On today's episode of the show, we're joined by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to discuss all the crazy things that happened at the Inauguration, including President Donald Trump's pardon of his entire family, and Elon Musk's "Roman salute" to the crowd. We're also joined by James Klug (Rocana) and Tyler O'Neill (The Daily Signal) to talk about the "People's Republic of Boulder" movement.
00:00:32.000As we were preparing for this show, 1,500 J6 defendants roughly have been pardoned.
00:00:37.000There have been a series of executive orders already pertaining to the southern border.
00:00:40.000We've seen riot police lining up at the southern border, shutting down ports of entry.
00:00:44.000Joe Biden, before leaving the office of the presidency, issued blanket pardons for the J6 committee, Mark Milley, and Dr. Fauci, which we think is kind of strange.
00:00:55.000With five minutes to go, as Donald Trump was about to be sworn in, issued blanket pardons for his entire family, going back 11 years for nonviolent offenses.
00:01:05.000So we have a lot of news to break down.
00:01:10.000Elon Musk is under fire for a strange gesture, the media calls it.
00:01:14.000He says he was throwing his heart out to the crowd.
00:01:17.000But it looked an awful lot like what they call the Roman salute.
00:01:19.000So now we've got a million and one stories, but I do think going over everything that's happening right now with the presidency of Donald Trump...
00:01:27.000And as we speak, live now, Trump is still signing executive orders.
00:01:54.000If you want to support the show, you can buy our coffee at Cast Brew.
00:01:57.000Of course, the other news the other day, of course, was that Joe Biden declared the 28th Amendment, the Equal Rights Amendment, which I find offensive.
00:02:06.000Because if you go to boonieshq.com, you can pick up the real 28th Amendment skateboard.
00:02:11.000And that is the right to keep bear and breed chickens shall not be infringed.
00:02:16.000And I just want to give a shout out to that picture of that little chicken right there, idiotic.
00:02:26.000right before this show in live we recorded ourselves talking about all of this crazy shenanigans talked a lot about health talked about philosophy of authoritarianism and libertarianism and when the government should intervene so if you want to support the show and watch that uncensored segment become a member at timcast.com but it is an honor and a privilege today smash the like button share the show we've got someone whose insights i think will be particularly interesting considering this is a republican victory we are being joined by congressman rep roca congressman rocana thank you for having me
00:03:02.000I represent Silicon Valley in the United States Congress.
00:03:07.000And I went to inauguration, didn't boycott it, because I believe that you have to respect the American people, and we can get into what everyone thought.
00:03:17.000Yeah, this is going to be interesting, of course.
00:03:18.000We've got a whole bunch of really awesome people, of course.
00:03:34.000Hi, I'm Josie of the Red-Headed Libertarian.
00:03:36.000I do outside media work at TimCast.com, and I have a show called Spaces X Josie, where I talk to really cool people, interview really cool people, celebrities and congressmen, and people who are important to the culture war.
00:03:49.000And then I have a channel called 1776 X Josie, where I talk about revolutionary history.
00:04:29.000Ladies and gentlemen, Trump pardons roughly 1,500 criminal defendants charged in the January 6th Capitol attack.
00:04:36.000The sweeping pardons would mark the beginning of the end of one of the largest investigations in FBI history.
00:04:42.000They say that President Donald Trump said on Monday that he was issuing roughly 1,500 pardons and commuting the sentences of six of his supporters in connection with the J6 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol when thousands of them stormed the building amid his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him.
00:04:58.000He made the remarks after returning to the White House Monday evening.
00:05:04.000The proud boy leader convicted of seditious conspiracy told NBC News on Monday that his client was being processed for release from FCI Pollack, a medium-security federal prison in Louisiana.
00:05:15.000Tario is serving 22 years in federal prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy.
00:05:28.000The rumor is that, I suppose, as he's saying, Some of those who are violent and did go to prison and were convicted have been commuted, and then it's a blanket pardon for some 1,500 other people.
00:06:03.000I have a very different view of it than people who smash down buildings, threaten people with violence, hit law enforcement officers.
00:06:12.000So I don't know the pardons, but my guess is that some of the people, from what you're saying, who pardoned it, actually engaged in violence and destruction of property.
00:06:21.000And my view is I thought Trump was going to be against crime.
00:06:26.000So why is any kind of violence on federal property not zero tolerance?
00:06:31.000Do you mean, so I think there's only six commutations.
00:06:34.000You're saying of the 15, you think it's likely that some of those probably did engage in violence?
00:06:38.000Yeah, and the person for the seditious conspiracy, I mean, did he, if 22 years, you're sentenced to 22 years, you probably have done something that led to an imminent threat of violence.
00:06:49.000Probably done something is a dangerous way to phrase it.
00:06:52.000Well, I trust the law, I trust the jury process there.
00:06:56.000And, yeah, I mean, we're probably going to disagree on this issue, but I fundamentally believe that you can't go into the Capitol or plan things to go into the Capitol and engage in violence.
00:07:15.000If they don't threaten anyone, don't have violence.
00:07:17.000I get that there was some of that that was taking place, and I wouldn't go after that.
00:07:21.000But the people who were engaged in actually breaking the buildings, I completely agree.
00:07:31.000I think that's why I've said commutation makes sense only because if someone shoved a cop or pushed them three years, four years is a long time to be in prison for like shoving a cop.
00:07:42.000But for people who didn't know what was going on and walked into a building when the gates were down or open and got trespassed, I agree with him.
00:07:47.000Well, I think the biggest problem here is trusting that process, right?
00:08:10.000They're painting him in court as a hardcore Trump supporter, and this was an insurrection, and painting him that way in court, that's obviously a completely abused system right there, because just walking around, non-violent, didn't do anything violent, walking around, taking photos, and getting four years from that, that's completely unimaginable.
00:08:32.000And there were a lot of enhancements on the sentences that turned out to be all unconstitutional by SCOTUS. They were adding to the sentences where they shouldn't have been.
00:08:40.000But to add to all of this, George Washington...
00:09:00.000So it's kind of a thought that once this is done, once you've made it through, once one side has won and one side has lost, quote unquote, it's good for the country to just move forward and not to hold on to it, just to start to heal in that way.
00:10:10.000So I think the challenge that many of us have is on May 29th, 2020, there were several thousand far-left activists.
00:10:19.000I would say many of them extremists who tore down the barricades of the White House, firebombed the White House grounds, set fire to St. John's Church.
00:10:28.000We did not see Capitol Police launch an investigation.
00:10:30.000We did not see FBI raids across the country.
00:10:33.000The president was forced into the emergency bunker.
00:10:35.000The corporate press, the media mocked him over it, calling him bunker boy.
00:10:40.000So that happened well before January 6th.
00:10:43.000Seeing the photos of the smoke rising up in D.C. all across the city.
00:10:47.000From the chaos and the rioting, seeing no law enforcement action.
00:10:51.000For me, I'm kind of like, well, what else is new?
00:10:53.000I've been covering protests for a decade.
00:10:54.000Then when January 6th happens, to see a nationwide raid that actually resulted in there was a woman in Alaska who was wrongly identified.
00:11:04.000And I'm thinking to myself, they're willing to send the feds to Alaska to raid the wrong woman's home.
00:11:10.000And they won't even do a simple local investigation into who set fire to St. John's Church.
00:11:15.000More importantly, who firebombed the guard post at the White House?
00:11:19.000I mean, the White House grounds was on fire.
00:11:21.000Yeah, there was about 60 Secret Service agents that were injured that night, dozens of police officers, dozens of vehicles, obviously St. John's Church as well.
00:11:28.000There should be accountability for that.
00:11:29.000I'm not defending left rioters and protesters.
00:11:46.000You're saying that the police, you feel the law enforcement, are singling out people because they're conservative in supporting Donald Trump in a way they aren't on the left.
00:12:04.000The cops target folks on the left more.
00:12:07.000My view is, how do we get to a point in this country where we can agree that we should allow for protests, give people the benefit of the doubt, but when people are engaged in violence, there should be zero tolerance.
00:12:18.000Honestly, it seems like the Democrat standard right now just...
00:12:20.000Pardoning every single person, even if they were violent, even if they did do crazy things.
00:12:24.000That's like the Democrat standard that I've noticed the last four years, so maybe we just do that.
00:12:28.000Yeah, I really don't want to engage in whataboutism, and I share your opinion, but it's really hard to say that we need to hold the J6 rioters accountable and that we do have to worry about the rule of law when, you know...
00:12:44.000There have been multiple times, I'm not going to get specific because, again, I don't want to get into whataboutism, but there have been multiple times where it seems like one political opinion is suppressed and another political opinion isn't.
00:12:57.000So I agree with you and I understand your position, but it's really hard to accept that now it matters when there have been multiple times in the past five or so years.
00:13:41.000But they had the Chaz and the Chad where they actually...
00:13:43.000Yeah, I mean, they murdered two people.
00:13:45.000I completely agree with you in that I would love to be able to say, you know, we should...
00:13:50.000Stop having these kind of ignoring the law and stuff.
00:13:55.000But it's really, really tough to be like, well, we're going to be the people that are going to actually start doing that and we expect the opposing political party to do the same when we don't really see that same kind of incentive feeling from the left.
