.000Young people care, or are they going to say, look, it, he's kicking him out because they're not giving him good coverage because he did all these bad things?
00:25:34.000People are going to fill in the blank.
00:25:36.000They're going to say, this happened, and this happened because he doesn't want to talk about the things that I'm concerned with.
00:25:43.000Whether or not he does want to talk about those things isn't relevant.
00:25:48.000People are going to see that they kicked out the mainstream media, and they're going to say, well, they were going to press him on the things that I care about, even if they weren't going to.
00:28:11.000If he had a real candidate against him, like Newsom, right?
00:28:16.000If you're just saying, okay, I'm upset with Trump.
00:28:19.000But if you had to choose between Trump and a real Democrat, I wish I didn't have to choose between that.
00:28:27.000And you're also forgetting the other option, which is just stay home.
00:28:31.000Well, that's what's going to happen, actually.
00:28:33.000Well, that's what we're seeing in the midterms.
00:28:34.000Because, I mean, to your point, it's like the macroeconomic numbers coming in from BLS are solid, right?
00:28:39.000Like, unemployment, the jobs, everything checks out.
00:28:41.000Problem is, inflation is running red hot.
00:28:43.000But what was in that BLS, the last BLS report that no one's paying attention to, is the year over year hourly wages is down from last year.
00:28:50.000And, like, that is the number that answers why people are so demoralized right now coming to the midterms.
00:28:54.000So it's like, yes, gas is high, but also the little piece of the puzzle people are missing is they feel like their dollar, they can't stretch their dollar as far as they used to, especially with inflation still growing.
00:29:05.000If those hour over hour earnings are going down actually relative to last year, that people are going to get really pissed off.
00:29:10.000And it's like, I mean, honestly, if you look at, I mean, this is like getting like Bloomberg stuff here, but like there's a lot of concern that the market's like overheating now, that like we're re accelerating going to Q3.
00:29:22.000Like now, the Fed's like in a box right now where the consumers' spending is still sky high while hourly wages are down, while inflation is high.
00:29:34.000We expanded the trade deficit, and it's not to the fault of like the tariffs failing, but it's just because these businesses are acquiring so many goods right now.
00:29:40.000And there's private capital that can't get an exit.
00:29:42.000No, there's like, what was it, $2 trillion, Financial Times reported, for dry powder of capital, uninvested capital right now, that they'd rather be eaten up by negative M than actually risk it in a volatile economy, which hurts us.
00:29:55.000And that's a direct response to why you're seeing wages stagnant.
00:30:00.000But then, yeah, additionally, it's just seeing these businesses actually firing back up again while wages aren't growing, while we're still in this no fire, no hire kind of Mexican standoff.
00:30:12.000But I think that number explains why Americans are seemingly frustrated, even though it's like, yeah, again, you look on the macro, the economy is good.
00:30:20.000This is why Americans are frustrated because they're not feeling the benefit right now.
00:30:59.000Pick up like a quarter million people in, like, literally an operation.
00:31:02.000The problem with what you're talking about is because they're the people in Silicon Valley have visas, they're here, they're technically here illegally.
00:31:09.000So, you can't go after them, going to pull their visa, you can go after the merits of how they obtain them.
00:31:15.000But that's that that's more complicated than the dude.
00:31:19.000I'm from the tri state area, you know what I'm telling you is true.
00:31:24.000If you just set up checkpoints across the tri state area, you'll it's a court easy quarter million people, flushing meadows, you can drag that like flushing meadows.
00:31:31.000Park, like go there on a Sunday in the tailgates, all you're going to hear is bachata cumbia and a lot of people cooking out of their trunks.
00:31:37.000You know, and I'm sorry to say this, it sounds horrible.
00:31:40.000They're potentially not doing anything wrong, but they've done something wrong, which is stay here legally.
00:31:46.000But look, the whole debate is around TV, right?
00:31:48.000Who's going to report on this if CNN and political and MSNow is not there?
00:32:21.000That'd be quite nice to appear on there.
00:32:22.000But yeah, I mean, you know, this is like going back to the earlier issue, though, is like the imperative to communicate these economic victories, so to speak, isn't on CNN.
00:32:33.000What you have to do is you have to like supply ammo for these Republicans that are on the stump right now.
00:32:37.000And again, When people are driving to your rally and they fill their truck up for 80 bucks, it's like that just completely nukes any speech the Republicans had ready to go.
00:32:45.000This is why you see a lot of these Republicans in competitive races like Michigan, like in Texas, and they're kind of having to like look for other attack vectors on these guys.
