00:02:35.000The DOJ has arrested illegal immigrants, Mexican national, a Trinidad and Tobago national for voter fraud in Pennsylvania.
00:02:45.000The midterm war is heating up, and the question is will the right make a procedural victory in this election?
00:02:53.000To be honest, it's a question of will they actually just get the votes?
00:02:56.000There's a diesel shortage, gas is up, Trump's approval rating is hovering in aggregate around 40%, maybe slightly down.
00:03:05.000And the prediction markets are saying Democrats are going to obliterate the GOP.
00:03:09.000But with the DOJ going after voter fraud with these moves on the post office, whether that actually works or not, there's a question of whether or not Republican strategy is targeting the procedure of how the vote happens.
00:03:22.000Now, of course, Democrats are calling that voter fraud itself and suppressing the vote.
00:04:35.000So, Day Jobs, I run a venture capital firm, but I'm currently here because I'm in a film called Bucks County, USA.
00:04:42.000Bucks County, USA is about political division in the United States, done by two Academy Award winning directors, Robert May and Barry Levinson.
00:04:51.000And the film follows the friendship of my daughter and her best friend, who don't agree on much and whose parents are political rivals.
00:04:58.000And it's about their friendship in spite of the fact that we're political rivals.
00:05:01.000I think it's a very timely story in the environment that you're describing.
00:05:05.000You know, just to the chagrin of so many people who watch this show, I'm friends with Brian Shapiro.
00:05:11.000I don't know if you know who he is, but man, he is one of the most hated liberal lefty guys.
00:05:50.000Yeah, okay, we got to stop the crazies.
00:05:52.000Listen, if you want to have a bar where your message is fine, but sending death threats to the bar owner, those people, these are not real people in the real world.
00:05:59.000I know they exist, but they shouldn't be presumed to be the majority or in control.
00:06:04.000So we got to have these conversations.
00:08:39.000Unless there's a dramatic, dramatic change in the United States before the election, you know, we're just over a month and a half away or a month and a week away.
00:09:01.000How many people are they facilitating?
00:09:04.000You know, what does facilitating mean?
00:09:05.000Does it mean that they're organizing illegals to vote?
00:09:08.000Does it mean that they're organizing the hundreds?
00:09:10.000Does it mean that there are more people like them that are organizing as well?
00:09:14.000Um, so that I think is an important question, but I don't know that these four individuals matter.
00:09:20.000But what's downstream from them, uh, possibly could, you know?
00:09:24.000Yeah, I mean, this is a tough one because okay, it's great we got four charges in election fraud, but you know, it probably requires a smoking gun with a volume of smoke that looks like a wildfire, uh, to bag people for this.
00:09:39.000Because I mean, you know, California, how many videos have we seen now and exposes on illegals voting in California?
00:09:45.000Granted, they're probably voting at the state level.
00:09:48.000But still, you know, without states forking over their election data, it's probably pretty hard to pin down anybody on this.
00:09:57.000And especially when, you know, Democrat states, they're not going to do everything they can to prevent the federal government from looking at anything.
00:10:04.000They've made it, you know, I think that California's passed legislation that says that the feds aren't allowed to look or something along those lines.
00:10:11.000So they're going to do everything they can to stonewall.
00:10:29.000To the right, the left is entertaining non citizen voting, allowing non citizens to vote or to come in the country, and they're not trying to stop it.
00:10:37.000And you're not going to convince either liberal or conservative, staunch liberal conservative, that their worldview is incorrect.
00:10:45.000So, how do we even navigate this space?
00:10:48.000If in the end Republicans end up somehow winning, the narrative is going to be among liberals that it was this it was intimidating minorities, it was manipulating the results, the Supreme Court was in on it.
00:11:01.000When the Republicans lose, you're going to get a ton of conservatives saying, oh, yeah, of course, Trump lost.
00:11:05.000He's the most popular president, but it's because illegals are voting.
00:11:09.000This is the narrative that we've already had for a decade.
00:11:12.000I wonder if that's actually going to pan out.
00:11:15.000I think a lot of Republicans are aware of how disappointed the electorate is with the Republicans are with Donald Trump.
00:11:24.000Is that why the Republicans left Congress early and aren't doing their jobs?
00:11:28.000I have no idea why the Republicans left early and aren't doing their jobs.
00:11:33.000I think that the, well, I mean, it's because that's what Congress does.
00:11:36.000But the, you know, most people in the U.S., you know, if you go by polls and stuff, they're really pretty uptight about the war in Iran and they're uptight about the gas prices.
00:11:47.000I think that they would be like, well, you know, he said he was going to do this stuff and he didn't.
00:11:51.000And, you know, there's an element of truth.
00:11:53.000Well, let me ask you, Paul, do you think this, like, I guess I might be a little blackpilly to point this out, but it feels like we're not mending.
00:12:02.000Like, The results of this election are just going to be acrimonious.
00:12:07.000Look, Richard Barris, if you guys know him, a very good pollster, he was at the premiere party that we did for the Bucks County USA show, and we went through some of the data in advance.
00:12:17.000I'm a classically trained data scientist.
00:12:18.000My wife, who's in the film, she's been a Google employee for 23 years on their data team.
00:12:25.000It looks very bad for us, and Richard will tell you that.
00:12:28.000But I'll tell you one of the things we did learn in Pennsylvania at the last election there's a lot of stuff that isn't so much.
00:12:34.000Outright illegal, but really pushes the border.
00:12:37.000Like we saw a lot of mail in ballots once the rules changed in Pennsylvania that got sent to a house and magically they then got dispersed to a set of people like the kids who were in college who you're not supposed to be able to do that with.
00:12:49.000So there's a lot of stuff that really can tip the balance when it's close.
00:12:54.000Well, I suppose it doesn't matter then.
00:12:58.000Well, I mean, and this kind of goes to look, this election frauds occurring in our elections, et cetera.
00:13:03.000This is a top priority for Republican voters, obviously.
00:13:06.000And I think the evidence, I don't know if it's in the stack.
00:13:08.000We had Tim Mellon today, who's a mega donor to the Republican Party.
00:13:13.000Last election cycle, he ponied up $200 million.
00:13:16.000I believe he was the guy that bailed out Congress when there was the government shutdown and they weren't going to pay the military.
00:13:22.000I think Tim Mellon was the one who stepped up.
00:13:25.000If you go to his Wikipedia, the last picture they have of him is from the 70s.
00:13:30.000But he's from the Carnegie Mellon, the Mellon part of the Carnegie Mellon family, Gilded Age, billionaire, et cetera.
00:13:36.000Anyway, $200 million what he ponied up last, and this is what he's planning on donating this cycle.
00:13:40.000He revised it all the way down to $5 million.
00:13:42.000So he's cut $195 million out of the purse of the Republican Party.
00:13:49.000He cited specifically frustration that the SAVE Act didn't pass.
00:13:52.000So, yes, Republican voters are obviously upset about Iran.
00:13:57.000But additionally, as much as this is on the Trump administration for the Iran war, a majority of this, I mean, we're talking about midterms, we're talking about electing Republican congressmen, is frustration that this Republican Congress can't get anything done.
00:14:11.000Something as popular as the SAVE Act, something that should be a home run, doesn't get passed.
00:14:15.000Now, it's not just voters complaining on Twitter or even maybe not showing up at a high enough turnout.
00:14:20.000It's quite literally mega donors closing the checkbook on Republicans and Tim Mellon putting his money where his mouth is.
00:14:33.000I'm like, we get on a podcast and we're like, why won't the Save Act pass?
00:14:36.000But I mean, there is something to that because that really does erode Republican voters' faith in Congress.
00:14:44.000If you can't get basic stuff like this across, because this kind of stuff pisses people off.
00:14:47.000Being okay, it's four people, but I think everyone can read between the lines here.
00:14:52.000This is, you know, probably tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even of fraudulent votes being cast in this country, and we can only get four pinned down.
00:15:01.000Additionally, you could probably just solve this problem with the Save Act, we can't get that passed.
00:15:05.000So everyone's like, well, what's the point of voting?
00:15:07.000You know, if I'm just going to get outvoted by someone that shouldn't even be in the country, you know, a lot of people are thinking along those lines.
00:15:12.000Yeah, like obviously, Donald Trump's going to take the brunt of the heat because he's the president, but I do wonder how many people are going to say, are actually saying, you know, if they can't do it, if they're Congress won't do the things that I want them to do, that I've voted for them to do, or I elected them to do.
00:15:30.000Save Act being one of the biggest things that has popular support on both the right and the left.
00:15:37.000And most Americans say this is a no brainer.
00:15:40.000If they refuse to do that, maybe there is a portion of the electorate that's like, well, it is Congress that's a problem.
00:15:46.000And considering this is a midterm, which has historically lower turnout than the presidential election, maybe they're just like, well, there's no point in voting.
00:15:54.000For the Republicans, because they won't even do the simple things that I want.
00:15:58.000And there's something, too, as well about like getting what you want from the GOP.
00:16:02.000So, you know, okay, voters, as voters, we're frustrated with something.
00:16:07.000Our main reason why we vote Republican at this point, certainly in a midterm, is not voting for the Republicans, but simply to keep Democrats out of power, right?
00:17:42.000Because, I mean, let's just put it like this when you've got that as a potential measure, when you need Venezuelan crude to offset the draining of the SPR, the economy's not doing well.
00:17:54.000And there are areas where it's okay and we're seeing weird things happening.
00:17:59.000But I think it's all indicative of a major collapse.
00:18:23.000I'm not morally opposed to people wanting to go out and have a night with friends or to make some bets here and there.
00:18:28.000The issue is when young people aren't saving and you do see them going to casinos, when you do see middle class people going on vacations, it looks like doomer spending.
00:18:39.000Like the mentality is it's not going to get better.
00:19:18.000And so I saw the entire sequence from being a little fringy fantasy sports company all the way to it being the world's largest sports betting company now.
00:19:28.000And you will always see that vice spending is counter cyclical and does not go down in a recession.