00:14:12.000Well, in that double standard, we see over and over and over again.
00:14:58.000I mean, it's like there's case after case after case where we can say, and I do say in this book about the weaponization of law enforcement, that there is a clear bias.
00:15:09.000And I understand, you know, a lot of people on the left feel embattled too.
00:15:13.000And it's partially because we have these echo chambers where we say, oh, we're the ones who are in battle.
00:16:05.000People that have been in oppressed groups or marginalized groups have to be treated differently under the law, which is completely and totally antithetical to what we're talking about.
00:16:15.000That's antithetical to the Constitution.
00:16:17.000That's antithetical to what our country was built on.
00:16:20.000When it comes to the Declaration of Independence, the grievances 8, 9, 18, and 19 all deal with captured courts, and the grievances 12 and 15 deal with two tiers of justice.
00:16:34.000I feel like the large shift that we've seen politically, like how Donald Trump ends up winning the popular vote, comes from a lot of moderates.
00:16:41.000You see Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., even someone like me.
00:16:48.000I never consider myself like a Democrat Democrat, but if I went and voted, it was just like straight Democrat, the one or two times I ever did.
00:16:55.000And then what ends up happening is I watch the news, and what do I see?
00:17:23.000It was a contractor who was doing rides.
00:17:28.000Numerous fires, and then they mass-arrested several hundred people.
00:17:32.000I end up getting caught up in what they call a police kettle.
00:17:36.000And I, as well as a few other journalists, presented our press cards, waited patiently, and eventually got released.
00:17:42.000These individuals who got arrested, who were clearly engaged in violence, ended up not only having their charges dropped, but they sued the federal government and won over a million dollars.
00:17:53.000So here's someone like me, where it's like, you know, I grew up in Chicago.
00:17:58.000And then I'm like, oh, that's how it goes.
00:18:01.000Then I see a bunch of right-wingers go out and protest, and it's nationwide manhunt.
00:18:05.000And to the point where, well, I certainly agree, anybody who's violent should go to jail.
00:18:10.000You hit a cop, you go to jail for that, you know?
00:18:13.000I met one couple that showed up to the Capitol several hours after everyone had already left, and there were just people standing in the lawn.
00:18:24.000Up to a building where the doors were wide open, no broken glass on the other side of the building, and they walked in and looked around and didn't know what was going on, didn't see anything, and then just left.
00:18:33.000And then I think it was a year later, they got their home raided, and this man and this woman were sentenced to 18 months in prison, and they had no idea why.
00:18:42.000So when I see something like that, I think that is why you end up with people saying, Trump, pardon everybody.
00:19:25.000And I think that's the reasonable take.
00:19:27.000Not that it's wrong, but to start from a place of skepticism and then say, show me the actual evidence because the word of a jury in a 90% Democrat district is not enough for me to believe someone actually did something wrong, at least right now.
00:19:39.000Well, and that's the real tragedy of all of this, is that the weaponization of the prosecutions is the one thing.
00:19:46.000And, of course, not a majority of the prosecutors across the country have been supported by George Soros.
00:20:20.000I think the jury having the ultimate say is ideal.
00:20:26.000But the problem is we're almost living in two different worlds.
00:20:30.000where the right and the left can't see eye to eye on almost anything.
00:20:33.000Let me ask you this, especially because we're on Martin Luther King Day.
00:20:37.000If I concede that there were some people who, like your couple, went in, shouldn't have been prosecuted for 18 months.
00:20:47.000And I also will tell you that anyone who engaged in violence, looting, rioting, whether they're doing it in the L.A. fires right now, should be locked up.
00:20:57.000Or if they did it in response to George Floyd, which was, in my view, a total case of police gone broke.
00:21:07.000But if the response to that has to be in the King's tradition of peaceful protest.
00:21:12.000Would you, though, concede that historically, and still today, if you're black in America, there is still often bias from the police force where you could be pulled over in a way that you wouldn't be if you were Indian?
00:21:28.000Or if you're in a certain neighborhood, and can you understand from the other perspective of some of these folks who were protesting?
00:21:36.000How they see, what you see is the law enforcement biased against those who are conservative, and they're saying, no, the law enforcement actually has been, in certain places, biased against us.
00:21:56.000And the reason why is from a logic standpoint, it would be impossible for a person or largely impossible for a person to know what the experience of another race is.
00:22:07.000So we hear stories and we are told that black people in this country experience bias at the hands of police officers.
00:22:15.000I actually believe some of these stories are probably true, but it's hard to quantify it.
00:22:24.000And so the issue I run into is, from the south side of Chicago myself, I saw no difference between the Mexican, white, mixed, Asian, black people in my community when the cops were hassling us.
00:22:34.000Then I see these stories from the left where they say, the talk.
00:22:38.000Something that white people don't understand.
00:22:40.000And I'm like, what are you talking about?
00:22:41.000Everybody in my neighborhood does the talk.
00:22:43.000When you were a kid in the south side of Chicago, be it white, black, Mexican, Asian, no matter what you were, your parents told you, if you get pulled over, You turn your car off, you put the keys on the dash, you turn the dome light on, you turn the radio down, wallet on your dash, hands on the wheels, and don't move because a cop could shoot you.
00:22:59.000So then when I'm told that there are these racial disparities because cops are treating certain minority groups a certain way, I say, okay, tell me the story.
00:23:07.000I hear a story from someone who's a minority, be it black, Mexican, or Indian, or otherwise, and I say, that's crazy.
00:23:26.000You're getting to the heart of the issue, I think.
00:23:28.000And part of the reason Trump won is that there are a lot of people in working-class neighborhoods, white working-class neighborhoods, who have suffered tremendously because jobs were offshored because of the opioid crisis, because they have not had economic opportunity.
00:23:46.000And one can say that is true and not deny their experience or look down upon them or make it kind of a pyramid of suffering or victimhood and still acknowledge, in my view, that race also has a factor.
00:24:04.000And that doesn't take away from the issue of people who are white and working class.
00:24:10.000And I think that's part of the challenge in this country.
00:24:21.000When you are perceiving someone who's different from yourself, and you haven't been trained, as I think many of us rightly were in this room, to judge someone based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin, it's very easy to see in the other something that you dislike,
00:24:38.000like that you think they're singling you out, that they're being, you know, I think that inherent distrust of tribalism is at the root of a lot of the perceptions of this supposedly widespread violence.
00:24:53.000We had a video from, do you guys know King Randall?
00:24:56.000Personality, I think we've had him on the show before.
00:25:36.000But today, I would argue that there's probably more demand for that racism than there actually is supply.
00:25:41.000Look no further than all the hoaxes we've seen recently, how much Democrat politicians leverage this, push this on their audience.
00:25:47.000I mean, I interview people all around the country, and most people are pretty darn good, right?
00:25:52.000You talk to a lot of people, they're honestly pretty great people.
00:25:54.000But you do run into people that genuinely are, like, fearful of white people walking around because they believe that maybe they're connected to the Proud Boys or they're racist and they'll hunt them down in the street or something like that.
00:26:06.000And you're just like, in what reality is this the case?
00:26:11.000But it's because people, politicians, and media figures leverage this stuff to a lot of times push fear on the American people.
00:26:18.000I genuinely don't think there's that much supply for it today.
00:26:23.000I will tell you, though, I do think systemic racism exists.
00:26:27.000And so I'll clarify what that means, because I know a lot of people in the audience are going to say, Tim, you're wrong.
00:26:32.000There are systems that were built over a long period of time back when this country had overtly racist laws and policies that remain in effect as barriers.
00:26:40.000For instance, redlining and blockbusting, which were legal practices in Chicago and in many other places, left behind structural remnants that exist today.
00:26:49.000So if someone comes to me and says, My family is impoverished, largely due to the actions taken in the 1950s, which segregated us, and now we are struggling to get out of this area.
00:27:02.000The issue of individual biases, I think you made a great point about humans being tribal, I do agree with and think exists.
00:27:07.000But I think, you know, outside of these structures, we have largely passed these laws to make that all illegal.
00:27:15.000And now I think the majority of the population is trying to avoid being racist.
00:27:20.000And they don't like being called racist, and we don't want that to be the principal issue.
00:27:24.000I do think we've largely dealt with it from a legal point.
00:27:27.000And now it's going to require, you know, I think we have to be cognizant of these systems, right?
00:27:32.000Redlining and blockbusting, for instance, for those who don't know, redlining was when real estate companies would only sell property to black people in an area near the red line in Chicago.
00:27:40.000Creating isolated pockets of racial segregation.
00:27:44.000And that results in you don't have the same industry, you don't have the same tax base, you don't have the same schools, you don't have the same skill sets as a robust, eclectic, educated area.
00:27:54.000Being aware of that, I think, is important.
00:27:57.000But I think blaming cops and calling them racist when police departments in big cities are even...
00:28:03.000They have affirmative action for the past 20 or 30 years.
00:28:06.000I would say, I think we may have swung the pendulum a little bit too far in the other way, which is causing more problems.
00:28:11.000Part of the challenge, I think, is that we've been having these conversations in silos.
00:28:15.000So if someone says your point, that you think that there isn't as much racism, the reaction on the left often could be, well, that's just a racist thing to say.