00:33:02.000Oh, yeah, yeah, well, yeah, you have like, yeah, you had, I think it was what Rogers just came out and he's saying like end this war.
00:33:07.000That tells you, first of all, the internal polls are screaming.
00:33:10.000And then, second of all, it tells you every single constituent's going up to him and saying the same things from a personal level, from a human level.
00:33:16.000He's like trying to basically make a decision here and see what's best for his voters.
00:33:21.000Either way, that indicates that he's ran out of ammo on the stump and now he's having to sort of look elsewhere.
00:33:27.000I mean, if people get Trump TV's solution to that, it's great.
00:36:08.000But then on the right, I feel like people have literally, not all of them, but some of them have forgotten to put the American people first.
00:36:15.000Like, let's take care of our kids, our young men, our young women.
00:36:18.000To your point, what kind of policy is it that you would like to see?
00:36:24.000And keep in mind, the president isn't the king.
00:37:45.000My organizations that can apply pressure to the president, then yes, I think that that's true.
00:37:51.000So, and but that they're not organizations that are like, I mean, you'll get you know, people in business they'll say, Look, this is really bad for our business, this is bad for this sector of the economy.
00:38:07.000They can apply pressure that way, but when it comes to the actual decision making, I still think the president is the one that will make the decision.
00:38:15.000Now, that doesn't mean That people can't try and sway him.
00:38:18.000It doesn't mean that, like, you know, the Rotary Club or whatever, you know, the chairman of the Fed, whoever you're talking, whoever, like, many different people will try to convince the president that a certain policy is a good thing.
00:38:32.000But at the end of the day, I think the president actually makes the decision.
00:38:36.000Are you saying that the president doesn't make the decision?
00:38:39.000No, obviously he makes decisions 100%, but I do think there's some swaying, whether it's a foreign lobbyist or just people in his ear or something.
00:38:53.000So then I think we're actually in agreement because there's in the president is a political actor, and political actors always have people trying to sway their opinion, trying to influence the decisions that are made.
00:39:07.000So if this is the way that you're articulating what you're saying correctly, then yes, we're in agreement.
00:39:14.000But when you say people above the president, it implies someone tells the president.
00:40:28.000This went from this is my take as somebody who's served in Congress, regardless of the time.
00:40:34.000This was a big issue for me because of where I represented.
00:40:36.000If you understood the demographics, Iran's a big issue in that district because I have the second largest Persian community of exiles, essentially Jews who were kicked out of Iran or they would die.
00:40:46.000So I always thought that there was something to be dealt with in Iran, but I never wanted war.
00:40:52.000So, hey, blowing up their nukes and their facilities and maybe their fucking whoever the guy with the towel up his head is, go ahead, have fun, you know.
00:41:31.000I'm not saying that I think this is going to happen very soon, but it's possible that the Iranian people actually do start fighting their government and the government loses control.
00:41:44.000At least to the extent where they won't be able to fight their people and the rest of the Middle East.
00:41:49.000The problem is like the because we get this reporting like every three months that like such and such group has exchanged fire with the Iranians, et cetera.
00:41:57.000Those people, they're typically ethnic minorities.
00:41:59.000So this last one is the Blue, because they've been going at it with the Iranians since the Stone Age.
00:42:03.000So I mean, like a lot of this reporting that like there is this eminent uprising tends to be false.
00:42:09.000Additionally, Iran from the outside, I mean, I for posterity was fully against it from the outside.
00:42:15.000I was even concerned with the strikes last summer.
00:42:18.000The understanding was, okay, well, look, we go in here.
00:42:21.000These people are primed for revolution.
00:42:23.000So, if we can go here and take out the trash, so to speak, because, I mean, certainly the Iranian regime is quite detestable, then these people will rise up.
00:42:32.000We've created space and they can rise up and whatever.
00:42:34.000And then it turned out to be the complete opposite, where it ended up kind of being a rallying.
00:42:38.000The government ended up becoming something for these people to rally around, where we've seen for the last six months, including this last weekend, massive demonstrations on the streets of Tehran.
00:42:48.000Of Iranian people, of Persian people specifically, supporting the regime.
00:42:54.000And I think there's kind of this point where it's like if you are in the camp of serious concern, the Iranian regime needs to go, that's your North Star, or even that's an imperative for you.
00:43:04.000There's an argument to be made that might have been better off just letting the revolutions run their course prior to this intervention, where this intervention has kind of created the same dynamic that happened in World War II with Germany, where the German people were also primed to start sort of attacking and trying to overthrow the regime.
00:43:19.000And then the Western, the allies sort of bombing them.