00:19:34.000It's one of the few things that is recession proof.
00:19:38.000I mean, because that's something I was going to speculate was, I mean, I guess another way to phrase it is like misery consumption of some things.
00:19:45.000Like you would also see this was probably alcohol use.
00:19:47.000In the instance of Zoomers, probably pot usage increases massively during recessions because Zoomers don't drink anymore.
00:19:53.000They've supplemented it with marijuana.
00:19:56.000But yeah, I mean, you're seeing a lot of these indicators that people don't even really perceive themselves as having a future in the country.
00:21:03.000But it makes you wonder, like, okay, well, things are this bad in the United States.
00:21:06.000You look around the rest of the developed world.
00:21:07.000I mean, they're having the same problems in East Asia.
00:21:10.000Is that a crystal ball into our future?
00:21:12.000I mean, I don't really know because, I mean, again, Scott Besant the other day came out and he said, I don't know how long this war is going to go on.
00:21:21.000And so you're like, well, if that's the economic secretary who is Probably in charge of communicating to the American people, I got this under control.
00:21:29.000And he's basically trying to soften the blow to the American people of like, hey, no, this is probably going to get worse or at least be as bad as it is right now.
00:21:57.000On immigration, I'd be the first one to admit.
00:21:59.000I mean, I've gone to the mad on this that Trump's doing things in immigration, but you look at the macro, it's like whatever gains you've made in certain policy sectors, like immigration, gets wiped out if you can't win an election.
00:22:09.000It gets wiped out if you're going to get wiped out in the midterm.
00:22:11.000So it's like great work there, but we're about to get buried in the midterms.
00:22:25.000Like people, you know, like I was saying back in March, like the Republicans could take the election if the economy was good, but that wasn't a guarantee that they were going to take the election, right?
00:22:35.000They're definitely not going to take the election if the economy's bad.
00:22:39.000And to the average person on the street, $5 a gallon gas means the economy's bad.
00:22:46.000That's like it's as pure and simple as that.
00:22:49.000There's a lot of people that, especially in the aughts when the Iraq war was going on, no war for oil, no war for oil.
00:22:55.000Even those people, if they were paying $10 a gallon for gas, they would stop saying no war for oil.
00:23:04.000Like oil is literally like the foundation of modern society still.
00:23:11.000And so if you can't afford to fill your tank, If you can't afford to go to the grocery store to get groceries that you can't afford, you're going to vote for whoever is not the party in power.
00:23:25.000And we're going to see that in November.
00:23:27.000I mean, look, at the end of the day, the moderates voted for Trump because they saw things like inflation under Biden and said he's going to fix it.
00:23:34.000And now, when it's not fixed, somebody's going to have to answer for that.
00:23:38.000And that's unfortunately what I'm worried about in six weeks, eight weeks.
00:23:42.000You know, part of the thing that one of the things that people were pushing about, or one of the reasons.
00:24:22.000You know what I was thinking with just like, I don't want to spill the beans on any private stuff, but having gone to LA and talked with just say people in media, holy crap, that's a gigantic flock.
00:24:38.000I think the internet has become too real life.
00:24:42.000I think the internet used to be your escape from real life.
00:24:44.000You know, you'd go to work, you'd go to business, then you'd come home, you'd go online, and you'd look up stories, you'd read things, and it was kind of an escape.
00:25:57.000And I feel like most people are just like, I'm staying home.
00:26:01.000That's what's really going to impact the Republicans.
00:26:03.000So, to Tate's point about, you know, we're voting to keep the Democrats out, I agree, but I feel like a lot of people are like, it doesn't matter if they're in or not.
00:26:12.000Well, and some of these candidates that are on some of these tickets are so bad that, like, you don't even really know if you're keeping the Democrats out insofar as the way that this governor is going to conduct himself, you know, isn't going to be that much, like, meaningfully different from the Democrat that would come in.
00:26:27.000And people, like, get so, you know, upset about this.
00:26:30.000But, like, I'm not here to do a get out the vote.
00:26:33.000Like, I'm just trying to, again, as a political commentator, like, communicate what I'm seeing, how I'm viewing this.
00:26:37.000And I'm like, again, you're looking at a few of these, especially governor's races, and you're like, I mean, again, how are they meaningfully going to govern any different?
00:26:45.000The senators is obviously a bit of a different story because we're talking about, you know, if Alito or Thomas goes down, we need votes.
00:26:51.000That's kind of my thinking for the Senate.
00:26:52.000It's like, okay, well, it's really about the Supreme Court.
00:26:55.000But you look at some of these governor's races and you're like, if I live in that state, I mean, it'd be really hard to, you know, take time out of your day to go and vote.
00:27:04.000You're like, what is there to get super excited about?
00:27:07.000I understand what you're saying, but I just put a link in the Slack, Tim, and it's.
00:27:14.000Hassan Piker talking about Democrats, right?
00:27:17.000And he's saying, you know, he's talking, he says stuff like, I want to throw you in prison.
00:27:22.000I want Chinese style communism to happen inside the Democratic Party right now.
00:27:39.000And so if you end up with Democrats in control of the House and the Senate, God forbid they get the presidency in two years because this is a recipe for disaster for the United States of America.
00:27:54.000You know, and so I understand that, you know, the economy is rough right now and people are hurting.
00:28:01.000And again, like you said, it's like we're not trying to do a get out the vote here, but the future that is possible with Democrats in control, and that's a great thing to bring up, is an absolute disaster.
00:28:16.000Well, I agree, but that's my point is that, like, we're already on the back foot where it's like the entire pitch for Republicans right now is look at us on Piker.
00:28:23.000And it's like that works for us because we're all like, you know, people reading the news or whatever.
00:28:27.000But again, like your average Joe pulled the lever for Trump because he saw him on Joe Rogan's podcast or whatever.
00:30:27.000That place is like 20 minutes from my house in New Hampshire.
00:30:29.000We need to stop pretending that these comments are real life.
00:30:34.000We need to stop pretending that these replies that you guys get represent.
00:30:39.000Customers to your business who want to buy a bakery fresh cinnamon bun.
00:30:44.000Once we realize that, we can actually move forward in this country with real debates.
00:30:50.000And for the moderate liberals who just don't like Trump, you will win more elections when you join us in pointing out these people are bad.
00:31:01.000But unfortunately for us, I guess, even with this CSP poll, looks like just more than half of Democrats want.
00:31:13.000Well, and what's so interesting about that data is you can like buttress it with listening to someone like Hassan Piker, for example, is, you know, the way that conservative commentators, when they're talking about the Republican Party, they're like, they're so ineffective.
00:31:43.000A bit more active than the Republican Party.
00:31:45.000I think that'd be fair to say because the Democrat Congress was in lockstep with Trump or not Trump, Biden's agenda a lot more than the Republican Congress's with Trump's agenda.
00:31:52.000Like, for example, Trump has been like demanding the SAVAC passed and he collaborated with Paxton on some ops to get that conducted.
00:32:24.000Like, I'm human enough to not want people to just die.
00:32:29.000But I think this does demonstrate a difference in the way that they actually just perceive life.
00:32:33.000This is why the dying overnight in his sleep is shocking because that 55% positivity.
00:32:40.000Because I got to be honest, if they were neutral on it, people who hated Trump were like, well, the balance there is if you said it sucks that he died, but we really think he's a bad leader.
00:33:21.000And The reason that they say what they say on this poll is it validates their identity to lash out and make a statement like this so they can feel good about themselves.
00:33:31.000And it's very difficult to ever have a rational conversation with a person who feels that way.
00:33:36.000I mean, I don't disagree with anything anyone's saying, not substantially, but there are times where I feel like Kyle Reese just screaming about the future is going to be so terrible, right?
00:34:22.000Like, there will be, there will not be a situation where Republicans can win because the Democrats will change the rules so that way they win.
00:34:30.000And again, I bring up California because this is the way it works.
00:34:34.000People in California, like they just say, well, you know, that's what the law is.
00:34:39.000But the law is literally allowing them to cheat.
00:34:42.000And it's not cheating because it's legal.
00:34:59.000And it's, you know, I don't, I don't, we talk about, you know, civil conflict here enough, and I don't want to get into that.
00:35:05.000But, you know, That is a real possibility, especially when the people that are young people in the Democrat Party are pretty extreme.
00:35:15.000When you see these kind of numbers, when they look at the Republican president with this kind of derision and this kind of animosity, they look at, and not just the president, because they look at Republicans generally, the MAGA Republicans, they look at MAGA Republicans as the same way they look at Donald Trump.
00:35:35.000And they will think, well, we have to save our democracy.
00:35:39.000We have to save our democracy from these people.
00:35:41.000So we have to make sure that they're disenfranchised, essentially.
00:35:44.000We can't allow their voice to be heard.
00:35:46.000We can't allow them to influence our democracy because it's our democracy.
00:35:57.000But at the end of the day, that is a very real possibility in either 2028 or 2032 for when, if the president is a Democrat with a sweeping control, with a Congress that's swept by Democrats.
00:36:11.000Well, I mean, this is like the key difference between the two parties ultimately is like the North Star of the Democrat Party has a much stronger pull for voters.
00:37:33.000It's just, it's really hard to compete with.
00:37:36.000So, I mean, that's kind of, I mean, this is something people have been saying for a long time on the right, but it's like the Republican Party really does need to come up with a way.
00:37:43.000To, or rather, they need to come up with a message that is like pro something.
00:37:47.000It's like providing a vision to the American people.
00:37:49.000Trump did this with Make America Great Again.
00:37:52.000But, you know, once you start having these problems like Iran, that falls apart quickly.
00:37:55.000I described the Democratic Party the same way I would, in terms of the politicians, how they behave, how they act.
00:38:04.000I would say that strategy, I see it so similarly in the Republican Party these days.
00:38:09.000And there's a, I call it the chicken coop naivete.
00:38:13.000That is, I'm rather shocked, actually.
00:38:18.000It is true that we ended up in this war, we ended up in this gas shortage, the economy's in the position that it's in, because Trump's first term was pretty good.