00:28:29.000Puts you in a position of anger and defensiveness.
00:28:32.000And on the right, on the flip side, if someone says, no, I actually experience the world through race and come live in my shoes, on the right people say, oh, they're just engaging in identity politics and they're just making this about race for advantage as opposed to being authentic.
00:28:50.000And the reality is those two groups aren't talking to each other.
00:28:53.000And one of the things we've got to do is have their authentic people in the George Floyd protest, not the ones who rioted, who, you know, my friend Jamal Bowman, he will tell you what he thinks it's like being a black person in New York, and you should talk to him about where you think being white in a neighborhood was.
00:29:14.000You had the same experience, and we ought to be able to have these conversations without labeling each other in a derogatory way.
00:29:26.000Biden pardons Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci, and the J6 committee members.
00:29:31.000Now, I will also add that he pardoned his entire family, which is another story.
00:29:36.000But I want to start with this one, because Mark Milley, I think, is the most...
00:29:41.000For those who don't know, and maybe Josie or Phil, or whoever, James, maybe you guys know better than me, Mark Milley subverted the chain of command to communicate with China a codified adversary of the United States.
00:30:41.000And then to make it worse, Mark Milley.
00:30:43.000Mark Milley engaged in very questionable actions in his communications with China outside the chain of command in defiance of the commander-in-chief.
00:30:52.000I mean, it should absolutely be investigated.
00:30:54.000And if Mark Milley is guilty of sedition or, dare I say, treason, I mean, there's got to be some action that we take as a nation to prevent that.
00:31:02.000Milley was essentially saying he would give them a heads up.
00:31:13.000China is listed in the U.S. In U.S. law, as an adversary of this nation.
00:31:18.000To be fair, Congress does declare war, so I would hope, and if I'm going to be charitable towards Mark Milley, I would hope if Congress were to declare war on China, then Mark Milley would rethink that position.
00:31:33.000But to say I would defy the commander-in-chief, that's a bad look, man.
00:32:22.000In the Pentagon, as opposed to a lot of other generals in our history or in our country who are saying, you know what, I want to make sure that we're doing everything we can not to get into a war.
00:32:32.000I'm not concerned that this country is going to be too timid about getting into war when we really need to.
00:32:39.000Well, I think the other aspect here is Fauci.
00:32:42.000And Fauci repeatedly said in congressional testimony that we were not funding gain-of-function research over and over and over and over again.
00:32:52.000And the quantity and just the disruptive nature of these lies during the COVID-19 pandemic when he presented himself as the figurehead of science.
00:33:04.000And yet he was telling the American people exactly the opposite of the truth in many cases.
00:33:10.000Often saying, you know, this was a white lie.
00:33:13.000Like when they said that PPE wasn't helpful, you know, that you shouldn't wear masks during COVID. And then they said, oh, you should wear masks.
00:33:23.000And they said, the reason was we lied to the public because we didn't want them to buy all the PPE. And then all of the science and all the medical staff wouldn't be able to.
00:33:34.000So they admitted they lied, and then they come out and say that they are the science.
00:33:38.000There has to be accountability for this.
00:33:49.000Senator Rand Paul held up a document that outright said gain-of-function research was performed and funded through the United States, through Eagle Health Alliance, through HHS, under Fauci, and he said it didn't happen and they didn't do it.
00:34:09.000During COVID, Donald Trump brought him on TV every step of the way and defended it, much to the chagrin of his supporters and many libertarians.
00:34:18.000After he got out of office, sure there was a little bit of back and forth, but why would Trump politically retaliate against the guy he chose to be his advisor to make him look bad?
00:34:26.000I think the reality is Joe Biden is protecting Fauci from willful crimes that Fauci committed.
00:34:31.000Yeah, so something about that is, so the pardon, you admit that you're guilty, it's an admission of guilt, essentially, and that goes back to Burdick 1915, and essentially what that says is, you cannot be compelled to accept a pardon, because if you are, then that violates your right to not self-incriminate yourself.
00:34:52.000However, this pardon for Fauci says, this is not an admission of guilt.
00:35:33.000He helped George W. Bush with PEPFAR, which, in my view, was one of the great achievements of America under President George Bush, where we saved millions of people in Africa for AIDS. And Fauci, in my view whether he was right or wrong largely was acting in the public interest i don't think we should be and by and one of the things i give
00:35:57.000trump credit for is operation warp speed which fauci was also involved in which was giving government uh procurement guarantees so we could develop the vaccine it's mind-boggling to me that trump has not bragged about that more To me, that was his singular best thing that he did in terms of working on the vaccine cures that we did for the world.
00:36:18.000So my view is, whether you agree or disagree with Fauci, do you really want to create a criminal standard for people in public service who are coming and doing what they think is the public government?
00:36:29.000Well, if you lie to Congress, it's lying to Congress.
00:36:33.000You know how many people come to our committees and think they want to put them all in jail?
00:36:38.000And how many times do they say, I can't recall?
00:36:43.000If Anthony Fauci had said, I can't recall, instead of, full stop, we don't fund gain-of-function research, we would be having a totally different discussion right now.
00:36:52.000This is one of the worst ramifications of the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
00:36:56.000Bill Clinton was found to have lied to Congress.
00:37:00.000And he admitted it later, and nothing happened.
00:37:04.000And that was a terrible precedent to set.
00:38:36.000The problem with COVID in general is that it peeled the band-aid off of the way that a lot of our elite institutions are abusing their power over people.
00:38:47.000And so one of the things, you know, be it school closures, and then you have this big focus on...
00:38:54.000Looking at education and trying to figure out, you know, having parental rights, trying to balance these different issues, and suddenly you have a former governor of Virginia running for governor again, coming out and saying that he doesn't want parents deciding what their kids learn in school.
00:39:15.000I'm glad to be sitting with you, Ro, because I think you have a track record of standing against some of the worst abuses I've seen from your party and the elites who generally agree with it.
00:39:26.000But I think a lot of the corruption that we've seen in this country was unveiled in COVID, and we have to solve it.
00:39:34.000And that's why we have a big populist movement.
00:39:36.000That's why we had a populist movement on the left, too, with Bernie Sanders.
00:39:40.000But one of the things I really focus on in my book...
00:39:45.000Is how these big donors are funding these initiatives that are pushing, you know, all these non-profits are pushing ideas that are being almost forced on the American people through the elite apparatus.
00:39:58.000There I agree with you sometimes, and I'm going to, I don't want to interrupt you, but I said sometimes my staff, they send me their 200 groups who have come out for something, and I said there are 200 groups run by 100 people.
00:40:09.000You know, this is the biggest myth in terms of all these groups.
00:40:14.000That sometimes they can make us be out of touch on certain issues.
00:40:19.000Let's jump to this next set of pardons.
00:40:21.000We have this tweet from Philip Blackman.
00:40:23.000He says, Pursuant to my powers under Article 2,
00:40:45.000Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution, have granted unto James B. Biden, Sarah Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John T. Owens, and Francis W. Biden a full and unconditional pardon for any nonviolent offenses against the United States which they may have committed or taken pardon during the period from January 1st, 2014 through the date of this pardon.
00:41:28.000I didn't like it when he did Hunter Biden, because I've been for the curtailment of the presidential power.
00:41:35.000I mean, we don't live in King George's time.
00:41:37.000I don't think presidents of any party should have this kind of broad power to just wave their wand and say, okay, some family member, some friend is going to be pardoned.
00:41:48.000And I think as the Democrats, if we're going to be the party of reform that says we want to get money out of politics, we want to stop members from trading stock, then we should be for reforming the pardon power.
00:42:04.000What I will say is that we should have some Amendment in this country to at least restrict the pardon power, in my view, especially for friends and family.
00:42:15.000Outside of that, I... That's an interesting thought, and I don't completely disagree.
00:42:19.000But outside of that, there's the more granular of, why would Joe Biden pardon all of his family members?
00:42:26.000I mean, Frank Biden, Jim Biden, they were trading on his name in Delaware.
00:42:30.000They got rich just because he was a senator.
00:42:33.000I don't think it's—it's not reasonable to just say that Donald Trump is going to go after Valerie Biden Owens.
00:42:39.000I think the reality is that this literally, five minutes before Trump was sworn in, issuing of a pardon, I would be more inclined to believe, based on what we know, and I'll cite Politico magazine going back several years to Biden Inc., James Biden was accused in that magazine of peddling influence and taking contracts from his brother illicitly.
00:42:59.000I think this is indicative of what we've long known.
00:43:02.000I don't think it needs to necessarily single out the Biden family.
00:43:06.000I think the issue may be perhaps this is the first time there's reason for or a president willing to go after the corrupt influences of prominent families in government.
00:43:29.000It would have to be because it's in the Constitution that gives the president...
00:43:34.000I think this goes back to Hamilton, who kind of viewed the presidency as almost analogous to a king.
00:43:41.000And I think we've moved far away from that time.
00:43:44.000Now, I will say, the only thing, and I don't defend the pardon, but we don't want to criminalize politics.
00:43:53.000I get that there are people on the Republican side who blame the Democrats for doing that, but I think at some point...