00:43:21.000And then they ended up rallying around the Third Reich.
00:43:23.000And then it made it even harder to break that up.
00:43:26.000So, yeah, I just think it was not just a mistake from a political perspective, because Trump had promised no new wars.
00:43:33.000But additionally, it was kind of a mistake just from a geopolitical perspective and even a military perspective, because the trajectory from then actually looks more promising than what we currently are.
00:43:42.000Where, from my perspective, again, as an amateur geopolitical commentator, very amateur, I see this stretching out potentially even in 2027, because the Houthis have demonstrated they can lay some serious blows on the Saudis.
00:43:53.000And that ropes the Saudis into the war.
00:45:51.000And this is what's not being talked about is tomorrow the Americans are having a sit down meeting with all of the Gulf state leaders.
00:45:58.000I'm really curious to hear what's going to come out of that meeting because it's not going to be a discussion about strategy or military.
00:46:03.000It's going to be a discussion of what happens after this war is over because these Gulf states are furious.
00:46:08.000And again, the fact that we can't even back up the Saudis, again, I'm okay with that because I don't want the Houthis shutting down the strait.
00:46:14.000That just demonstrates it's a very volatile, unstable region.
00:47:24.000The Gracie Mansion, for those of you who are not from New York, is the residence, this mansion on the Upper East Side with sprawling views and famously known for Bill de Blasio building a fence twice as high as city ordinance allows to protect him for privacy.
00:47:40.000Now, interesting thing is, the headline from the New York Post reads very interesting Trump tells socialist Mandami he could be a great mayor for New York City after Gracie Mansion Love Fest.
00:48:52.000With, you know, both of these schools of thought, there's no concrete evidence what Trump's thinking here.
00:48:55.000I guess there's three schools of thought.
00:48:57.000The second school of thought is Trump is being Trump.
00:48:59.000And then the third school of thought is yes, Trump loves New York.
00:49:03.000And Memdani, and this is another one where it's like, I'm not trying to be a contrarian here, but he's taken a surprisingly pragmatic rhetorical approach recently.
00:49:12.000Like, he had this sit down meeting or sit down QA or whatever today.
00:49:16.000He was talking, he was almost like giving props to right wingers.
00:49:20.000He was saying, you know, right wingers are really focused on like order and these sorts of things.
00:49:23.000And that's something that we could probably emulate in New York City.
00:49:26.000What I think is going on is Memdani understands that he's like, New York is their status as the financial capital of the United States is being.
00:49:34.000Threatened right now actively and is being acted out upon by the fact that so many major houses are moving out of New York City.
00:49:40.000And he's having meetings with a lot of these guys and he's saying, What do you need me to do?
00:49:51.000Yeah, well, tax, corporate tax, the second homes, the commuter tax, because that's the dirty congestion toll tax.
00:49:58.000Yeah, well, and the dirty secret is they're more than willing to eat the like little micro, you know, tit for tat taxes.
00:50:05.000What they're freaked out about is the Piedtierre, just a massively Uh, regress George Clooney complaining about that and Robert De Niro highlights of 2026 for me.
00:51:03.000He is what a millennial statesman looks like, for lack of a better word.
00:51:08.000And I think that's quite soothing for a lot of these guys.
00:51:10.000Additionally, yes, I think what he's doing is he's going to your Jamie Dimons, et cetera, and he's saying, What do you need for me so I can keep up this aggressively left wing social messaging while having cover to pay the bills?
00:51:40.000Look, I personally am skeptical of this guy as a New Yorker.
00:51:45.000I can tell you, I don't know a single.
00:51:47.000Person in New York, in my group of friends, including some who voted for him, who are now seeing him as like this menace to society.
00:51:56.000He's making New York more unaffordable with some of the things he's doing because he's catering to the bottom half of New York in lieu of the top half.
00:52:03.000He's catering instead of creating a happy medium where everybody benefits.
00:52:06.000But who he is catering to is your activist engine room.
00:52:09.000So he's catering to, I mean, for like a bet, like basically these like recent arrivals from the third world who provide the votes for him.
00:52:15.000And then he's appealing to the yucky class, these young urban creatives who.
00:52:19.000Are the intellectual and again the activist engine room for him as long as he keeps them satiated and he keeps your Jamie Dimons from moving to Florida or whatever mission accomplished?
00:52:29.000He can say whatever he wants about you know any social policy or geopolitical thing, like that's that doesn't matter.
00:52:36.000Um, and there's not really this, I don't think the Democrats really care about him very much.
00:52:40.000You know, some people are like, oh, well, you know, look at such and such activists or such and such politicians from the 90s said something critical about Memdani.