00:38:25.000But I wonder if all of that lawfare and just battering down of Trump, Finally, he broke him and he lets in the wolves into the hen house, and we end up with war, conflict, crisis because that's what the machine wanted.
00:38:39.000Let me think out a word this while being like, because I do mean this like with politeness.
00:38:44.000He seems to be a lot less active, especially in 2026.
00:38:48.000Like, he doesn't really seem to be, he doesn't seem to have as many irons in the fire as he did last year, certainly compared to the first term.
00:38:57.000Like, when he's in these press pools and whatnot, he's like talking about the ballroom and like, The Trump arc and stuff, or arch, arc to Trump, whatever you call it.
00:41:25.000Well, and the common sentiment I'm hearing from people, just again, people from back home, family, people that are Republicans, they're patriots.
00:41:34.000And I kind of share this with you actually a bit the thing they're saying isn't they're not attacking Trump.
00:41:39.000Like when you go on Twitter, that people are just attacking Trump or whatever.
00:41:42.000What they're saying is almost the opposite, which is if Trump can't get it done, I don't know who can.
00:41:50.000Like, if someone as, and it's a positive attribute if you're the president, as stubborn as President Trump is, can still be persuaded to go to war with Iran, I don't know who could, like, withstand that.
00:42:00.000I mean, because there's clearly mechanisms, there's lobbies.
00:42:03.000I mean, you have, like, the Israel lobby, you have the military industrial complex lobby, you know, multiple people lining up for this war to be carried out.
00:42:14.000I mean, if he couldn't withstand that, you look around, you're like, well, the bench isn't going to withstand that anymore.
00:42:19.000So that's the sentiment I'm hearing from people.
00:42:22.000Is not like, you know, Trump's betrayed us or whatever.
00:42:25.000They're just like more disappointed, but it's kind of what they expected from government, which is depressing.
00:42:30.000They didn't expect good governance, and they're like, if Trump couldn't do it, I don't know who.
00:42:35.000Here's the Calche balance of power for the midterms Democrat sweep is at 61%.
00:42:44.000The chance of Republican holding the Senate is the prediction marked at 32.
00:43:05.000Listen, I understand for the Trump diehards and the Republican diehards, they're like, we got to maintain morale and say that we're going to get it.
00:43:47.000The government is going to have to spend most of its money to pay the interest on the debt instead of funding services.
00:43:53.000So, we are about to get hit by a tsunami, and whoever's in power at the time, they're going to face, they're going to feel the brunt of that to their face.
00:44:03.000Democrats will use it right now to take power.
00:44:06.000Republicans' only real opportunity is procedure, winning in courtrooms and changing the rules.
00:44:12.000Well, and to your first point you made about people kind of just hand waving away the polls, I'm like, I've seen this story before.
00:44:18.000I don't know if people remember the 2022 midterms when everyone was saying, okay, the polling saying the Democrats are going to pick up Pennsylvania, they're going to keep the Senate or whatever, but the Republicans are going to win the House.
00:44:32.000Well, actually, the vibes, it feels like the Republicans are going to, where it's a red wave incoming.
00:45:39.000That is like the Iron law of elections.
00:45:42.000If there is a bad economy, the people will take it out on the people in power, no matter whether it was their fault or not, right?
00:45:50.000Like, if the Democrats were in power right now, if they had the White House and the House and the Senate, people would be all in for voting for Republicans.
00:46:04.000It's just people vote with their pocketbooks.
00:46:06.000It's kitchen table issues before anything.
00:46:10.000The most important thing for any politician is making sure.
00:46:14.000That the economy is working for the American people because the laws that they pass generally don't affect everybody.
00:46:22.000They affect certain groups of people here and there.
00:46:25.000Some people get a little bit of a bump, some people get a little bit of a hit.
00:46:28.000But most laws that the federal government passes don't affect people, or the people that do get affected are not aware of how they're being affected.
00:46:36.000But the cost of gas affects everybody, the prices at the grocery store affect everybody.
00:46:44.000So, I mean, I I don't know how to say it any more simple.
00:47:48.000Was on about, and he was went through his story about what happened to him during COVID and stuff.
00:47:53.000And it was, it was a really good reminder of how just how incredibly bad the government behaved in regards to COVID, the things that the government did.
00:48:03.000And, you know, it reminded me all the people that are really upset about the fact that there's nothing that's going to happen to anyone.
00:48:11.000And all of the horrible, horrible stories that you hear about people having to watch family members die from a different room, they're like looking at them through the window.
00:48:20.000He was, uh, Ron was talking about, you know, kids that were terminal that passed away and their parents couldn't go in the room.
00:48:31.000The people that are upset about the COVID stuff and knowing that nothing's going to happen, that Biden's pardoned everybody involved for, you know, whatever, 15 years prior.
00:48:43.000I mean, it's no surprise that people are pissed off that nothing's done.
00:48:49.000Let's go to the story from the New York Times.
00:48:51.000An army of paid creators is carpeting the web with political content.
00:49:29.000To become something in the political realm, talking about, oh, prices are super expensive here.
00:49:36.000They always wanted us to mention the local policymakers, you know, not affecting or like not creating the change about it and like calling them greedy and shit.
00:49:45.000And it's really, really fucked up when you think about it that the amount of brainwashing that is taking place in social media.
00:49:53.000I was considering if I really wanted to do this or not, but I'm bored, so I figured I might as well just make this video.
00:50:01.000So I'm going to be addressing the videos on my account.
00:50:06.000So everything I posted on the account.
00:50:11.000Uh, drew yaps, all of it was paid for, so it was user generated content.
00:50:18.000Uh, it was through this app, which they basically paid me retainer and then any view bonuses to make TikToks/slash Instagram reels about whatever content they wanted me to do.
00:50:30.000So they were paying me to post very left-leaning stuff about how Texas was super expensive and how it has been hard for me living in Texas.
00:50:40.000I don't even fucking live in Texas, I'm from Utah, I'm in Florida right now.
00:50:45.000Uh, they kicked me off the campaign like absolute assholes.
00:50:48.000So, yeah, I figured I would come on back onto this same account, Drew Yaps, and talk about my experience with it.
00:51:00.000And it's really fucked up, though, because you have so much stuff on your reels that is okay.
00:52:24.000Then networks started buying up big shows.
00:52:27.000They are making it so that no one will want to use social media.
00:52:32.000This is how they end the decentralized media system, the independent media system.
00:52:38.000Everyone's going to be like, I just can't because every time you open up Instagram or YouTube, all you hear is someone screaming at the top of their lungs like nails on a chalkboard.
00:53:01.000I started seeing so many of the same videos.
00:53:04.000I started intentionally going to their profiles and looking at their videos, see what they were doing, and then seeing how many of them are producing identical videos.
00:53:12.000It's just you open the Instagram app, and what do you get?
00:53:16.000Some person is literally screaming at the top of their lungs.
00:53:18.000No, I don't say figuratively, literally.
00:53:22.000I can't tell you how many videos I've seen where people desperate for attention, instead of just saying, You know, guys, I was reading the news here.
00:53:50.000Tim, there's one more thing, though, that you left out from this article.
00:53:54.000AI allows you to record at one time, upload 70 avatars, and make 70 different versions of the exact same video with the exact same talk track.
00:54:03.000One is a black woman, one is a white guy, one is a Chinese gal, you name it.
00:54:08.000One video, 70 versions of it, all saying the exact same thing.
00:54:14.000And that's one of the scariest parts of that article.
00:54:18.000Yeah, it's hard to go a day without talking about AI just because it's already having a massive impact.
00:54:25.000Even people that don't realize it, I think I've said this before on the show, but used to be people would go and they would type in something on Google because they're looking for something.
00:54:33.000But now that you type in your question into the Google search bar, And it'll give you the answer.
00:54:55.000I'm building a weather app that will show the weather three dimensionally because people are like, oh, a hurricane is a sphere, it's a flat plane.
00:55:03.000No, it's a big sphere that's undulating and twisting over the earth and sucking up water like.
00:55:16.000And many of you are like, Tim, why did you play that clip of Ian?
00:55:19.000Because I want to show you this clip from our sister show, Gymcast URL, where Aaron was going on a rant about the weather and Bill's reaction was priceless.
00:55:28.000I'm building a weather app that will show the weather three dimensionally because people are like, oh, a hurricane is a flat plane.
00:55:35.000No, it's a big sphere that's undulating and twisting over the earth and sucking up water like.
00:56:47.000Then loads it into an AI and then also uploads 15 different fake AI generated people, clicks render, and they get just instantly 15 different versions of the same political talking point and they can spam blast it out through a network of accounts.
00:57:04.000These accounts exist where people will just post random video content, they'll re upload news clips just to get a base following and to exist.
00:57:14.000That way, when they get a campaign, hey, we'll give you 10 bucks to play this video.
00:57:19.000They will play the video, and then all of a sudden, you go on Instagram and you see 700 people all being like, I'm voting Democrat.
00:57:35.000If people are really just not smart enough, then what is the argument against, quote, some people must work at McDonald's?
00:57:43.000I mean, look, Asmund Gold, there isn't one.
00:57:46.000Asmund Gold likes to describe it as like there are some people that are best suited to make big rocks into little rocks, right?
00:57:53.000Just, there's not really anything that you can train them to do.
00:57:57.000So then why try to do a show to inform a population?
00:58:02.000When the population is incapable of being informed, well, the reason to do a show is because there are enough people that can be informed and that can be motivated to go out and vote.
00:58:12.000And the best idea, well, no voting doesn't matter.
00:58:15.000If we're dealing with this and this is the basis by which people are choosing their leaders, then the best thing to do would be to change this show into a finance show so that people smart enough to try and suss out what's true or not can make sound financial investments and we all get rich and then with money can have influence over the system.
00:58:54.000So it's like it is illegal, but the penalty is a fine or something.
00:58:59.000So that's what that guy was saying that they're not disclosing that these are ads.