00:44:01.000It's got to end, because people are not perfect.
00:44:05.000Usually you don't get angels in politics.
00:44:07.000I will say this, surprisingly, the Congresses of the past have been a lot more corrupt.
00:44:13.000You had the robber barons who actually bought members of Congress and senators.
00:44:17.000And by criminalizing it, what you're doing is you're telling every young kid in this country, yeah, you don't want to really be in Congress, you don't want to be a senator, you don't want to run for president, you don't want to go be in the cabinet.
00:44:29.000Somehow figure out how we have accountability without everyone thinking, okay, if I run for office, now everyone in my family, if they've done anything wrong, now there's going to be a big spotlight.
00:44:42.000This is Politico from 2019, Biden, Inc.
00:44:46.000Over his decades in office, middle class Joe's family fortunes have closely tracked his political career.
00:44:50.000Going to mention how his brother got lucrative contracts in Iraq.
00:44:54.000I think the reality is perhaps it's time to start doing this.
00:44:58.000I've had almost no faith in government.
00:45:00.000The first time I voted was for Obama, and then I instantly regretted it because he blew up a village of women and children by executive order.
00:45:11.000It was immediately reported that a drone strike ordered by Obama killed a village of some sort.
00:45:18.000And I remember being an anti-war activist, marching against George W. Bush, told by everybody, you've got to vote for Obama, for the first time in my life.
00:45:26.000Seeing this just absolute corruption ripping at the soul of this country, it looks like something's being done about it.
00:45:33.000Now, you can say that Donald Trump's doing it because of revenge, and I can say, well, I don't know his motivations, but I would like to see the Biden family, the Clintons, or the Trumps, whoever.
00:45:43.000Anybody peddling influence illicitly, corruptly to enrich themselves.
00:45:51.000When Donald Trump tried to have the G7 at Trump Doral, I called that out immediately.
00:45:55.000He should not be using his properties.
00:45:56.000It's a conflict of interest no matter what he charges.
00:45:59.000And when there were reports that Trump properties were advertised on military websites, or I believe it was a State Department website, I said, that's wrong.
00:46:14.000You've got Devin Archer all coming out saying that they were engaged in illicit activities.
00:46:17.000And then Biden comes and pardons his whole family.
00:46:20.000So I would agree that we don't want someone to believe that if you get into politics, they're going to target your family because show me the man, show me the crime.
00:46:28.000But at the same time, I don't know how this country survives if the Biden family's activities, which have been widely documented going back to, again, not even 2019, well before that, if we ignore these things and say, that's par for the course, Trump's going to go ham.
00:46:43.000And then whoever comes after Trump next is going to be like, I'm the president.
00:46:47.000How much are you going to pay me to sign an executive order?
00:46:49.000And no one will be able to do anything about it because of precedent.
00:46:52.000Well, and this is also part of that elite apparatus, right?
00:46:56.000You know, Politico, to their credit, covered this.
00:46:58.000There were a lot of things that were covered like that.
00:47:01.000But in the past four years, we've seen the legacy media act as though it was the height of mendacity to suggest there could anything be wrong with Hunter Biden and that Joe Biden could be involved.
00:47:14.000And every single time it was like, how dare you suggest?
00:47:17.000I mean, we had big tech, as you rightly condemned, censoring a story that was reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop.
00:48:21.000There is going to be another Democratic president.
00:48:23.000I don't know when, hopefully in 28, but maybe the pendulum swings back and forth.
00:48:28.000I wouldn't want that president to say, you know what, we're going to go and investigate all of Donald Trump's family and all of his dealings.
00:48:36.000Now, if there's an independent justice attorneys and people in law enforcement who are doing it, that's one thing.
00:48:43.000thing, but I don't want the president on either party directing the Justice Department to be going after their political rivals.
00:48:53.000I would say to your idea about the Independent Commission, a lot of states do this.
00:48:57.000The governor can issue a pardon, but it has to go through a panel to get approved.
00:49:00.000And I don't completely disagree with that.
00:49:01.000I do understand the original arguments that they were making for why the president would have this power.
00:49:06.000But then there is an interesting point about, show me the man and I'll show you the crime.
00:49:40.000How do you solve for that we know powerful individuals have utilized the office for financial gain corruptly, but we also don't want an abuse of the DOJ to go after people for political reasons?
00:49:53.000Well, that's one of Trump's promises that he made is he's like, the law fair's over.
00:49:57.000And that's why he's really not, doesn't seem to be wanting to push any of these investigations on any of his political adversaries.
00:50:04.000So maybe that could be the way to reset it.
00:50:06.000Listen, you did all this horrible stuff to me, and I almost died, and I was assassinated, or almost assassinated, and we don't know anything about that.
00:50:16.000But maybe that's his way of trying to heal.
00:50:22.000I think people, if he restrains from that, in my view, that would be a credit to him.
00:50:28.000But one way to go after this, Tim, is I think podcasts, and the media, and X, and TikTok.
00:50:36.000I have the smallest of things that people think may be a conflict of interest, and there are TikTok videos and Instagrams all over the place, right?
00:50:44.000And, you know, it can be annoying because everyone now in America has the baseline assumption that every politician must be a lying, corrupt person, and that we've got to fix because that's not the case.
00:50:56.000But the fact is that it is much harder to get away with stuff today.
00:51:00.000And we may not need a criminal fix on it.
00:51:03.000We may need more transparency in media so that you...
00:51:05.000You don't have independent media, so you don't have a legacy media protecting people.
00:51:09.000When you say that, because of your stance on the Hunter Biden censorship, I think you really mean it, and I'm very glad to hear, because I think that more transparency is largely the answer.
00:51:24.000We have systems in place where, you know...
00:51:27.000People are held accountable through elections.
00:51:29.000We have checks and balances in our Constitution.
00:51:53.000Trump shuts down immigration app dashing migrants' hopes of entering the U.S. One of the viral stories that's been going around is an image of a video of a woman who's breaking down in tears because she will now not be allowed into the United States.
00:52:06.000There was a journalist who posted this, but it's always something like that.
00:52:10.000There's no video of the cartel members with rifles running away, the drug traffickers or the child traffickers.
00:52:16.000It's always going to be the humanitarian crisis.
00:52:20.000Where it's a child crying and a person saying, oh no, the child's crying, quick burn the Constitution.
00:52:25.000The joke being, when the press comes out with this sad sympathy story, or even someone like Ocasio-Cortez says, these poor asylum seekers, it's ignoring the other side of that coin, which is the evil we are trying to stop.
00:52:38.000So I would say I largely know the opinions, I could guess.
00:52:42.000Everybody here, that their opinions are largely going to be in favor of this, but Congressman Conn, I'm curious what you think about the shutdown of the border and the immigration app.
00:52:50.000Look, there's no doubt that we needed a more secure border, and I'm not going to defend that the process was messed up and that people were coming here without the legal way.
00:53:05.000I mean, my parents came as immigrants.
00:53:17.000And the Democratic Party does need to be clear about that.
00:53:21.000And it's factual that a lot of people came in an illegal way under the Biden presidency.
00:53:29.000That said, I believe that this country is also a humane country and that when people are coming with legitimate cases, either of asylum...
00:53:38.000Or in my view, if they want to come and work here and make money here and send it back to their families or go back to their families, I think there should be a process for that or if they're fleeing for persecution.
00:53:50.000And I don't think just shutting it down is the right way.
00:53:54.000By the way, if you shut it down in a port of entry, they're probably more likely to come in a non-port of entry way.
00:54:00.000So it's an issue that we need a secure border, but I still believe...
00:54:05.000That there needs to be a humanity to allowing us home, so I don't support sort of a blanket.
00:54:15.000No, I mean, so we talk, and I don't want to go too down this road, but we talk a little bit about race, and I like to think, you know, I... I'm descended from two groups that were not considered white until very recently, Irish and Belarusian Jewish.
00:56:36.000I don't have the view that every single person who came here in an undocumented way should have mass deportation of 11 million.
00:56:42.000I do have the view that if you're convicted of a violent offense or a sex offense that you should be deported.
00:56:48.000Is that ultimately, and I don't want to misrepresent your argument here, I guess wait until they commit a crime against an American citizen and then deport them after they've committed a violent crime?
00:57:28.000Any unlawfully present individual in the United States who has been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting must be detained by the Department of Homeland Security.
00:57:41.000It says under this bill, DHS must detain the individual who, one, has unlawfully present in the United States or does not possess necessary documents when applying for admission, or two, has been charged with, arrested for, convicted for, or admits to having committed acts.
00:58:03.000Connie here because it says, if you were to separate sections 1 and 2, and this is just a summary, so I'd have to go through it, but under the summary, you could read it as, under this bill, DHS must detain an individual who has been charged with, arrested, for, convicted of, or admits to having committed acts that constitute an essential element of burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.
00:58:40.000So my view is like, okay, you got a DACA kid, hypothetically, who's someone basically who's undocumented because their parents came here, grew up here.
00:58:47.000They go out, they go, they have a DUI, they commit shoplifting.
00:58:52.000If they're arrested at the moment of...
00:59:27.000Her daughter is studying for med school in Southern California.