00:52:46.000They don't care because he's he's he's DOA because he can't run for president, so they don't have to worry about like snuffing him out.
00:52:58.000I think that he was surprised when they went after him for laughing at 9 11 when they were reading off the names and he's smoking and joking with AOC.
00:53:07.000And I think that that sort of stung his machine.
00:53:41.000He likes to think that he's this pragmatist.
00:53:44.000Again, he likes to make sure Ezra Klein doesn't think he's a communist.
00:53:47.000And I think that's the North Star for a lot of these millennial yucky types, where they do like to thumb through Politico and feel like that they belong to this world, I guess is what I'm trying to get at.
00:54:30.000You get a little too crazy or a little too controversial on the right.
00:54:34.000And I don't feel like they accept you in.
00:54:35.000Yeah, because listen, the left has always been.
00:54:39.000Driven by the farthest of the left, right?
00:54:44.000So the people like Hassan Pikers, like your mom, Donnie's basically the socialists, right?
00:54:49.000The DSA types, even the communists, they're the ones that have driven what the left, you know, says and does for the past 20 years.
00:55:01.000The right excludes people because the furthest right, you end up with, you get, you know, you Nazis basically and, and, and identity politics, which the right has.
00:55:12.000Always try to avoid because any association with Nazis is a doomed politics.
00:55:20.000But you know, there's a little like, you know, right now I think some Republicans are mad at Tucker.
00:55:34.000But I do think, you know, if the Republicans open up their arms a little bit and were like, hey, let's actually listen to the youth of today and not just have a quote unquote boomer mentality, I think go a little farther.
00:55:46.000Like you did during the campaign, and then it stopped.
00:55:49.000I thought, I thought what he when he went to alternative media, media great, right?
00:55:53.000And the podcast talking about Trump and 24, he's talking about like Aiden, and then it stopped.
00:56:00.000Yeah, I would have paid money to sit where fat Nick is.
00:56:03.000That's that's that's fine, but you still like so.
00:56:08.000We there are people that that are taught like make allusions to fascism, and I make a distinction, fascism and Nazism are different.
00:56:16.000Right, that all Nazis are fascists, but not all fascists are Nazis.
00:56:21.000But the American public is not going to accept fascism, like, they're not.
00:56:24.000Well, yeah, you, you, anyone that alludes to that kind of authoritarianism on the right, they're automatically kicked out.
00:56:31.000What Phil's getting at is like, since World War II, we've lived in a liberal society, liberals have basically dictated terms for the last 70 years, and so they've set up all the taboos, they have ensured.
00:56:46.000What the taboos are, where the lines are, et cetera, all of them are on the right.
00:56:51.000So it's like you can't go past certain lines on the right.
00:56:54.000That becomes a taboo and you're excised from politics.
00:56:56.000The left doesn't have that because, and this is like the most, I mean, you could probably find this take on Prager U, honestly, but it's like, why isn't communism, you know, perceived with the same level of taboo as Nazism, where it's like the death toll of communism far higher?
00:57:11.000You can hear this on the Daily Wire, even.
00:57:14.000But to my point, that is why Republicans are slightly less accommodating because you have a lot of these guys who are baby boomers and they remember what the world was like after World War II and they're freaked out.
00:57:26.000And so, any perceived Any perceived going off the rails or going off of the plantation, so to speak, they're going to like retract closed ranks.
01:00:53.000And Fishback said, listen, he can't do that.
01:00:55.000But what I could do is if you bring in cheap workers instead of them, quote unquote, taking the American people's jobs, we're going to put a tax on the business people to pay extra for bringing them in and losing jobs to the Floridians.
01:01:09.000Look, that's also highly unconstitutional, by the way.
01:03:11.000I'm like doing Hollywood red carpets and nonsense.
01:03:14.000Because, by the way, shameless plug Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern, I hope you all tune out to Fox to watch this fat boy here in the jungle in Malaysia for Special Forces Season 5.
01:03:26.000That's what I was caught up all week in LA for, like doing red carpets and promos and stuff like that.
01:03:31.000And then Phil, I sit here and Phil's like, George, what do you think about Putin provoking NATO and inching closer in a Sorry, what was it again?
01:04:33.000And if, I mean, look, the whole world is going to say, we don't want the United States and Russia getting into, you know, kinetic conflict over Estonia.
01:04:43.000Because Estonia is a small country and we don't want a nuclear war for one small country, which is a legitimate concern.
01:04:51.000And basically, the whole world would be like, don't do that.
01:04:55.000So, what Russia wants is to poke holes into Article 5.