00:59:04.000And indeed, all of these are advertisements or fake.
00:59:07.000Because otherwise, imagine what would happen if, I don't know, I offered to pay people to just make a bunch of videos quoting Tim Cass and talking about how great the show is.
00:59:33.000But demoralized, I do think there is one thing that we need to focus on, especially the conservatives that we haven't done enough of since COVID.
00:59:41.000You need to teach these kids critical thinking skills.
00:59:44.000And COVID woke us up about what was going on in the classrooms or the lack of classrooms because kids were at home.
00:59:50.000And I feel like we lost a lot of that over these last six years.
00:59:54.000And if we're ever going to have a populace that doesn't make you demoralized, it's going to be because they actually have these critical thinking skills.
01:00:04.000Well, I mean, I know what you're saying, but like, I guess, you know, when you've got.
01:00:11.000Enough of the accounts or enough accounts that are posting the same thing, you'd think that people, because again, these are exactly the same narrations.
01:00:20.000It's just a different person posting it.
01:00:23.000You'd think that people would realize, but I feel like it's not really, they don't consciously know that these are the same things.
01:01:03.000You know, we normally save it, but this one's relevant.
01:01:05.000Maine X community says, Don't be demoralized.
01:01:07.000We're all here and want to destroy the DSA, destroy the global news, access, Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela, Cuba, et cetera.
01:01:14.000Luke R. and AJ are crying nonstop about Iran.
01:01:17.000But crippling Iran is key, like we did with Maduro, Cuba, Greenland, new gen cartel fight.
01:01:23.000The reason I wanted to read that is the demoralization is in political power is not going to be found in voting for these people.
01:01:30.000And the people who are voting for these members of Congress, be it Democrat or Republican, don't even know what they're voting for or why, they are ridiculously and easily manipulated.
01:01:40.000They get extremely angry, and many of them get violent.
01:01:43.000But the real means of influence and power is money.
01:01:48.000So, the best thing for our audience is not for us to discuss the goings on of the world, but to discuss the goings on of the world in the context of who you short and who you buy so that we all get rich.
01:01:58.000Then we have influence over the system.
01:02:02.000Money dictates policy more than the votes ever did.
01:02:07.000And we've got the studies from numerous institutions.
01:02:11.000I think one of the more recent ones in the past 10 years showed that I forgot how they put it, but like 60%.
01:02:20.000Of legislation came at the request of a corporation or wealthy special interest groups, high profile special interest groups, lobbying groups, and the polls of the American people as to what they wanted to happen had almost no impact on the voting record of members of Congress.
01:03:08.000Members of Congress are probably like, nah, it's better off if the people are stupid and impotent.
01:03:11.000I think it's probably members of the Senate that are more like that.
01:03:15.000I think Congress people are more grounded because they're shorter terms.
01:03:19.000That's where, I mean, look, everyone knows Congress is where the clown show happens, right?
01:03:23.000You get weirdos in Congress on a regular basis.
01:03:26.000You don't generally get weirdos in the Senate.
01:03:28.000They look at themselves as, You know, more deliberative, they're they kind of have their nose in the air, they look at themselves as the upper chain or they're the upper chamber of the government, and so you get the weirdos and con.
01:03:39.000Yo, look, man, I look at this and I just see the philosophical zombie, which in layman's terms is NPCs.
01:03:49.000Yeah, but like I said, this is all about reinforcing a narrative that people already believe.
01:03:52.000If people don't like this, they sweep past, right?
01:03:54.000If you're a conservative, that's not what I'm talking about.
01:03:56.000I'm talking about is each and every one of these people.
01:04:00.000Who lacks the cognitive faculties to do a Google search to try and suss out what is or is not?
01:04:07.000See an advertisement for a $30 video to post some statement, and they go, Oh, I'll do that.
01:04:25.000I mean, you know, to be honest, I did an interview with Flat Earth Dave, and.
01:04:31.000I told them I am not so egotistically attached to my beliefs that I would be offended by anything you say.
01:04:38.000You can tell me that the earth is a gigantic macaroni noodle, and I'd be like, that's a weird thing to think.
01:04:43.000I don't think so, but I'm not mad that you think it.
01:04:47.000But these are the kind of people that get angry.
01:04:51.000They don't think when you're like, actually, Trump did not call Nazis very fine people.
01:04:57.000They get physically agitated and they feel anger and pain.
01:05:03.000And I think it's just they lack the capabilities.
01:05:06.000I wonder if that really is the defining trait of the quote unquote NPC or the philosophical zombie, an individual who cannot deviate from that track and they get angry if someone tries to make them.
01:05:17.000Yeah, well, I'm curious where you're seeing all these stories about people basically outsourcing their thinking to an LLM and if that's going to exasperate this issue of, okay, we can't quite put a.
01:05:41.000Like, if we could just silo, granted, it's going to be tough with democracy, but, you know, once we get rid of that and all that, then we can.
01:05:48.000Then, you know, and they're removed from the equation, democratically speaking, then you can just silo them away and they're like goon chambers or whatever.
01:05:56.000And then, like, the 10%, you know, I was thinking, I was like, you know, the Jehovah's Witness were kind of cooking when they're like, maybe there's only like 144,000 people that are like insulted.
01:06:05.000I'm like, you know, I've seen them every time I see them on the street in New York, I'm like, what are these?
01:06:39.000I mean, I got no problem with video games.
01:06:41.000So if they came out with AI generated video games with like a Neuralink headband, no surgeries, but if they had a headband you could put on and then you could play GTA, but it felt real.
01:08:12.000But look, I mean, I don't know that technology is the answer here, though.
01:08:18.000Honestly, it's causing a lot of the problems.
01:08:22.000I mean, I'm not particularly a big fan of universal enfranchisement generally, just because I don't think that the average people are actually that interested beyond the economy.
01:08:34.000And the government does have influence over the economy, but they don't have absolute control over the economy.
01:11:14.000The reason why I think this story matters, given the choice, everybody takes the buyout.
01:11:20.000If you gave someone an opportunity and said, We're going to plug your brain into the matrix and you will be 16 and it will be the late 90s, early 2000s all over again, they would say yes.
01:11:47.000Now, I don't think it's supposed to change so rapidly the way they are now, but we weren't able to go back in time and relive our nostalgia.
01:11:55.000We just told stories about it to the kids.
01:11:59.000But with the world turning digital, with us spending so much of our time in virtual realities, even if it's third person, soon it will be first person, like actual immersive.
01:12:11.000People are going to choose to stay locked in their fake realities forever to relive the glory days.
01:13:12.000There's a lot of people that still buy action figures and they save them thinking, you know, oh, in 20 years, these things are going to be worth something.
01:13:23.000People forget that the reason why an original Boba Fett in the card or whatever, like still in the package, the reason it's so much money is because there's like three of them.
01:13:34.000You know, every in the 90s, like the late 90s, when the new Star Wars movies came out, people were buying up all the Darth Mauls and stuff.
01:13:43.000Oh, these are going to be worth so much money.
01:13:44.000It's like, look, man, there's probably 20,000 of those in mint condition hidden around the US.
01:15:23.000I'm asking you guys a literal question.
01:15:26.000Would we be better off with no independent media and only major network news if it meant that everybody in this country was on the same page with disagreements here and there, but for the most part, a monoculture?
01:15:39.000Weirdo extremists demanding the lesbian bar wear masks.
01:15:42.000We would be better off without weirdo extremists.
01:15:46.000I mean, but the point is, if you have one or the other, you have the option of you know a small network of channels, maybe there's 30 channels, everyone kind of agrees, no one's really extreme, there's no media broadcasting for wacko lunacy, or we have the internet, which is just chaos in every direction and good luck who wins.
01:16:04.000No, I think in a weird way, the main problem now, like for example, part of the reason monoculture stuck was because the country is a lot more homogenous.
01:16:13.000Where now, if you abolish that, we went back to network television.
01:16:16.000I actually think the ethnic divisions in the country would get worse because BET would be able to gobble.
01:16:24.000Right now, among young people, there is a monoculture in the sense that they share a lot of the same sense of humor through memes and whatnot.
01:16:30.000And I think if it went back to network programming, you would probably see ethnic siloing again.
01:18:34.000Where now these new stars are coming through and they just don't have like the aura or gravitas.
01:18:38.000And yeah, part of that's monoculture was able to amplify their fame.
01:18:42.000But secondarily, people have too much access to these guys now, where it's like now you can go to their Instagram and see what they're up to in their Twitter and they feel a lot more approachable.
01:18:48.000They feel a lot more like real people.
01:18:50.000When what made Tom Brady, Tom Brady, is that he had this just kind of like, I wonder what's going on.
01:19:22.000He just doesn't have the aura like LeBron does.
01:19:25.000By the time LeBron was 25, he was already, you know, a household name.
01:19:29.000And every kid had a poster on his wall of LeBron.
01:19:31.000Does this guy have the same kind of talent that LeBron had, though?
01:19:35.000Yeah, Wimbenyama is like a just generational.
01:19:38.000I think he would be the most even one to one swap because Messi was special.
01:19:42.000People consider him the consensus goat.
01:19:44.000Where Mbappe, it's like, well, that's always going to be tough to chase.
01:19:47.000But yeah, Wimbenyama's, I mean, obviously LeBron had a 20 something year career, but Wimbenyama has that skill set of like, this should be a guy.
01:20:38.000You play a lot of shows there, but like outside the state.
01:20:41.000Well, but it sucks because we've, and Phil, you could probably speak to this with authority, is even like regional scenes as they existed don't exist anymore because it's like a rock band from Boston and a rock band from Portland, Oregon, or something are going to have broadly the same sound.
01:20:58.000You know, I can't remember that we had a comedian here recently and he was, we were talking about this how like a Boston comic, nothing would land in Dallas and vice versa, where now Shane Gales can sell out a stadium basically anywhere in the country.
01:21:09.000I mean, like when I was coming up in the music scene, like, Especially like in New England, like there was this whole thing that was going on that was really north the Northeast, right?