00:59:30.000She drives down every day once a month and drives back the same day because she can't afford a hotel, because she's underpaid as a dental hygienist.
01:00:12.000I mean, there's a growing faction on the right who opposes all immigration, period.
01:00:17.000I'm not part of that group, I think, immigration, when it is rightly tailored and welcomes the right people who actually love this country and want to follow our laws.
01:00:27.000And the number one way that you know if somebody loves this country and wants to follow our laws or doesn't is if they're following the law when they first enter the country.
01:01:59.000And first, I just want to say on the ACLU and Center for Market Progress, those groups are, in my view, constructive.
01:02:05.000I'm not saying I agree with all their policy, but I didn't want people to think that I was saying that they're one of the groups that don't matter because I do work with them on civil liberties issues and policy.
01:02:15.000But your broader point is I think that if you have my view that America is going to become the first truly cohesive multiracial democracy in the world, that no other nation has ever done this, and this is something truly remarkable about America, I don't think having an influx of those who are undocumented I don't think having an influx of those who are undocumented coming to America is helping that I think it has created resentment.
01:02:40.000And so if you're telling me that we need to do a better job of securing the border and having a process and...
01:02:48.000Insuring Americans, who I believe, given my own upbringing in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in a 99% white community when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, I believe Americans are fundamentally decent.
01:03:11.000But you're right that that always gets caught up because we Democrats say we want a fix of the border, but we also want a path to citizenship and a place for asylum.
01:03:21.000The Republicans say, no, we don't want that part.
01:03:23.000You guys aren't serious about a border fix.
01:03:26.000My view is maybe there's going to be, we had Biden, now we're going to have Trump.
01:03:29.000I think he may overreach the other way, and maybe eventually we're going to get a path forward on this where 80% of Americans are.
01:03:36.000Yeah, I really feel like a lot of Americans have shifted on this issue just because of how out of control it was the last four years.
01:03:42.000I mean, I'll talk to people that are pretty moderate that are just like almost saying, hey, just close down everything.
01:03:47.000Like, we need a five-year pause because this is out of control.
01:03:49.000That was the worst border crisis in American history.
01:03:51.000You have people that enter the country, they're unvetted, they just cruise on in, you know, and we have no clue who they are.
01:03:57.000You end up with situations where Americans get murdered.
01:04:00.000And that's why a lot of people are up in arms when they hear stuff like this, where it's like, oh, hey, the thing is, We don't want to enforce the laws, the position.
01:04:08.000But we will enforce the law once somebody's inevitably murdered, and then we'll deport them, even though we're not actually going to deport them.
01:04:16.000We're going to put them in jail, and then taxpayers have to pay for them to be in prison for the rest of their life.
01:04:21.000It's fair to say that the past four years have really done a lot to, I guess, maybe radicalize the average American.
01:05:08.000Those kind of things were looked at positively by the American people.
01:05:13.000And now it's gotten to the point where, like I said, 70% of the American people are okay with things that would have been almost shocking to most people.
01:05:22.000Ten years ago, the idea of rounding up people, the idea of deporting people like that, what used to be really, really...
01:05:28.000Majority of Hispanic Americans as well.
01:05:30.000Yeah, it used to be something that would make your average American blanch, and now they're like, build the wall and just go and round them up.
01:05:43.000We have zero tolerance for illegal immigration because we have people who are good, that we want to come to this country, who want to raise families and go to school, who are trying desperately to apply the legal way.
01:06:14.000When you allow people, Chinese nationals, African, from African nations, fly to Brazil and then come up to the southern border, and then we as a country say, ah, but we have this person who's here illegally who's a good worker.
01:06:28.000We're telling everybody who's trying to do the right thing that they don't matter.
01:06:33.000But then we have to create pathways, in my view, for people to be able to do that legally.
01:06:37.000I mean, what George W. Bush was trying to do.
01:06:39.000He was saying that, you know, you can come here, you can work.
01:06:42.000You could get paid a higher wage, not be exploited like some are, and abused on an H-1B or abused because of your immigration status.
01:06:53.000And then many of those folks would go back.
01:06:56.000I mean, look, there are a lot of people, obviously, who want to come to America for economic reasons.
01:07:01.000Some of them are now coming illegally.
01:07:04.000And there is a way to have folks come legally in a way that's going to benefit.
01:07:13.000But you have to punish them, otherwise you send the message.
01:07:17.000Well, let's take a look at the Bay Area specifically where, and correct me if I'm wrong, because you would know this better than me, but the story was that they were no longer enforcing shoplifting under a certain number.
01:07:42.000We've had two new mayors come in, Matt Mahan in San Jose, Dan Lurie in San Francisco, and they both ran on common sense public safety.
01:07:49.000But the point is, when you say, if you break the law, there's a tolerance we have for the crime, the crime skyrockets to the point where the city panics.
01:08:02.000If you say there's a certain degree of illegal immigration we will tolerate and protect, it's going to skyrocket.
01:08:08.000And then you're going to get the Donald Trump backlash.
01:08:09.000I imagine it's fair to say that there are probably a significantly fewer amount of people that decided to leave for the southern border today than there were six weeks ago.
01:08:22.000During his speech today that Donald Trump might have used his emergency powers to declare an invasion.
01:08:28.000And I think that that's the way that it would have to be to do the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, because that act says that we need to be either in war or in invasion, and then you can apprehend, restrain, secure, and remove the...
01:08:43.000So we do have this, the way USA Today describes it, Trump to declare border emergency to, quote, repel forms of invasion.
01:08:53.000So if that's the case, if he did declare an invasion, that still needs congressional affirmation.
01:08:58.000So you guys would have to make a joint resolution or do something just regarding the Constitution, Article 4, Section 4, that he needs to have Congress to kind of back him up on this invasion.
01:09:08.000He can declare it with his emergency powers, but it still needs the affirmation from Congress to say, Yes, but then I'm thinking of the AUMF, which is what they declared after 9-11.
01:09:22.000So I don't know if that comes into effect now because that's not constitutional, but I don't know if it comes into effect now because it's an invasion.
01:09:35.000I don't know all the details of the constitutional law.
01:09:39.000My view on the secure border and why, if you have Democrats who aren't going to...
01:09:42.000Support declaring it as an invasion is just that we do have a view that people who have legitimate asylum claims and legitimate claims should have a process.
01:10:13.000But the fact that there are so many Americans in this country who have had opioid crisis, jobs leave, economic dislocation, no prosperity, declining wages, in my view, is not because of the southern border.
01:10:29.000That is not the reason that that's happened.
01:10:31.000That's happened because we outsourced our jobs to Mexico.
01:10:35.000Because we outsourced our jobs to China, because we got a $1 trillion trade deficit, while China has a $1 trillion trade surplus.
01:11:23.000Gen Z can't afford a place to live and these illegal immigrants are given hotels in New York.
01:11:28.000Do you see how it would be Yeah, I mean, this was the mistake of the left, that we thought globalization somehow was going to lead to this multiracial democracy and the world would all get along and four countries would come up.
01:11:44.000And the reality is a lot of people got left out.
01:12:09.000If you have my goal, which is let's have what Frederick Douglass talked about, Martin Luther King talked about, a cohesive multiracial democracy.
01:12:18.000This was the wrong way about going about it.
01:12:21.000But the answer to that, I'm not saying there are not serious answers.
01:12:26.000On crime, on gangs, but we can't tell people in Johnstown, Pennsylvania or Paintsville, Kentucky that if we fix the border that their kids are going to have the American dream.
01:12:45.000You're right that a lot of prosecutors are taking it seriously now that the American people have woken up to the soft on crime, the dangers of being soft on crime.
01:12:55.000George Soros, though, just got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
01:12:59.000Like, the left, and I mean, I love hearing you talk with us because you're part of the left that I like, and I wish more Democrats thought like you did.
01:13:09.000But the left, in the way that it pushes the elite's agendas, it brooks no dissent.
01:13:15.000And then you have these groups, like the Center for American Progress and the ACLU, that, you know, they may do some good things.
01:13:24.000Their perspective is the only perspective.
01:13:26.000And then they push it to the nth degree and you get a system that is welcoming.
01:13:32.000I mean, in this past administration, we had Border Patrol agents told not to refer to illegal aliens as he or she until they knew their preferred pronouns.
01:13:42.000That's what they were being told in the middle of a border crisis.
01:13:47.000The worst border crisis in American history.
01:13:52.000With all respect, like, I talk about the Southern Poverty Law Center, which I think is the worst example of this, which, by the way, did really great work when it first started.
01:14:02.000But then it started comparing mainstream conservatives and Christians to the Ku Klux Klan.
01:14:07.000There was a supply to demand issue with them.
01:14:11.000Do you condemn the Southern Poverty Law Center?
01:14:13.000I don't know if I condemn comparing Christians to the...
01:14:22.000And I think my party has to recognize that we have to respect people who may have different cultural, religious, social views as us, and that too many people in this country view the fact that we look down on them, that there's condescension.
01:14:38.000And that's a big, big problem in the party.
01:14:41.000That has to be fixed, and I think will be fixed.
01:14:43.000But, you know, one thing that Trump shows, and I... I think it's such a dumb idea, in my view, to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
01:14:54.000But here's what I'll give Donald Trump.