01:04:58.000They want to see, you know, Estonia say, look, hey, we're invoking Article 5.
01:05:04.000And you know, if Russia does anything, there's going to be plain loads of diplomats going to Estonia from the United States saying, don't invoke Article 5, no matter what you do.
01:07:27.000Western Europe and countries that have been longtime allies.
01:07:32.000But the Article 5 that demands that the United States come to the defense of countries like former Soviet republics, that is a terrible idea.
01:07:43.000It's a terrible idea to make the United States say, we have to.
01:07:48.000It's the entire predicate of why NATO was formed, right?
01:07:50.000Yeah, but it's to stop the SSR from reforming.
01:07:53.000But they should, well, they should, no, not to deter the USSR from reforming.
01:08:00.000Like those countries should have never been let into NATO at all, in my opinion.
01:08:03.000Well, but we have individual defense agreements with them.
01:08:08.000But I thought the entire, you know, preface of, oh, let's do NATO because we're going to go ahead and protect, you know.
01:08:15.000It was in response to the Warsaw Pact.
01:08:17.000So, like, all of those countries used to be either Soviet or under Soviet influence.
01:08:23.000And then at the end of the Cold War, a boatload of other countries joined NATO because they were looking to go towards a Western style democracy.
01:08:30.000It's a free club that they wanted to be.
01:08:35.000Belarus right now is on the news with Trump, right?
01:08:38.000So, we have this article that comes out at the Washington Post about Trump having to do a deal with Belarus on fertilizer because of Canadian tensions.
01:08:47.000And apparently, Canada corners a market on this fertilizer.
01:08:58.000Probably one of the stuff that we probably don't even want in our food.
01:09:02.000But how does that square away with the argument here?
01:09:06.000This is Belarus, a pretty antagonistic Russian proxy.
01:09:09.000Who's in the mix of all the former SSR like nations bordering with the majority, a bunch of them?
01:09:15.000And here we are having bilateral conversations.
01:09:18.000The U.S. getting fertilizer from a country is not, you know, it's not just a country, right?
01:09:24.000It's a major proxy of Russia, which, by the way, chances are this stuff is going to, the money that's going to generate from this is going to probably go right into the Kremlin.
01:09:31.000I mean, look, let's not talk about money that's going to the Kremlin when all of Europe has been buying fuel from Russia for the entire Ukraine.
01:12:14.000But from a realist perspective, the United States is saying, actually, this might be to our benefit.
01:12:19.000If NATO is still in one piece, Europe rearms.
01:12:22.000And I think the Denmark thing, the Greenland situation is a great demonstration of that.
01:12:26.000Without NATO, I'm not sure how we get our mitts on Denmark, but communicating to Denmark, communicating to the rest of Europe, like, hey, if you play ball with us, we'll play ball with you.
01:12:35.000They're happy to give the U.S. full reign over Greenland because they're like, sweet, we don't have to pay for anything now.
01:12:46.000Giuseppe Cavodragone, who is from NATO, came out saying NATO is ready to respond to a potential Russian escalation on Europe's eastern flank.
01:12:55.000The alliance top general came out and said that.
01:12:59.000And Saturday, I'm growing warnings of a possible staged attack by Moscow.
01:13:04.000Now, the question is people are even considering that they might be false flags and as Reported by political, of all people, they think that there could be a false flag attack just to, you know, bait NATO into action.
01:13:18.000So now we need to worry about bad actors trying to do a false flag.
01:13:22.000And by the way, who in the region could potentially benefit the most?
01:13:26.000And I know people hate it when I go down this path, but who could potential the most from a false flag attack right now that would trigger the full force of NATO and the US?
01:13:58.000My fear, my fear that I think my fear and every American's fear is, is that there might be a false flag by Vladimir Zelensky or the Ukrainians or some fanatics out there who really want to see the bludgeoned full on war apparatus of NATO to quote, Take out Russia, do something stupid to provoke it.
01:14:20.000I don't want to see us go to another war.
01:14:21.000And secondarily, definitely not going to go to the map for Zelensky for obvious reasons.
01:14:27.000But there also needs to be a point made here, which is like, well, if the Russians are in a situation, if they have instigated a situation in which a simple attack of some sort, a terrorist attack that could be credibly attributed to the Russians, is enough to instigate a full blown war between the United States and Russia, I'm sorry.
01:14:44.000That's like on Russia because Russia has put themselves in this situation.
01:15:01.000I wouldn't put it past the Ukrainians.
01:15:02.000I think there's some evidence they've dabbled in the sort previously.
01:15:06.000But also, like, there needs to be some blame assigned to the Russians as well.