01:21:19.000Like it was it was called the new wave of American heavy metal, and it was it was basically it was Lamb of God was from Virginia, God forbid was from New Jersey, and then everybody else was from Massachusetts, right?
01:21:32.000Like Shadows Fall, All That Remains, Unearthed, Kill Switch Engage, The Acacia Strain, all these new bands, and we shared a similar sound, but we shared a similar sound.
01:21:42.000And the only other place kind of in the country that had anything like that that was going on.
01:21:46.000Was Southern California and it was similar sound, just they wore makeup, right?
01:21:51.000Like that was obviously because it's LA, right?
01:21:53.000So there's Bleeding Through, there was Avenge Sevenfold, there was, you know, a handful of bands.
01:21:59.000I think As I Lay Dying probably didn't wear makeup, but they were one of the bands that was coming up.
01:22:04.000And you wouldn't, I don't know that you'd see that now because, you know, when we were coming up late 90s, early aughts, like the internet hadn't gotten into everyone's pocket yet.
01:22:13.000Like it existed and you could put stuff on the internet and listen to it, but there wasn't YouTube, there wasn't Spotify, there wasn't like the monoculture like we talk about.
01:22:20.000It was like, Laying the foundation for that.
01:22:23.000So, the sound that we had did start to filter through the rest of the country.
01:22:28.000And it kind of, you know, for lack of a better term, it kind of took the country, at least the metal scene, by storm because everything was new metal before we got on there.
01:27:06.000Those online videos explaining games were community building.
01:27:10.000And everything's become so dumbed down that people open the game and they're either bored because there's no challenge or they're too stupid to play it anyway.
01:27:18.000The same thing happened to RuneScape, actually.
01:27:21.000In 2007, they took away the PvP version, it was called The Wilderness.
01:27:26.000And then everyone was like, Really pissed because, like, you can't, you know, hurt, you know, can't kill another player to get their loot or whatever anymore.
01:27:34.000And then they replaced it with like Castle Wars or something ridiculous where you just drop in and then, like, you're just with a bunch of random people you don't know fighting a thing for no actual gain.
01:27:46.000So they recreated RuneScape as 2007 Scape and now everyone plays that still, which is kind of like the equivalent of this.
01:27:53.000I feel like I just totally missed out on the prime era of gaming because, like, 2007.
01:29:32.000And then he was going on to explain, No, all 100 players were.
01:29:35.000Playing at the same time, and they're all in the same voice channel.
01:29:38.000I'm like, that sounds so electric to have like a hundred dudes that like half of them are just friends of friends or whatever, and everyone's on voice chat just rolling in.
01:29:46.000Like, that sounds like the most fun experience possible because it's like every game now it's like maxed out at like four players in the lobby.
01:29:54.000I mean, yeah, four players in the lobby that was kind of like that's kind of like, but like Warzone, Fortnite, and stuff.
01:29:59.000Yeah, I mean, when I was playing a lot of Xbox Live, playing a lot of Halo 2 and Halo 3, like that was like the peak for me, and it's you know, it was four on four.
01:30:10.000You could do big team battle, but Slayer was the best.
01:30:16.000Everybody knows kind of how they play, and everyone knows kind of what their role was.
01:30:21.000And you could play all night long, get home from like, I was probably working at the mall or whatever, but get home and jump on Xbox Live and play for, you know, till five in the morning.
01:30:32.000And it was like, it was great, you know?
01:30:47.000And in 82, when he started the company, he had a theory which was people will want interactivity more than passively watching television and film.
01:30:56.000And he was right for a long time until basically what you're saying, he's not right anymore.
01:31:02.000Because now we've gone back from things being hard and interactive and interesting and social to a spot where you hit the button, unplug, and just go watch.
01:31:11.000Yeah, I mean, a part of me thinks that it's the wrong people got in charge of video games.
01:31:16.000Like they, because there was a time where video games were kind of exclusive, right?
01:31:21.000They, like, when you would, the people that were playing video games wanted a challenge.
01:31:26.000The people that were playing video games wanted them to be hard.
01:31:29.000They didn't want to be able to sit down and just play through a, you know, a 15 hour campaign in a day.
01:31:37.000And as video games became more popular and, Certain people that shouldn't have been in charge of video game studios got in charge of video game studios.
01:31:48.000They started saying, well, these stories and these video games are actually more about stories, and we want to tell the stories that we want to tell.
01:31:57.000And it's not supposed to be hard because people want to find out how the story concludes, they want to play the game.
01:32:04.000So we're going to make it so that way everybody can play because if everyone can play and everyone can do well, then we'll actually open the market to more people.
01:32:13.000And more people will feel like they can, they can, you know, enjoy our product.
01:32:17.000But the problem is the people that really loved the product didn't want that.
01:32:23.000And the people that came in and loved playing video games because they were easy and they got the gratification of finishing it, that changed what gaming was.
01:32:34.000And now I think you're seeing the people that started the video games when video games were more exclusive have basically moved away from video games significantly.
01:32:43.000And it shows in the sales that the core audience was the majority, that the people that were, you know, Just wanted to play through the video game, they weren't logging on all the time with their friends.
01:32:56.000They'd play through the video game, they wouldn't play anymore, they wouldn't be going into the store to buy the new skins or whatever.
01:33:04.000So, they were, you know, the studios kept putting out all these different skins and stuff to try and collect money from people because they weren't getting the same kind of returns.
01:33:16.000And you're seeing it now, like I said, like I mentioned Halo earlier.
01:33:20.000Halo just got turned over to Activision.
01:33:45.000Then the studio changed, went from the original creators to another studio.
01:33:48.000And everything they put out after that just got worse and worse and worse.
01:33:52.000Well, a huge reason for this was consolidation.
01:33:54.000The number of game studios when you were playing those games, when I was playing those games, they were all independent.
01:34:00.000They were all around the world and they were five guys in a bedroom and they were really good.
01:34:04.000At the end of the day, Electronic Arts and two or three others, I think there's only three or four major game companies left.
01:34:12.000And almost all of those studios that you remember those names of, they're inside of one of three or four silos.
01:34:18.000So it's the same consolidation you see in other industries.
01:34:21.000In my opinion, it's actually what ruined unique and differentiated gaming.
01:34:25.000There's only so many people you can go to to get a game now.
01:34:28.000Yeah, the video game I'm talking about in question, Halo.
01:34:32.000Once they were bought, they were created by a company called Bungie.
01:34:35.000Once they were bought by Microsoft, the games, they transferred it over to a company called, they basically created a company called 343 Studios and everything went down from there.
01:35:05.000Even when Destiny 2 came out and they kind of changed it because shotguns were so good in Destiny 1 that they made it more like, what is it?
01:36:13.000The witness was supposed to be like the big bad guy at the end, and it was a little underwhelming.
01:36:17.000And then, once you actually fought the witness at the end of the storyline, they still kind of tried to limp it on, and they needed Destiny 3 is what they need.
01:36:27.000Well, what they needed with Destiny 2 and what people want to see is progress.
01:37:06.000And again, I think it was one of those things where, like, you know, the player base started to dive and they were like, we got to do something about this, so let's bring Cade back.
01:37:16.000All you had to do was establish that they, like, built a new city and, like, The humans are coming back and tell us something is happening in the game.
01:37:27.000Hopefully, though, you know, the reason why I'm excited for World of Warcraft Forever, as much as the whole point of us talking about this was that people desperately want to go back in time and relive their youth.
01:37:37.000And this is what I was thinking about.
01:37:38.000It's like you couldn't before, but now the buyout is coming.
01:38:31.000The question is, do they realize that that's what they need to do?
01:38:34.000You know, if they don't actually put the effort into making something that's challenging, making something that matters to the hardcore players, the people that'll play, you know, all night long with their friends and come back the next day and the next day, if they're not focusing on that, then they're not making something that people are going to really love.
01:38:51.000They'll make something that people like and will play, but they'll leave it behind.
01:38:55.000People that play Destiny, play Destiny, you know, Every week they were grinding, playing the same missions, they were doing the same stuff.
01:39:02.000People that played Halo, they played, you know, they played PvP all the time, every night for months on end and stuff.
01:39:08.000Um, but if you only have casuals, people that play a little bit, you're not going to have that core, that base that you need.
01:39:16.000This is the battle of all like our cultural development over the past 20 years kind of exemplifies it the casual versus the you know, the hobbyist, I guess, tourists.
01:39:26.000And they keep trying to make the game for the casual because they're like, most people only play a little bit here and there, so we need to make sure.
01:39:33.000The person who's playing an hour or two per week can still feel powerful, get good items, and be involved in the game.
01:39:39.000So they end up making it horribly boring because then there's nothing to achieve.
01:40:11.000Let the Chads be the Chads and the Stacey's be the Stacey's.
01:40:14.000Yeah, but I'm talking about everybody's a Chad in World of Warcraft if you work hard enough.
01:40:19.000You can be a fat, miserable misanthrope in real life, but if you grind in World of Warcraft, you can be a level 60 field marshal or what was it?
01:41:06.000It's been trending massively because there's no actual game.
01:41:09.000I mean, sure, you can click buttons and stuff, but there's a blue line from Wolverine directly to your target so you know what to do.
01:41:15.000And there's a couple missions that apparently are so egregiously not games, people hold their controllers up on live streams as the game effectively plays itself.
01:41:32.000There was a, I think one of the problems was there was a survey that of people that played video games, and it showed that women played a lot of video games too.
01:41:41.000But the video games that women played were like Candy Crush on their phone.
01:41:46.000Yeah, totally different kind of thing.
01:41:47.000So you had all these people that were saying, look, we got to make games that are attractive to ladies that girls will play and blah, blah, blah.
01:49:32.000Here's a question like, how come no one's made these games?
01:49:36.000Like, okay, so in all seriousness, you've got Married at first sight video game, figure out how to gamify that, have it largely be story with various choices because women love watching this stuff.
01:51:17.000Like, there are video games where you're trying to solve murder mysteries.