01:14:56.000He throws out a lot of ideas that some of them are really dumb, and he just keeps on saying, okay, I'm going to try something new.
01:15:03.000And one of the things the American people want is just out-of-the-box thinking.
01:15:06.000One of the things the Democrats have to get out of, which is what Bernie Sanders did, right?
01:15:11.000He said, Medicare for all, or we're going to get there.
01:15:13.000And the whole party said, oh, you can't do that.
01:15:17.000That doesn't fit within our think tank, Washington Post editorial board opinion.
01:15:23.000And I think the next generation of politicians have got to be willing to think outside the box, say things that could be a gift, say things that may be dumb.
01:15:33.000FDR did a lot of things that were really dumb, but he got the New Deal, which I view as an extraordinary achievement.
01:15:38.000But you've got to have a sense of not being just conventional cardboard.
01:15:44.000And I do think that's been a problem in our party.
01:15:47.000Do you think he was just poking fun at the president of Mexico, though?
01:15:49.000And by the way, it is the Gulf of America, by the way.
01:16:01.000I don't want to go with the stupid part, but the out-of-the-box I'll give you.
01:16:05.000But that's the bureaucratic group thing that you're talking about, is really the centerpiece of...
01:16:10.000What I wrote this book about, because I think when you get that on one side that tends to have the media echo chamber, tends to have a lot of the elite institutions following it, edging out people who have alternative points of view, you often end up with really horrible policies on the ground.
01:16:29.000And that's what I think we saw these past four years.
01:16:31.000We saw the weaponization of law enforcement because the Biden administration brought the Southern Poverty Law Center in to educate people.
01:16:40.000And on domestic terrorism, according to the SPLC president.
01:16:44.000But you saw, you know, every radical idea that's being championed by people like George Soros was embraced by the bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy still tends to favor those ideas.
01:16:59.000I grew up admiring the Southern Poverty Law Center.
01:17:01.000I'll look into your points, but I just, you know, from my perspective, they did a lot of work on anti-poverty and work in the gym.
01:17:09.000They've largely been ideologically captured over the last, what, decade or so?
01:17:14.000Yes, and they did really great work when they started.
01:17:16.000They did wonderful work when they started, but then once they did such good work, there's less of a need for them to be there, so they almost had to have people create.
01:17:28.000and demand issue when it came to that yeah when it came to the when it came to the southern poverty law center and it's a lot like some politicians who run on run on problems that they want to fix but then if they fix them then they don't have a platform to run on anymore so the whole deal is getting it out there getting the word out there but never truly fixing it all the way that way they can continue to have their power and i think southern poverty law center might have kind of been in that whether they were ideologically captured or whether they they had malicious content i i don't know
01:17:55.000my first book is all about that called making hate pay the corruption of the southern poverty law center i I can send you a copy.
01:18:01.000Nonprofits in general, they can't go out of business.
01:18:04.000They become addicted to their cause, and solving the cause would end them.
01:18:08.000And so what I find is that smaller nonprofits do a great job.
01:18:11.000There's somebody who actually cares about something, they want to raise money, and they do their job.
01:18:15.000And then there are larger ones that claim they have a mission.
01:18:30.000And said that they started Greenpeace to target nuclear testing.
01:18:34.000And then all of a sudden, they opposed nuclear energy, which was totally different.
01:18:38.000And that actually could help offset carbon emissions.
01:18:41.000And they became very much just generic environmentalism.
01:18:45.000Because that was the brand and that's what signed up members that made money for the machine.
01:18:49.000I don't question that some non-profits go too far and that there's bureaucracy.
01:18:56.000But don't you think that there's something about like today's inauguration and I saw up on the platform, by the way, all these tech multi-billionaires from my district who were not Trump supporters in 2016 or 2020 or 2024 in the primary.
01:19:13.000And I'm thinking, what about People who don't go into sort of starting companies and entrepreneurs, but are non-profits on the left or the right, or all the people who voted for Donald Trump who weren't actually in the room because they couldn't buy the $15,000, $20,000, or didn't contribute a million dollars to the inauguration.
01:19:34.000Part of me is sort of like, the real problem in this country is not the kid who says, okay, I'm going to work for a non-profit the rest of my life.
01:19:41.000How do we have all this outsized influence of wealth in this country in terms of the politics?
01:19:46.000I think it's because it largely correlates with merit.
01:20:10.000That's why they say wealth lasts only three generations.
01:20:13.000It's not absolutely true, but it tends to be because the grandkids of a wealthy individual don't know what it takes to build the machine and maintain it.
01:21:09.000Who's worth billions of dollars, but for the life of them, they can make crackers, but they don't know how to buy politicians.
01:21:14.000And then there can be some guy who's got a podcast with millions of followers who doesn't know how to sell ads, but can convince a million people to bombard a senator with emails and letters that changes policy.
01:21:26.000When I see that room today, I mean, you know, I interview thousands.
01:21:30.000Last year, I probably interviewed like thousands of people, right?
01:21:33.000And I interview all different types of people, rich people, people that are in inner city, whatever it may be.
01:21:38.000And a lot of people, it doesn't matter if they're left or right, a lot of people look at Donald Trump and they're just like, what do they always say?
01:21:43.000What's something that they like about him?
01:22:00.000A lot of the American, you know, the working class Americans see Donald Trump and his positions as more of looking after them.
01:22:08.000And so, you know, I guess to Tim's point, yeah, you can have a lot of billionaires in there, and perhaps those people aren't relatable, but the movement is.
01:22:19.000More so than what we're seeing from the left.
01:22:20.000I think that's just what I hear from a lot of people on the street.
01:22:23.000It's one of the most common things I hear.
01:22:24.000We do have some relatively breaking news from the last hour.
01:22:42.000NPR reports, President Trump signed an executive order Monday seeking to hit pause on the law banning TikTok and provide a liability shield to business partners on the popular video app.
01:22:52.000According to the order, the law will be paused for 75 days and companies that work with TikTok will not be liable for doing so.
01:22:59.000Off, right off the bat, I don't believe that the president has the authority to do that.
01:24:04.000With 170 million users in the United States, if TikTok decides to push an algorithm that creates a 51% weight towards supporting China taking our jobs, that's going to affect an entire generation where they're going to vote on behalf of Chinese interests.
01:24:19.000Well, I'm opposed to, we can have a law that says you go to jail if you're an executive of a company here and there's any evidence, a shred of evidence of algorithmic interference by the CCP or a foreign adversary.
01:24:32.000Or if you're any company, data brokers or social media, and you sell or transfer any of Americans' data to the CCP.
01:24:39.000But I think singling out TikTok with 170 million people, It was a mistake.
01:24:46.000And I also think, I have a lot of confidence.
01:24:48.000People say, well, China bans the apps.
01:24:50.000Yeah, I'd rather that they have our apps in there.
01:24:52.000And Elon just tweeted out about, why can't you get X into China?
01:25:38.000We could have the subpoena, the CEO. We could have a law that says you need to ensure that the TikTok operational in the United States is not going to have any connection to the CCP. I will say that's impossible.
01:25:50.000Well, I mean, that's basically what this bill is, to be honest.
01:25:55.000Forcing divestiture, and there's no evidence in the public record, because everyone is saying they can go on the public record, there's no evidence that the CCP has either gotten a significant amount of American data, or that the CCP is telling TikTok, hey, let's make sure that there's suppression of Tibet or the Uyghurs.
01:26:19.000The Axios report, which kicked this off, we talked about this the other day, was that shortly after October 7th, with 123,000 posts...
01:26:28.000Stand with Palestine, there were only 11 million views, but within the span of only a few days, it jumped to 285 million views with 87,000 posts.
01:26:37.000A lesser amount of posts, some 26 times the amount of views, was indicative of an algorithmic change to promote pro-Palestine content.
01:26:43.000But there were also a lot of young people who were pro-Palestine in this country.
01:26:46.000Except when October 7th happened, and there were 123,000 posts, nobody cared to watch it.
01:26:53.000So, in my experience with social media, having worked in this industry and built a company based around this, We, you know, I can look at an influencer and I can tell you if they're botting and if it's fake.
01:27:04.000I, along with many others, saw that data and instantly said, oh, that looks like an algorithm switch intentionally done by TikTok.
01:27:10.000Now, I'm not saying pro-Palestine, pro-Israel.
01:27:15.000I'm just saying that it looks like, as it pertains to a major component of U.S. foreign policy, TikTok made a decision.
01:27:20.000Well, and TikTok has also been promoting the sorts of causes that divide Americans more and that tend to enrich China.
01:27:29.000And beyond that, just the division is often the point of foreign countries meddling in the United States.
01:27:38.000Having the United States being divided and bickering with each other is good for China, it's good for Russia, it's good for our international rivals, whereas having the United States generally on the same page...
01:27:50.000Sure, but I'm not sure TikTok is doing it more than X in terms of the division.
01:27:55.000But we have recourse against X. And American companies, we can sue, we can subpoena, we can FOIA. And we have recourse against TikTok.
01:28:02.000They were doing the Texas project where they were keeping the data.
01:28:06.000And my sense is if Trump has a resolution to this, he's going to insist on enough American ownership.