01:15:09.000It's like, well, if you're the one like, you know, playing with the dog here and the dog comes out and bites you, like, it is what it is.
01:15:16.000You can put yourself in that situation.
01:15:17.000They flipped, you know, Brigades, the divisions.
01:15:20.000Yes, they've got like six or so thousand troops on the Estonia border.
01:15:26.000Well, and additionally, in the Baltic states, people miss this because, you know, obviously I don't expect people to be included in the Baltics.
01:15:32.000Latvia specifically, but also Estonia, the eastern parts of their country are Russian, Russian speakers, Russian ethnically.
01:15:39.000So, how many billions do we spend to keep Russians out of Russia?
01:15:45.000It's not about keeping Russians out of Russia, though.
01:15:48.000I mean, look, the fact of the matter is, the die was cast.
01:15:53.000When the United States or when NATO allowed these countries into NATO.
01:15:57.000Yeah, like we're in the situation now.
01:18:11.000And so, You know, and I old school, and I think that's why the left in this country hates Putin.
01:18:18.000Well, yeah, well, and I think at its core, frankly, Putin does a lot of things.
01:18:22.000If Putin, you know, they say about Putin interfering in our elections, I wish Putin would take over our midterms.
01:18:29.000Well, I think Putin, like, certainly has some like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
01:18:33.000I think Putin certainly has some like reactionary aesthetics, but if you look at like the way that he conducts affairs in Russia, the way he conducts affairs globally, uh, this is not reflective of like a friend of Western right wingers.
01:21:17.000So you have a view from your hotel to the Radisson on the other side of Moscow River, which is one of the seven sister buildings, which is one of the most insane architectures.
01:21:47.000Robert Mueller had questions for me back in 2017, like, why have you been to Moscow so many times?
01:21:51.000Well, I like, I work, yeah, I'm not quite a Russophile, but I love Russian culture, I love food, culture, opera, ballet, they're just very talented, but they so like, our politics sucks, yeah.
01:22:03.000I'm not making like an attack, I again, I think a little, I love the Russian people.
01:22:10.000These like reactionaries online who, like you know, get all their news from Twitter or whatever, like this idea that just simply because Russia's like it's these people that like became orientalists like three years ago and they've like missed the last like 50 years of like the tension between the West and Russia, it's like they have this false impression, I guess, because they're like naturally contrarian that Russia again is like some sort of like based haven and it's like, unfortunately for me for me, when it comes to these things, is all the people you saw Stalin and Gorbachev fight for their lives.
01:22:38.000It's when people you were there for the The fall Of Stalin, and then you saw the rise of Gorbachev.
01:23:21.000Well, as all these people I hate, I think the middle ground here is we can acknowledge two things are true at once here, which is a Russia is not a friend of like Western, like white Christians broadly, but also acknowledge that yes, these Atlantis have the wrong read.
01:24:41.000I just have this, like, very real, like, I think I am pro NATO with Trump in office because I think that he has a much more real understanding of NATO, not as an ideological project, but like as a real geopolitical asset.
01:24:53.000And again, in the hands of Biden, where again, they just view it purely through ideological terms, yeah, they're going to like utilize it to like go after the Russians.
01:25:03.000Like Kamala was in Berlin like three, what, three, four weeks before the invasion was like, yeah, we're going to like totally go and like nuke Moscow if they do.
01:25:45.000And I will say this look, I think we're living in dangerous times on this stuff, and people are just mad and angry, and they're looking for reasons to support one side or the other and fantasize and glorify Russia.
01:25:58.000There's nothing to glorify about Russia.
01:26:01.000Did you guys see Laura Loomer going to Ukraine and then all of a sudden coming back, a newborn Ukrainianist?
01:26:07.000I mean, I'm not criticizing her, but I thought it was wild because she has had probably one of the hardest takes on Ukraine for the duration of this and on Zelensky and all that.
01:26:16.000But I guess she saw something there that changed her mind.
01:28:38.000It's like they aren't even ready for prime time.
01:28:41.000So, this is Putin trying to make the rest of the world believe that the United States is one unreliable, is a paper tiger, doesn't have the ability to defend them.
01:28:53.000So, that way, they think that it's a better deal.
01:28:57.000Now, I don't think, especially considering the terrible results they've had in Ukraine.
01:29:04.000I mean, Russia can't even defeat small Russia.
01:29:08.000You know, like everybody thought the Ukraine was going to get absolutely rolled, and they haven't.
01:29:14.000Now, granted, a lot of that is because of a massive influx of money and weapons from the United States and from other countries, but people still believe that Russia was going to take Ukraine basically in the weekend that.