01:51:21.000But I guess they got to target them towards women and make the narrative very much like hear the key details about what happened, and then you explore that story somehow.
01:51:33.000And then I suppose the way the game would work is it has to be that the official narrative is wrong and you have to exonerate the female murderer or something.
01:53:19.000And so I was like, I'm assuming it's probably six months of work.
01:53:22.000And then we looked it up, and it's like the estimates are that it would take between, at this point, two to four years and probably cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in art, design, animation, development.
01:53:35.000Right now, I have an addiction to adding features because it's so easy.
01:53:39.000So I have to keep stopping and kind of pulling back.
01:53:42.000To finish the game, the game is technically done, but I had my brother come in and I'm like, you need to just polish it and figure out what I didn't do.
01:53:51.000And so he's basically cleaning it up a little bit.
01:53:55.000I think we're going to have this game done.
01:53:57.000It's a procedurally generated dungeon roguelike action RPG.
01:54:02.000You basically are just going down a building to the first floor.
01:54:05.000And then if you solve the quests, you get an infinite dungeon mode that basically just, and then you can level up and just keep playing forever.
01:56:30.000Tech Rue says, Biden is one of the Democrats responsible for Ukraine's war, closing refineries, cancellation of pipelines, draining the strategic oil reserves, supporting Iran's nuclear program, and high fuel prices.
01:56:42.000Indeed, we are dealing with a lot of the ramifications from what happened in the Biden administration.
01:58:06.000Take a look at all of the young people that somehow have money to gamble, and you're wondering why that is.
01:58:11.000Take a look at all the people who are sitting at the craps table with like 10 grand in front of them, and you're wondering how they do it.
01:58:17.000Go to MGM National Harbor on a weekend and ask yourself how it is that these people are playing a hand of, let's just say, three card poker at $250.
01:59:28.000I think the will of the people, when we had a couple million people and they were all morally homogenous, you know, American colonists, they largely agreed on most things, even though they thought they disagreed on most things.
01:59:41.000They didn't even realize you could disagree on the Christian moral framework.
01:59:45.000They were like, well, that's just normal.
01:59:47.000So they built a government with the basis of an underlying moral framework.
01:59:52.000Now that we have a country with disparate moral frameworks and more than two, people largely don't agree on what these laws even mean anymore.
02:00:26.000Well, what I always say is you know, when you have a dog, when you have a good pet, your dog or cat, any pet, really, any animal that you really care about, these animals bring you so much joy for so little in return.
02:00:41.000You have to ask yourself, when does the bill come due?
02:00:44.000Because we don't get things for free, right?
02:00:47.000So what happens is all of these years, these 17 years, you get to spend with that friend where you are made to feel good.
02:00:59.000When that friend passes, all of that love that they gave you over 17 years gets released all at once, and you feel it.
02:01:07.000And so I always describe it as it's a good pain because that sadness that you feel is the expression of all of that love that you were given over that long period of time.
02:01:18.000So the bill comes due, as it were, but it's good.
02:08:03.000You think it's possible that people come back together?
02:08:05.000Well, the history of the U.S. is it's cyclic, right?
02:08:09.000That's the one saving grace that I, that's the one thing I hang my hat on, right?
02:08:13.000I mean, remember, there used to be political battles that ended in duels in this country.
02:08:17.000So I think we never, I think we still allow duels.
02:08:21.000Look, maybe that's what the answer is.
02:08:23.000But the point is, divisions have been this bad in the past, and things have gone back to a time where there's conversation.
02:08:30.000Now, there are structural reasons around technology why it's different this time, but the history of the country is that this goes in cycles.
02:08:38.000And that's the one thing I'm optimistic about.
02:09:28.000It's interesting to look at the divisions that we'd seen.
02:09:32.000The division, I mean, the principal divisions we had, I don't think were ever the existence of the country.
02:09:38.000The American Revolution, you could argue, was the existence of the country, it was the creation of one.
02:09:43.000But should the British have won and maintained the United States as a colony, life would largely not have changed for most people.
02:09:55.000It wouldn't have been the end of their way of life.
02:09:58.000They wouldn't have destroyed, like, let's say the founding fathers did nothing.
02:10:03.000What would the country look like today?
02:10:05.000Might look like any one of the other Commonwealth nations.
02:10:07.000I think the makeup of the people of this country versus the United States versus Canada is why you got their gradual faux independence versus the United States fighting for it.
02:10:17.000But I think with the moral traditions, it would still look largely similar.
02:10:22.000With the American Civil War, slavery was on the way out as it was.
02:10:26.000It had already been abolished in Britain, already got rid of it in the British Empire.
02:10:31.000And so, if the South did have slavery, it wouldn't have lasted very long.
02:10:36.000The way of life in the United States would look relatively similar.
02:10:39.000The underlying moral worldviews save the principal issue of slavery.
02:10:45.000For the American Revolution, slavery was still contentious.
02:10:48.000For the Civil War, principally contentious, but life for most people would have still stayed the same.
02:10:55.000In fact, there are many arguments that if the United States didn't declare independence, slavery would have ended 40 years earlier because the British Empire would have ended it.
02:11:04.000The civil rights era, Jim Crow and all that, the protests were not about the existence of the nation, but about the laws within and how certain groups of people were treated.
02:11:14.000The United States would not cease to exist.
02:11:17.000The interesting thing about the Civil War is as close as I think we've gotten, but the Union, the North would have been the Union, the South would have been the Confederacy, and it would have fractured the United States and would have been something different.
02:11:28.000That's, I would argue, the conflict we're facing today, should the left win, is outsourcing our generation of wealth, all our manufacturing is already being stripped away, open borders.
02:11:45.000You cannot have a moral discohesion and survive as a nation.
02:11:49.000So it really does feel like the United States would break up completely beyond what it was for the Confederacy should the left continually pursue what they're doing.
02:11:59.000I mean, California does not feel like the rest of the United States.
02:12:03.000They have unfettered illegal immigration.
02:12:05.000They give free health care to illegal immigrants at the expense of others.
02:12:11.000Let me just put it this way we were in Hollywood.
02:12:13.000Naked homeless women lying on the streets.
02:12:16.000Children are supposed to come here as a tourist attraction.
02:13:25.000And so we very rarely get West Coast people because who wants to fly to the East Coast?
02:13:29.000If we go there, we could do these one on one interviews.
02:13:31.000And then the other thing was just meeting with industry people, networking, finding opportunities.
02:13:37.000We have a lot of music that we've never done anything with.
02:13:40.000So I was basically like, let's get this in the hands of the right people.
02:13:43.000And then also, just what's the future going to hold for media and what are these companies looking for?
02:13:49.000What I can say that I learned is that all the big networks are shitting in their own mouths, have no idea what the fuck is going on, and are panicking, dumping money on shit that doesn't make sense.
02:13:58.000I don't want to say too much because I don't want to blow people up, but let me just say the networks are having a crisis over podcasting.
02:16:39.000I still think in all reality, it was probably just some kids up late, but they sounded like they were seven or eight.
02:16:45.000And so I'm just thinking, like, how the fuck are there seven or eight year olds at 11 30 outside of their hotel running around the halls up and down?
02:17:22.000But, Cal, look, there's a couple things that happened recently, though, that give me some hope that people are starting to wake up.
02:17:28.000The wildfires were, my house was right in the zone of that.
02:17:32.000And obviously, a lot of people's places went away, like Spencer Pratt, who ran.
02:17:38.000Well, here's a question for you, though.
02:17:39.000Because one of the things, we drove briefly down, accidentally down the PCH.
02:17:43.000I used to live in LA for a couple of years.
02:17:45.000And then I was like, should we just drive up and take a look at what happened?
02:17:48.000And when I looked at the map, It's just the Palisades in this one spot where all the houses are gone, and then next to it, the houses are fine.
02:18:54.000It was a national news story because it flooded a whole bunch of businesses.
02:18:58.000And this is what we found out from our great local government in West Hollywood.
02:19:02.000The reason the flooding got so bad was it happened at three o'clock in the morning, and there was no one to turn the water off until they came into the office.
02:19:12.000And that's the kind of stuff that actually wakes up local constituencies.
02:19:16.000When you hear about government incompetence of that kind, people start waking up and going, You're supposed to protect me.
02:19:23.000My house is not supposed to burn down, and my business is not supposed to flood.
02:20:01.000I don't see a reality where anyone on the right, regular people, accept child sex changes.
02:20:07.000Like, I've had a bunch of conversations about this recently, especially having gone to Santa Monica and Venice and just everybody's coming up to me and they're fist bumping me.
02:20:16.000It was pretty wild because I don't spend a lot of time going out to dense urban populations, you know, and don't see the people like who watch the show.
02:20:25.000But seeing that, I'm like, how could this be that the government is what it is if most people are pissed off of the same things we're pissed off about?
02:20:35.000There's a store right across from the skate park selling Trump gear.
02:20:38.000It's on the boardwalk with Trump hats.
02:20:40.000And I'm like, I don't think that what they're telling us on the internet is real.
02:20:44.000So I wonder also regular people don't agree with child sex changes, but there's a cult.
02:20:49.000There are people who live in that reality and believe it.
02:20:53.000And it's the lesbian COVID bar people.
02:20:58.000We have to excise these people from society, we have to cancel them.
02:21:02.000We have to say if you are the wacko lesbian mask wearing person accusing the bar of genocide, You're blocked.
02:21:45.000My wife's an Indian girl from Alabama, and they ruthlessly called her the white Christian nationalist.
02:21:54.000When we ran school board candidates all across the country in Allentown, which is as in the song Billy Joel song, literally that town, we ran a gay guy because he wanted to keep the schools open.
02:22:06.000We're focused on keeping the schools open.
02:22:08.000We ran a gay guy who was married with two kids.
02:22:11.000He would knock on doors in his own neighborhood.
02:22:14.000And they would say, You're not welcome in my house because you're the anti gay bigot on the ticket.
02:22:19.000They would say it to his face as he knocked on the doors.