01:28:15.000And he's going to insist on some mechanism that if there is evidence or any sense of suspicion that there is algorithmic interference from the Chinese party, that those folks could have criminal.
01:28:26.000So long as China has the ultimate authority over ByteDance and can claim any data that we don't have, the buck doesn't stop with us, it stops with them.
01:28:36.000Yeah, I don't think the storage really has any influence in that, does it?
01:28:39.000It's a completely separate thing from the algorithm, isn't it?
01:28:42.000I mean, Oracle doesn't call us shots on the...
01:28:54.000And the other is on the algorithmic interference, which is to say that you have to...
01:28:58.000you can have an affidavit for TikTok folks to say that their algorithm going forward is not going to have any changes recommended by anyone in the Chinese Communist Party.
01:29:09.000But then they could just do bad things outside of the Chinese Communist Party.
01:29:13.000Yeah, just trust them as far as you can throw them at that point.
01:29:35.000But they don't have the ability to demand a change in the algorithm.
01:29:41.000And if the U.S. made it a conditional that it's a crime here, then TikTok would have to shut down.
01:29:46.000What's your evidence that they don't have that authority?
01:29:50.000Or if they do, we can make it criminal for a U.S. executive to submit to the...
01:29:59.000I just don't understand in any capacity why we are saying, yes, China can have a mass media operation to 170 million people in the U.S. There's no argument for it.
01:30:13.000But I don't think it's Chinese control.
01:30:46.000I believe there's an Iranian network that's banned.
01:30:49.000So I don't think that the TikTok ban is that much of a different...
01:30:57.000I think the difference is it's a U.S. subsidiary, and if there was actually evidence that you pass a law saying if there's criminal liability, if there is interference by the Chinese party.
01:31:11.000Now, you may put TikTok in a situation that they have to shut down.
01:31:15.000The Chinese Communist Party is demanding to do something and the executives are facing criminal penalties in the United States.
01:31:20.000But I think we went to the solution of shutting it down.
01:31:25.000And I think a lot of people view it as, well, they're shutting it down because we're saying things on the app, whether it's on Palestine or whether it's anti-vaccine or whether it's speech that the establishment doesn't like.
01:31:37.000I mean, Donald Trump is very popular on that app.
01:31:39.000He was more popular than Kamala Harris.
01:31:40.000Only recently and only after he said he wanted to ban the app because it was biased and censorious.
01:31:47.000And we were on TikTok to tens of thousands of followers, two accounts, my personal one and the show, and we largely agreed.
01:31:53.000There's no argument for China to own any piece of mass media, no matter how big or small.
01:31:58.000We have to have mass media in our national interest.
01:32:00.000They banned us arbitrarily for breaking no rules.
01:32:02.000This clearly shows, in my opinion, that if you speak out against their interests, they will kick you off the platform.
01:32:22.000I mean, you shouldn't be censored from that platform.
01:32:24.000Well, the issue is we have researchers pointing out that in the app, for instance, they inject Java to keylog when you open links through the app.
01:32:35.000I should say the reporting states, maybe it's wrong, that they inject a keylogger.
01:32:41.000The evidence that we have of data collection means the only way I can really use that app is if I buy a brand new phone and do nothing with it, which is why we largely don't want to go near it.
01:32:51.000Now, we do know that American apps have CIA interests and things like that.
01:32:54.000But hey, if the CIA stole my info, I could FOIA request some of these things.
01:34:00.000The Democrats did not want to ban this until after October 7th, and we have this story from Axios, which we highlight all the time.
01:34:06.000It appears that there was an intentional change, and maybe it's not, but it appears, either because the algorithm does change or because someone changed it, it appears the algorithm changed to massively promote pro-Palestine content.
01:34:18.000Now, I am not saying, one way or the other, pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, I am saying that as soon as this happened, American foreign policy interests...
01:36:15.000Yeah, a lot of prominent conservatives have been hired to lobby on behalf of TikTok.
01:36:21.000There's a couple reasons I see for it.
01:36:22.000One, obviously getting a paycheck will sway a lot of people's motivations.
01:36:25.000I do see this masterful manipulative move that was just played where TikTok pretended to shut down and then pretended Trump brought him back.
01:36:59.000They decided they would shut down in protest, and the rumor was they wanted to shock 170 million Americans.
01:37:07.000And so they shut down with a message saying, due to U.S. law, we're shutting down, but hopefully Trump can save us.
01:37:12.000And then I think within a matter of hours, by the next day or whatever, they said, yay, Trump saved us, but Trump hadn't actually done anything.
01:37:20.000So why Trump may be advocating for TikTok now is, that move resulted in people like James Charles with 30-some-odd million followers saying begrudgingly, am I MAGA now?
01:37:42.000Perhaps Trump then later on says, my executive order didn't do anything anyway and we don't like TikTok.
01:37:47.000Perhaps he forces some kind of co-American investment so American interests are monitoring at the same time.
01:37:52.000But I think the lobbying played a role, the American interest investors played a role, and I think that they're all largely wrong, though I will acknowledge the masterful PR stunt that TikTok did was masterfully pulled off and hugely beneficial to Donald Trump.
01:38:08.000I also think that people like Jake Paul and all those other influencers that he was doing shows with, I think that they actually had an impact on Donald Trump as well, to be honest with you.
01:38:16.000And Donald Trump had come out and he said that he wanted a little bit of government into like maybe the solution is adding a little bit of government.
01:39:16.000And I do think it's fair to say that there should be enough U.S. control that you should have some redress if you're getting kicked off the platform, like you would on Axe or Facebook or any other social media platform.
01:39:29.000And so, you know, hopefully there's a resolution here that gets it in a better place.
01:39:35.000If China wants to remain involved, the algorithm must be open source and viewable by anybody, and there has to be direct recourse for censorship.
01:39:47.000So I think the companies should be, but I think as the law prescribes a foreign entity operating mass media, there's going to be certain limitations on that.
01:39:55.000I think, you know, we can look at Facebook X, YouTube, and say they're heavily biased, and they have been for a long time.
01:40:03.000And there are problems with government involvement, as Trump just signed this executive order, and we've had leaked documents, we've had the Twitter files, etc.
01:40:09.000It should be that Americans are allowed to argue with each other.
01:40:12.000If an American starts a company and says, this is my view and how I want to moderate so long as they're violating Section 230, I say, okay, fine.
01:40:19.000But we will challenge you because we want to make sure you're abiding by the law.
01:40:22.000If a foreign country, especially an adversary, wants to operate mass media in the United States, I say, you've got to be completely transparent.
01:40:29.000We get to see your code because we don't trust you.
01:40:32.000Americans trying to sway Americans and playing political games is what Americans do.
01:40:36.000China doing it to us is an act of war.
01:41:06.000They rushed to do it partly because of what you're saying.
01:41:09.000What was happening with the algorithmic amplification of pro-Palestinian voices?
01:41:16.000And again, I support the US-Israel relationship, but I think that was part of the motivation.
01:41:24.000Well, if China has this impact and can push back, I think the US government had to move quickly if they were going to do this at all.
01:41:34.000Because what we're already seeing, if our discussion is illustrative of anything, is that China is working both sides and trying to prevent this in any way that they can.
01:41:47.000Trump came into office and made waves because he said the United States is not going to be taken advantage of.
01:41:56.000One of the things we constantly saw under both Republican and Democratic administrations in the past was that the Yeah.
01:42:16.000instrument that, you know, you want something a little more tweaky and specific, which I appreciate.
01:42:23.000But sometimes you have to just go full bore, otherwise you're going to be taken advantage I think Trump got the politics on this right compared to our party.
01:42:39.000And that was telling all these auto workers and steel workers that we were basically fine with the jobs going to China.
01:42:45.000I'm not saying that there isn't an argument against blanket tariffs, but basically we're against tariffs, and we were for banning this app.
01:43:13.000So what he is doing, in my view, I have to look at it, is you can find that TikTok is in compliance with making a good faith effort to resolve the issue on divesture.
01:43:26.000And then the way divesture is defined is very technical, right?
01:43:30.000It doesn't mean it has to be a U.S. interest.
01:44:40.000And I think it's largely because they don't want to issue a declaration to their shareholders that we've decided to violate the TikTok ban because Trump said it'll be fine for a couple months.
01:44:48.000And I think their insurance companies told them, hey, if you decide to break the law, regardless of what Trump said, we're not going to insure you because that's risk on us.
01:45:03.000If you haven't already, my friends, would you kindly smash that like button, share the show with everyone you know, become a member over at TimCast.com.
01:45:11.000We're not going to have the members-only show tonight because it's inauguration night and there's too much going on, but we did film a behind-the-scenes Green Room episode.
01:45:18.000So if you want to see us hanging out behind the scenes talking about health, where we think all this stuff is going, I think we recorded for about a half an hour of behind-the-scenes conversation on a variety of issues.
01:45:28.000That'll be available on TimCast.com, so become a member to support our work and check that out.
01:45:32.000But let's read some of your Super Chats.
01:45:34.000We have this one from Just Cause I'm Free.
01:45:36.000He says, To echo a post of Rose from June 2021. Well, I'm not an oppositionist just for opposition.
01:45:56.000I wouldn't have shown up to the inauguration.