01:31:14.000Yeah, he can't learn Ukrainian until he's like in his 30s.
01:31:16.000Zelensky ran in 2019 as the pro Russian candidate, promising that he would negotiate with the Russians, promising that he would negotiate to handle all the prisoner issues, all of the war issues.
01:31:30.000And he said the incumbent, I forget his name now, but the incumbent who was backed by the US State Department, right?
01:31:38.000He was the one who wanted to carry on the war and expand the war against the Russians.
01:31:42.000Zelensky ran as the pro Russian peace candidate.
01:31:46.000And then they put the touch on him once he won.
01:36:16.000You're seeing a lot of players enter the game.
01:36:18.000And I think that explains why Nike, you know, it's like I'm sure Ford had 100% market share until eight years after and some other car manufacturers entered the game.
01:37:07.000The people want to imagine themselves in the product that they see marketed to them.
01:37:14.000That's why you put beautiful, attractive, good looking people in advertisements because.
01:37:19.000If you motivate them with a just do it, well, yeah, you can do it too.
01:37:23.000Amazing slope, yeah, you can do it too, but no, instead, you put it on like what's that, Lizzo?
01:37:28.000Well, yeah, there was, I don't know if it was actually Lizzo, no, no, I'm just saying, like, there was a type-esque guy, it was a uh, an obese, a very overly large human being, yeah, large, uh, black woman in you know, Times Square, yeah, in a you know, a Nike and booty shorts, and and you know, and it just doesn't make people aspire to wear Nike.
01:40:03.000The idea that you could, you know, make a stink online and get a reaction from a company, they're just kneeling to the mob and everyone knows that it will never be good enough.
01:40:15.000I don't know if we're going to talk about it, but the same thing with the Ed Sheeran stuff, right?
01:40:22.000Well, look, the fact of the matter is, Ed Sheeran's still going to sell a boatload of tickets, but there's going to be people outside that are going to be trying to, you know, have protests.
01:40:31.000They're going to make a big stink because the The idea of cancel culture hasn't gone anywhere.
01:40:36.000The idea, like the whole woke is dead.
01:40:44.000It is still just as present in society.
01:40:48.000It's just that people don't react the same way, right?
01:40:52.000And you're not going to get the same kind of reaction to the issue in Palestine or in Israel with Americans that you did with Black Lives Matter.
01:41:49.000The Palestine thing is going to fall apart too, eventually, because most Americans, like, it doesn't affect their daily lives.
01:41:58.000The closest thing that could affect the daily lives out of all of that stuff was the Black Lives Matter stuff.
01:42:04.000And once people kind of realized that it was basically a scam, that all the big players in the Black Lives Matter organizations were all just.
01:42:12.000You know, throwing money in their own pockets, buying tons of houses, and basically just scamming everybody, right?
01:42:20.000Like, then people were like, all right, I'm over it.
01:42:21.000It's not going to have the same effect, but it doesn't mean that they're not going to try.
01:42:25.000The left is built on an entire worldview based around oppressor and oppressed.
01:42:32.000Right now, it's the oppressor is Israel and the oppressed are Palestinians, and Americans are the oppressor because they're supporting Israel.
01:43:03.000If you look at the numbers when it comes to police brutality and police killing unarmed black people, the average person in America was like, oh, it's got to be hundreds of thousands.
01:43:37.000It's a con when it comes to global warming, it's a con when it comes to Black Lives Matter, and it's a con when it comes to free Palestine.
01:43:46.000It's a way to get people to say, look, this terrible thing is happening, and I'm complicit, so I got to do something to make sure that we fix this problem.
01:43:55.000And this stuff right here, they're trying to go back to the Black Lives Matter playbook.
01:44:05.000Maybe someone should have looked at it and said, you know, that kind of looks like, and maybe they shouldn't have put it up, but it certainly wasn't the condo.
01:45:27.000You guys in the entertainment industry, musicians specifically, I always thought you guys have the perfect platform to unite us through art, like music.
01:45:36.000Commonality every human being is going to have is we all like music one way or another.
01:45:39.000If we can bond over your music, Phil, or your music, Nick, and put everything else aside, why would you bring a divisive political rhetoric to your performance?
01:45:49.000It defeats the purpose of what music does.
01:45:52.000Like music unites, it's love, whatever.
01:45:54.000All the feel good shit that you see out there that people talk about.
01:45:57.000And I can use all the buzzwords here, but it really comes down to the feel good moments, right?
01:46:02.000And I think Ed Sheeran, great musician, now I'm pissed at him.