02:22:23.000And that's when you realize how pernicious the media takeover is to basically create this narrative.
02:22:29.000So I had him, one time he called me up.
02:22:30.000I said, What did you ask the woman who said that to you?
02:22:36.000So I'm literally here in front of you with a photo of my family, and you don't believe me, but you read, you believe what you read in patch?
02:24:01.000You know, funding for startup businesses, and you seem to really support it.
02:24:07.000You know, there's the bigger question that I think is at the end of the day, you see big business really put a lot of roadblocks in there for small businesses and small startups.
02:24:20.000What realistic kinds of policies would you like to see enacted in order to help lift up the small businesses that really support the economy?
02:24:32.000So, I think government in general is too slow at ever doing what it is you hope that you're asking for in this question.
02:24:40.000And anytime the government shows up to try and create these policies, they usually make things worse.
02:24:45.000So, what I tell my startup, when it's three guys in a bedroom, four gals who start company, whatever it is, what I say is look for an incumbent business that is so fat, dumb, and lazy that your startup being five people is your advantage.
02:25:00.000Because if you're going to wait for the government to even out the field, you're going to wait too long and they're going to screw it up.
02:25:05.000So, find a sleepy, dumb incumbent and go disrupt them.
02:25:09.000And the best businesses I've ever invested in are ones where that was the formula.
02:25:15.000But what do we do to stop the big guys from putting in those, using government as a cudgel against small businesses to put roadblocks in so that new businesses can't start up, pulling the ladder up after them, so to speak?
02:26:28.000No, no, I think that's, you know, government doesn't always have the best results on it, but, you know, sometimes we rely on them for protections of rights and stuff like that.
02:26:42.000I would rather them actually do what you said and not get involved.
02:26:46.000It seems like exactly what you say the crony capitalism comes from government, where you have the lobbyists go in there and lobby for what it is that they want that then screws things up.
02:27:00.000Here in Texas, we have the sugar cartel kind of thing going on with Imperial Sugar, where we put a tariff on sugar imports so we can make sugar land more profitable and stuff like that.
02:27:13.000So I honestly think government getting involved has been the problem.
02:27:18.000But it's really the question is, how do we stop that from happening?
02:27:23.000Look, that one's above my pay grade, sir.
02:29:08.000So, my question is recently, ICE conducted immigration enforcement actions in Frederick, Maryland, where local law enforcement stood by as protesters fought with ICE in an effort to prevent a search warrant.
02:29:21.000Frederick Mayor O'Connor is on record as saying that he'd used taxpayer money to support nonprofits to resist immigration enforcement actions.
02:29:29.000At which point should Trump begin enforcement actions against these politicians and have a follow up to that?
02:30:46.000I think the things that Trump is, the things that people are pissed off at Trump about, you're not going to see any kind of relenting on that unless gas drops to two bucks a gallon and, you know, people's wages increase, you know, 30% in the next month.
02:31:07.000You know, I honestly, I don't even think that if gas dropped, right?
02:31:10.000Like if tomorrow Iran signed a deal and gas, you know, went through the floor and, and, You know, the cost of fuel was down to three bucks.
02:31:18.000I'm not even sure that could save him.
02:31:23.000The protests, I mean, I remember like the No Kings and all that and the ice protests in the winter didn't really have an impact on the polls at all.
02:31:33.000I remember actually the New York Times or no, it was Washington Post drew the opposite conclusion was that the protests, actually, most Americans didn't even realize what was going on.
02:31:42.000I think they had, they asked for like name recognition of like Greg Bavino and it was like, 5% or something, like an absurdly small proportion of the population.
02:31:50.000But he was kind of the central figure of the protests in the winter.
02:31:55.000The real reason to be pro, the real reason to be for getting rid of people that are here illegally, getting them to go back to their respective countries is because the downstream effects are going to be good for Americans.
02:32:11.000It's not something that Americans are going to realize.
02:32:17.000They're not going to be like, oh man, my life's so much better because there aren't so many illegals here.
02:32:24.000The way they're going to notice is that jobs are going to become easier to get, cost of renting homes and stuff, renting apartments, cost of housing goes down.
02:32:34.000And those things take time to materialize.
02:32:38.000Probably a year or two before you'd see real significant impacts on the market.
02:32:45.000I mean, right now, Part of the problem with housing costs is the cost of borrowing money, right?
02:32:54.000I think a home mortgage is over 7% now, which is historically not crazy high, but in recent history, it's very high because you had 0%.
02:33:02.000You could get a house at 3% or whatever for most of the teens.
02:33:07.000And that's not going to be the case again anytime soon.
02:33:11.000In fact, it's likely that the cost of borrowing money is going to be fairly high for the next.
02:33:17.000Probably five to 10 years until, if not longer, because the debt is getting so high.
02:33:26.000So, by the way, real quick, the thing that's really screwed up right now, and we have a lot of exposure to real estate companies in our portfolio.
02:33:33.000So, rates are at the two year high, but the prices keep going up.
02:33:45.000Those two things are not supposed to move up in the direction that they are.
02:33:48.000So, there's some fundamental demographic shift or purchasing behavior change that seems to be structural and permanent because as those rates go up, the house prices are supposed to go down.
02:33:59.000And they've not only been persistently high, they keep going higher, which is very difficult to square.
02:34:05.000Do you think that that's because people that own homes look at it as because there are so many people that own homes and that's the biggest investment they have?
02:34:14.000And so they refuse to lower their price because they can't lose that money?
02:35:07.000Actually, a couple shout outs real quick.
02:35:10.000First and foremost, if you could go and follow my young man's band, it's Midnight SUN Official on instagram and uh, it's spelled mid n underscore, I g h t SUN Official.
02:35:29.000Uh, they had their first paying gig this sunday at 3 p.m.
02:35:34.000Chocolate Park Tavern, Cascade Maryland.
02:35:37.000It's right outside of historic Fort Richie Maryland, i'm sorry.
02:37:09.000There's a man on death row, but after listening to this podcast, she's convinced he's innocent.
02:37:15.000So, you start with searching a fiction.
02:37:17.000There's a fictional internet that you can use in game.
02:37:20.000And the solution to creating it would be that it actually uses real search with filters so you can't get porn or any weird shit.
02:37:26.000But the key things you need to search for are hidden in this hybrid internet.
02:37:31.000So if you pull up the browser and search, you'll get real websites from the real world.
02:37:35.000But if you search for an in game item, it will treat it like it's real, but it'll only appear in game.
02:37:41.000And the ultimate goal of the game is you go on the internet, you read posts, you look up videos, and then you go and interview people and you travel around and then you prove the guy was innocent.
02:38:08.000It's literally just you deal with bureaucracy, you prove it, you advocate online, and then you finally get the legal documents and paperwork to get the guy, you know, emergency state of execution by introducing new evidence to his lawyers, ultimately resulting in him being exonerated and a Netflix documentary.
02:38:24.000And you have credibility for the next season.
02:38:27.000You get credibility for the season two.
02:38:29.000No, I wouldn't use the same character.
02:38:57.000Here's the thing part of the game will be sitting on a couch in your living room playing the podcast and just listening to what the person's saying.
02:40:14.000And then we pull up an article, and then she's like, Hold on a minute.
02:40:18.000In this article that she sees from the show, and then she finds another article and there's something contradictory, and then she's like, I'm going to go interview the person.
02:42:14.000Candace Tucker, Massey, and Alex Jones crowd are being corrupted by something, especially since Charlie's death.
02:42:22.000Why would Republican conservatives not look at the Small majorities we have, and understand we need bigger wins in the midterms for real changes done.
02:42:34.000Look, man, I have said, you know, the entire year I've been saying, look, the Democrats, if they win, it's going to be terrible for America, right?
02:42:44.000Like, I am, I fully believe that it is going to be an awful, awful result.
02:42:50.000Democrats are going to do terrible damage to the United States.
02:42:54.000But I'm just looking, you know, I'm just looking at the way people are acting and behaving and the responses that I see when I post on the internet.
02:43:13.000I hope that there's just a vocal, you know, minuscule but very vocal minority of people that are like, you know, I don't, I'm mad at Trump.
02:43:21.000And I hope that a lot of people go out and vote for Republicans.
02:43:38.000Additionally, I'm just trying to prescribe why we're underwater.
02:43:43.000And I think it's largely the congressional Republicans' fault because, I mean, all of those major wins, and we could go through them, barring the big, beautiful bill fight, have been from the Trump admin directly.
02:44:00.000So, you know, it kind of goes back to this thing we've been wrestling with for 10 years when Trump's not on the ballot, Republicans underperform.
02:44:08.000And then, what do you do if you're Republicans and you can't even necessarily depend on that Trump energy?
02:44:12.000So, you are in a serious conundrum there.
02:44:17.000So, yeah, what I was trying to outline on the show is just like, we have a lot of guys, and it's a lot of my friends, even are constantly like, well, look at the Trump victories.
02:44:31.000I mean, how can we not rest on our laurels there?
02:44:33.000And I'm like, the Iran thing really makes people mad because, I mean, You know, that was a campaign promise.
02:44:40.000That is a large reason why Trump kind of has garnered this sort of historic following and support base.
02:44:49.000And that was like a big line for a lot of people.
02:44:52.000I think if the Iran thing wasn't going on, then the price of gas wouldn't be so high.
02:45:23.000We were going to have these procedural victories in the courts with the redistricting and all of that.
02:45:30.000We probably would have held the house.
02:45:32.000I mean, I know it was like 50 50 in the betting markets at the time, but and the Venezuelan oil hits the market, you know, gas goes even lower.
02:45:43.000I mean, gas was at like 280 before the war.
02:45:55.000I mean, you could see it when you brought up the Calci chart earlier, right?
02:45:58.000I mean, you can point to exactly where the curve, the derivative of the curve changes.
02:46:03.000I mean, it's almost exactly right there.
02:46:05.000And you see it really free fall around May or June, where me and most Trump supporters, again, including myself, and that were taking an initial wait and see.
02:46:18.000And then by late April, it became obvious that the operation was a failure.