01:45:59.000And as my comments over the last hour and a half have said, there's places I've agreed with Trump, like the TikTok ban.
01:46:05.000So I'm going to try to call balls and strikes.
01:46:08.000Now, I'm a proud progressive Democrat.
01:46:29.000Now they have night vision capabilities or they sell them, which they have done, to enemies of the U.S. Well, I was opposed to this idea of an endless war in Afghanistan.
01:46:39.000Could we have gotten out in a way that was better planned and where 13 of our Marines didn't die?
01:46:47.000Yes, and that needs to be looked at, but I give President Biden courage for doing something that he knew was going to be politically risky and politically unpopular.
01:46:56.000That's why presidents don't pull out of these wars, because usually when you pull out of these wars, things sometimes go wrong, and you get the blame.
01:47:05.000Couldn't he have avoided that disaster by just using Bagram Air Base, which is much, much, much bigger compared to Kabul Airport?
01:47:15.000Sure, but I think the miscalculation in the administration was that the administration thought that the government was going to be stronger and last longer and that they were going to have more time.
01:47:28.000But my sense is these things, look, when you look at how we withdrew out of Vietnam under Gerald Ford, I mean, there were people who were, it was a mess.
01:47:42.000I'm just saying it's a tough call for a president.
01:47:45.000The easiest thing to do as a president is just let it be.
01:47:48.000I give Trump credit when he called for originally getting out of Afghanistan.
01:47:53.000I give Biden credit for actually pulling out, though I acknowledge that the actual evacuation had mistakes, and we've got to learn from it.
01:48:00.000Do you know about the Cheney Crow amendment?
01:48:05.000I don't remember the details, but I remember when it came up.
01:49:01.000There are two countries that are going to be competing for who leads the 21st century, us and China.
01:49:07.000And given all our imperfections in our democracy, our commitment to freedom, human rights, democracy, free enterprise, is far, far better than China's system.
01:49:20.000And when we withdraw from international organizations, we basically are saying, China, why don't you take it over and why don't you build more alliances?
01:49:28.000And I'd rather America be the leader of the free world than ceding these to China.
01:49:33.000Now, if we want to push for reform, fine, but withdrawal, I don't think, is in our interest.
01:49:38.000Well, the difficulty is the strongest way to push for reform is to withdraw, because these agencies want the United States there.
01:49:47.000They get a lot of United States funding.
01:49:50.000Most of the global organizations are reliant on us to one degree or another.
01:49:55.000So by withdrawing, Trump sends a message that we don't trust you.
01:50:01.000And I think the WHO is one of the key organizations that really needs to hear that message.
01:50:06.000After what they did during COVID, after what they're doing, they're pushing.
01:50:09.000know this may be an issue you and I disagree on, but gender ideology...
01:50:16.000is the biggest scandal in healthcare right now because we have doctors who are pushing in the name of public health and in the name of setting someone's head right pushing people to change their bodies physically that can't be reversed and then when people like Chloe Cole come out and say oh I was abused.
01:50:43.000I think it's fair to say that the United States membership to any type of organization or any kind of treaty, it has to be that what the organization is doing is something that the American people agrees with and finds...
01:51:00.000And when you're talking about the type of transition surgeries or transition surgeries, I say with air quotes, I think those are extremely unpopular with most Americans.
01:51:10.000I think that most Americans reject the concept of the idea that you can go from being a man to a woman.
01:51:17.000It's one thing to say you want to live your life as something and you ask people to accept that and say, would you please use the...
01:51:24.000These pronouns that I prefer, it's totally different to demand that people believe what you believe.
01:51:30.000And that's something that the World Health Organization has been essentially doing.
01:51:35.000And so I think that it's perfectly reasonable for the U.S. to pull out of organizations that we as a nation disagree with, whether it be the World Health Organization or any other international organization out there, even up to and including the U.N. and NATO. If their policies don't align with what's best for the United States, I think it's reasonable for the American people to say, we want out.
01:51:58.000I do believe in basic transgender rights and treating people with dignity, and we just disagree on that.
01:52:06.000But I also believe that we need to have these conversations, difficult conversations.
01:52:10.000I went on Megyn Kelly's podcast for a half hour where she was telling me why my position was wrong.
01:52:16.000And I was trying to say where I was coming from with people.
01:52:21.000But I don't think either way that that's, in my opinion, reason to pull out of an organization.
01:52:26.000I get that if there is something so, so offensive to the United States, and maybe for some people it is, I doubt that...
01:52:34.000I would be surprised if there was a majority of Americans who on just that issue wanted to pull out.
01:52:39.000How would you define transgender rights?
01:52:42.000I would say that we need to treat every person with basic dignity and that there are people who identify with a different gender than they are born at in birth and that we should let them and their families.
01:53:07.000Can I play this clip for you based on what you just said?
01:53:22.000When you don't have that watchful eye, they tend to go back to old patterns.
01:53:27.000I have woken Jazz out of a dead sleep and taken the dilator and put the lubrication on it and said, here, you take this and you put it in your vagina.
01:53:47.000So just to clarify, this sounds like...
01:53:50.000Jazz Jennings was a child, I think seven years old, when it was declared for Jazz that Jazz was transgender, put on puberty blockers, given multiple surgeries.
01:53:58.000And hearing now that an adult human male who has gone through these surgeries is resisting the medical treatments, but the individual's mother on television says, if you don't do it, I will force this into your body and wring your neck.
01:54:11.000This is mainstream, televised, gender-affirming care.
01:54:15.000When we talk about parents getting to decide what they do to their kids, we're talking about that.
01:55:25.000Well, my understanding of the few transgender families that I have taught kids who are transgender and parents is that they often have such agonizing decisions.
01:55:35.000I mean, usually if someone's kid is transgender, they think it's a huge challenge in society.
01:55:41.000And they are the most reluctant to have surgery.
01:55:50.000And so I'm not saying there are not cases, and outlier cases, or I don't know the statistics, but my own experience in terms of talking to kids who are transgender, they often get bullied.
01:56:06.000Their parents are often, often worried about their safety.
01:56:08.000And I just think we're a compassionate nation.
01:56:10.000Let's, you know, let's have some space for people to...
01:56:16.000Well, gender dysphoria can be real and the solution can be mental health direction, not chopping body parts off.
01:56:23.000Desistance rates, the rate at which a child will stop being trans, is upwards of 65 to 90 percent.
01:56:30.000And suicidality for transgender youth is around, I believe it's 40 or some odd percent.
01:56:34.000That would mean that there is a greater probability of reducing suicidality by doing nothing.
01:56:41.000Despite this data, we have large industries and television shows advocating that children be put through this process.
01:56:47.000That is, for these families with agonizing decisions, typically if the child just goes through puberty, they have a 60-90% chance of coming into their body and being happy with it.
01:56:58.000But if you then affirm them, their suicidality skyrockets to some high 40%.
01:57:05.000That's increasing suicide in children.
01:57:07.000When Big Health and the NIH have suppressed the studies showing this.
01:57:13.000Everywhere doing a comprehensive view of the studies.
01:57:35.00080% of girls who believe that they're a boy were sexually abused.
01:57:39.00044% of boys who believe that they're a girl turn out to be gay.
01:57:44.000So what they're doing is, and then it comes down to other horrendous statistics, 30% of children in foster care believe that they're trans.
01:57:54.000So it comes down to children who are looking for a community, children who are confused about their sexuality, children who don't feel safe in their bodies.
01:58:00.000And instead of saying, no, you're perfect, we love you just the way that you are, they say, no, you are right.
01:58:06.000You are actually a boy, and we need to change everything about you.
01:58:10.000And this doesn't fix what's internally the matter with them.
01:58:12.000This is why the suicide rate continues to stay so high.
01:58:15.000We do have very limited time, but I wanted to give the congressman the last word on this.
01:58:18.000Well, I would just say, we've been talking about family rights, parental rights, individual rights.
01:58:23.000I think that these decisions are best made by the family with the consent, of course, of the person.
01:58:36.000I don't think that there should be censorship in the medical opinion.
01:58:39.000But the people I know who are transgender, and I do know some in my district, you know, I could tell you that they are transgender.
01:58:46.000They believe that they were born in a different body than their identity.
01:58:52.000And I just think, I also think, one point out of this, I mean, it's, I think everyone would concede as less than 1% of Americans still today.
01:59:01.000And it has torn, this issue is tearing our country apart.
01:59:05.000Yeah, because where are the guardrails?
01:59:07.000The problem isn't the actual person who suffers with gender dysphoria abusing women in women's shelters.
01:59:14.000The problem is the man claiming to be transgender.
01:59:16.000It's the guy who rapes somebody in prison because he was put in a women's prison.
01:59:21.000And my book, I mean, not to go crazy on this, but my book lays out how the Human Rights Campaign Pushed the federal government to go whole hog on this.
02:01:49.000For those that don't know, the green room show is when we record behind the scenes before the show starts, so you can watch us hanging out.
02:01:54.000We talk for about a half an hour about a wide range of issues as we are getting everything set up, because, like I mentioned, we do have a hard stop for the space that we're in.
02:02:00.000You can follow me on X and Instagram at TimCast.