01:46:08.000He got into this big tiff over Macklemore.
01:46:42.000Right, but I also think even though Malcolm Moore was wrong for making this whole speech on it, you can't be pulled out of a show for your freedom of speech, whether I like it or not.
01:46:52.000Like, if you make a speech about how much you hate fat people and whatever, I'm not gonna pull you out.
01:46:56.000I have a take because now it's kind of like, why does my freedom of speech end where your feelings begin?
01:47:02.000Because the reason is, Malcolm Moore was supporting Ed Sheeran.
01:47:07.000When I go out on tour with a band, if I'm headlining, then I have the full right to say whatever I want for sure.
01:47:17.000When I'm supporting someone, and this is the way that my band operates all the time, when the headliner says get on stage, you get on stage.
01:47:26.000When the headliner says you're done, I don't care if you got another song, you get off.
01:47:52.000He's got millions of listeners on Spotify.
01:47:54.000He can go out and do his own shows and he can say whatever he wants.
01:47:57.000But because he's out supporting someone else, you don't go out there and make a statement that is controversial, whether or not people support it.
01:48:09.000Now, there is a certain amount of you have to understand who's going on tour with you.
01:48:15.000If you're going out on tour and you're a headliner and you bring Rage Against the Machine, you better expect that they're going to say things that are political because that's Rage Against the Machine's whole brand, right?
01:48:28.000Everything about Rage Against the Machine is political.
01:48:30.000So if you go out there and you bring them on tour and then you get mad because they make a political statement, you're the dummy.
01:48:37.000But if you bring someone like Macklemore, whose music isn't politically motivated, right?
01:48:44.000It's been politically motivated since like 2022.
01:48:47.000So it's not new, but the point that I'm making is he may have had songs that have some politics in them.
01:48:55.000I have some songs that have political basis behind them.
01:48:59.000You wouldn't really know it if you listen to the songs andor read the lyrics.
01:49:03.000You might, if you know a little bit about the politics, but it's not overtly political.
01:49:08.000And Macklemore is definitely not overtly political, he's a pop artist.
01:49:11.000So, if you're going to Britain for Macklemore to go out there and make a political statement, that is something that he, at the very least, should have cleared with Ed Sheeran or Ed Sheeran or however you pronounce his name before he did that.
01:49:24.000I think you're 100% everything you said's correct, right?
01:49:27.000But the problem is, is when Ed Sheeran put out that statement, he was like, it's not me who cares, it's the owners of the stadium.
01:52:40.000He was saying what he thinks is happening there and his position on it.
01:52:43.000And he shouldn't have got kicked out of a tour.
01:52:45.000Now, could they have been after, hey, that was sick, but you know, from now on, don't say that and just continue with your music, but we appreciate it?
01:52:57.000No, I actually agree with the point you made there, which was, again, a lot of these people are expecting conservatives to go to the mat for this pro Israel cause.
01:53:07.000But Robert Kraft, again, no problem if it's Beyonce getting up doing this, like, WOTEP BLM stuff, HOTEP BLM stuff, rather.
01:53:16.000Again, name your leftist cause, no problem.
01:53:19.000But suddenly, this issue, all of a sudden, it's like, okay, we're tossing them off a tour or whatever.
01:53:44.000So, yeah, that's why I'm like, I'm not going to go rally the troops to go defend Bob Kraft and Ed Sheeran here when it's like, hey, you guys have no problem letting these guys get up and just perform, quite frankly, stuff that's quite, let them on stage to have messaging that's quite frankly dangerous for the American people.
01:54:04.000Like, I'm not going to get super worked up over this when the amount of stuff that they let fly on stage all the time that's just completely deranged and just damaging to the American people.
01:54:29.000So equal application of the rhetoric, but this is the same single out because of Palestine.
01:54:33.000If this is the wedge, I'm like, Why there's so like this is very derivative.
01:54:37.000There's a lot of people in New England who think that the reason why you know he fell out with Belichick is because he invited Belichick to take a trip to Israel and really declined.
02:03:46.000Make sure to follow me on all socials at George Santos and tune in on Special Forces on Fox starting this Thursday, the 24th at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.
02:03:59.000And you're going to see me do crazy things like jumping out of a helicopter.
02:04:01.000And I can't wait to show you guys that.
02:04:03.000And stay tuned and we'll be right back to you guys with the after show.
02:09:22.000Is it really a war if it's one directional?
02:09:24.000Well, listen, if the American people are bummed out about bombing Iran, right, you think they're going to be more happy if we start bombing another country so we're bombing Iran and Ukraine?