02:46:23.000And then by May, June, it started to set in like, oh, we're not getting out of this anytime soon.
02:46:59.000Term when he bombed Syria and was kind of an in and out operation, we're like, okay, well, we can stomach that.
02:47:04.000Additionally, the administration was communicating, we did set back their nuclear program 50 years or whatever.
02:47:09.000So we were like, okay, well, you know, I can live with that.
02:47:12.000If anything, you could probably mark it down as a win.
02:47:16.000So then, yeah, that was a major theme when the war first broke out wasn't even, wasn't so much as like, why are we going to the war with Iran?
02:47:22.000But the question was, well, what was the, were you lying last summer when you said he decimated their nuclear program?
02:47:32.000And then, yeah, by April, the picture became clear that they were actually seeking a regime change, and then it didn't work.
02:47:38.000So, yeah, I mean, I'm not trying to beat up on the admin or anything.
02:47:43.000I'm just trying to sort of communicate that the reason we're staring down the barrel of a blowout here is largely self imposed.
02:47:51.000Yes, you can attribute some of it to external factors like the black pillars who were black pilled anyway, or the Democrats, or the media.
02:48:01.000But largely, again, if you were to look at where we were in February compared to now, My main conclusion that I have to draw, if I'm being honest, is this is largely self imposed.
02:48:37.000Well, I got a diesel truck that we use.
02:48:38.000And even among core Republican voters who, Are going to stick by the admin through an Iran war.
02:48:46.000The Save Act is demoralizing to the base, as in the red no matter what base.
02:48:51.000And then, yeah, the coalition broadly and maybe one foot in, one foot out Republican voters, the Iran war is enough for them to say, okay, well, I'll give the Democrats a go.
02:49:00.000And then you combine those two factors Save Act, you have big mega donors taking their money out of these races.
02:49:07.000And then, Iran war, you lose your voters.
02:49:18.000I don't think we're going to see a lot of people show up for the Mandani lights.
02:49:22.000Yeah, especially because people that vote in the midterms are likely to be more politically aware and they're probably more aware of what the Democrats are offering.
02:49:32.000And probably, if you're a Republican, you definitely don't like it.
02:49:35.000But where you're likely to see Democrat pickups in the Senate are states that are default Democrat, like Ohio, Michigan.
02:49:43.000So, the voters understand there that by staying home, it's likely going to keep either in the shared rounds case, let him return to the Senate, or in the case of Abdul El Said.
02:49:53.000I think they implicitly understand that that is harming Republicans, where Republicans staying home in Texas would just be because they're staying home.
02:50:41.000And the reality, either way, is MAGA is coming to an end because JD Vance, and I mean, I like a lot of rhetoric and policy proposals from JD Vance, but as we hear more from him, see more from him, it's clear he's not like the successor to Trump.
02:51:01.000Like, nothing about him is very like Trumpian.
02:51:03.000Again, he has a lot of those policy positions from MAGA, so to speak.
02:51:08.000But MAGA as a whole, this probably would have been happening anyway.
02:51:12.000Maybe it would have been after the midterms as people just kind of like start to sort of reorient, like, okay, well, now we're looking at a, you know, maybe not a post Trump GOP because Trump's always going to be there, but a GOP without Trump being the guy on the ballot.
02:52:35.000The diesel price is hurting and stuff like that.
02:52:38.000But, you know, that's basically all I want to add.
02:52:44.000Well, yeah, I mean, and I'm not saying like it's your prerogative, but yeah, I mean, if I were pro Iran war, then I would be very white pilled right now.
02:52:53.000So, yeah, I think that's just kind of what it comes down to.
02:52:56.000So, wait, we can be white pilled if we want the war?
02:53:16.000That's why they built military bases along the edges of Iran.
02:53:19.000You want to shout anything out, brother?
02:53:22.000Yeah, I want to shout out Andrew Wilson and the Crucible crowd for taking the steps against the real black pillars of Candace and Tucker and such, and Nick Matau also, and Gary Melton.
02:53:46.000Candace is air gap featured, meaning on a brand new machine today.
02:53:53.000Candace's live stream at 8 p.m. is featured on the marquee of YouTube, featured in the top slot, and her last three episodes are featured in the top three.
02:54:02.000So if you go to YouTube, it says recent live streams Candace, Candace, Candace, and then live streams Candace, and the main front page Candace.
02:54:10.000The reason why she's got a massive concurrent viewership count is because they put her on the marquee.
02:54:15.000Key meaning they guarantee every single person who goes to YouTube default is watching Candace.
02:55:55.000He's convicted of murdering his ex girlfriend, and he's seven days he'll be executed.
02:56:00.000She goes on the online forum where everyone's talking about how they think she's innocent and they start putting the pieces together.
02:56:06.000She then realizes she hears something in one of the pieces of audio that's played that nobody notices that a certain train horn actually is not possible.
02:56:16.000It's not possible that it was the same in the location of the murder.
02:56:19.000They say, Oh, this is the sound you can hear.
02:56:21.000And then she's like, Wait a minute, that's a different train.
02:56:35.000And then some of the evidence you get, some other members will be like, hey, that photo you sent, this is where it originates.
02:56:40.000Like, this is the company you're talking about.
02:56:42.000And then it ends with 38 minutes before the execution, she gets a stay by you line up all the evidence and present the file.
02:56:50.000And then they get an emergency stay from the governor.
02:56:53.000When the guy gets exonerated, you learn the true story of what really happened.
02:56:56.000And then it ends with her being the final guest in the season finale of the True Crime Podcast, where all of the podcast fans are cheering for her and they're following her and they're like, you're the best.
02:57:06.000That's the female power fantasy right there.
02:57:11.000To be fair, maybe women just want to sit there and listen and not actually be involved, in which case, maybe this is a man projecting what a man would do in the circumstance onto a woman.
02:57:20.000And the women literally just want to sit down and listen to it and then gossip about it.
02:58:29.000Iran possibly starts saying, okay, well, we're going to start charging a toll to get out of the strait.
02:58:37.000That's one of the things they've talked about.
02:58:38.000So it's not just that that's the big problem of the Iran war, by initiating the bombing, he set things in motion with no easy way out.
02:58:51.000Iran, the people that run Iran are still in control of Iran, and there's still enough military power in the IRGC to harass any kind of transport ship that's going through the Strait.
02:59:05.000So, Iran does have the ability to say, Well, we're going to charge.
02:59:09.000And if you don't, if you try to go through the Strait without paying us, then, you know, we're going to shoot something at your, you know, we'll blow up your ship.
02:59:18.000And so that has a major impact on, you know, the.
02:59:36.000And that's why it's dragged on because if it was, if there was an easy way out, he could have just said, okay, we're done in May and this wouldn't be happening.
02:59:41.000Well, yeah, if you read reporting from the Iranian camp, they're fully aware that Trump's party, because the ruling party is coming up on an election.
02:59:57.000Before the midterms, they understand they can harm Trump electorally.
03:00:02.000And then after the midterms, if the Democrats, you know, if they likely win, if that manifests, they can start jamming up funding for the war.
03:00:11.000So, like every three months, Congress signs off on certain funding aspects for the military.
03:00:20.000If the Democrats are in, they're going to try and jam up this war as much as possible.
03:00:28.000You know, is also in a tough spot, which is now he's dealing with less plentiful resources than, or the Pentagon's dealing with less plentiful resources than they had before.
03:00:40.000Iran just has a lot of leverage, and that's a really scary thing.
03:00:45.000And so, Iran's in no position to take anything less than the deal that they want by and large.
03:00:52.000And I don't think Trump's going to back off unless he can take home something that he can, you know, dress up as a victory for the American people.
03:01:00.000So, Yeah, that's, I mean, that's been the theme.
03:01:03.000This is what I've been talking about in the show is like, I just do, I still, it's seven months in and I still do not see where the brinksmanship is going to occur.
03:01:09.000The United States and Iran have completely disparate goals in this conflict.
03:01:15.000And Iran's now in a position, say it again.
03:01:21.000But I mean, Iran's in a position where now they can start to say, okay, we might be able to keep a toll or, you know, negotiate some sort of toll on the straight.
03:01:32.000In conjunction with sanctions relief from the United States, like that is now on the table for them.
03:01:38.000You know, the initial speculation was like, okay, well, maybe the US just pulls like entirely out of Iraq or something.
03:01:44.000But that is now, you know, theoretically something that maybe the Iranians would be happy with.
03:01:50.000And if the strait, you know, is less, you know, free or clear, so to speak, than it was before the war, I don't know how Trump can really dress that up.
03:02:00.000I mean, I guess he could go home and say, okay, we destroyed their navy.
03:02:03.000But it's like navies and asymmetrical warfare don't matter as much.
03:02:07.000The Russians have a massive navy, and the Ukrainians basically don't even have a navy.
03:02:37.000I mean, what I think the Washington Post said 50 people down the flow, 50 tiers down the flow chart in some trees.
03:02:46.000And it turns out every time we kill one of their officials, they just report.
03:02:49.000Place them with another guy that, like, literally has the exact same ideology.
03:02:53.000So I don't even know how you, I mean, and the IRGC is kind of rogue right now.
03:02:57.000Like, not rogue, but they have slightly differing perspectives in the Iranian civil government.
03:03:04.000So the Iranian civil government probably be more keen on negotiating a settlement with the United States right now.
03:03:09.000The IRGC got fired up after Khomeini's funeral and started bombing ships in the strait.
03:03:16.000So the IRGC is, you know, when people that are proponents of the war are saying, well, Iran is this fanatical.
03:03:22.000Extremist regime, they're really talking about the IRGC because the IRGC is kind of this loose cannon who will literally get fired up after a funeral and start bombing ships.
03:03:30.000The Iranian civil government seems to be a bit more, again, still hostile to the United States, but a bit more amenable to negotiation and brinksmanship.
03:04:59.000From these meetings and these interviews I had in California, the new, the, so the next episode of Tim Pool show on Sunday was filmed here.