TRIGGERnometry - The Most Important Election in History

00:00:00.000 What are his major deficiencies? Because for me, I see it as temperament.

00:00:06.720 You know, it's funny that in 2020, I interviewed Steve Bannon in October,

00:00:11.360 and he told me he's not going to concede. Before the election, Steve Bannon told me this,

00:00:16.880 the idea that you cannot concede the election is terrifying to me.

00:00:20.880 The Democrats keep putting people up. It's like we're in trouble now when they're in front of a

00:00:24.480 camera. How is this happening? I'm a Brit. I'm not the smartest person in the world. I'm not as au fait

00:00:31.040 with your ways of government. You have a lot in common with Robert Harris.

00:00:38.160 And I'm looking at the scales, and they're kind of like this, and you're going, it's very close.

00:00:42.640 But if I've listened to the hour conversation we've just had.

00:00:45.440 You really want me to vote for Donald Trump, don't you?

00:00:47.040 Michael, every election cycle, we get told this is the most important election of all time.

00:00:56.480 But you're looking at this one, and I'm kind of thinking, they might have a point.

00:01:01.440 They might have a point. It depends on who you listen to. I mean, if you've been paying attention

00:01:05.920 to American politics in the past week, by the way, not in the past year, but in the past week,

00:01:10.560 it is between democracy and fascism, democracy and darkness. Of course, remember that the

00:01:17.280 Washington Post said democracy dies in darkness. That was in 2016. I believe they still have it

00:01:22.720 on the masthead there. It didn't die in which, by the way, it's interesting because someone was

00:01:28.480 talking to me about this this morning. And we were talking about how much of an effect this has on

00:01:32.320 voters. And I realized when I talked to voters about this, and I've talked about this various

00:01:37.280 issue before, that Trump is an authoritarian, he's a dictator and waiting, he's a fascist.

00:01:42.880 And the response now is that, wait, didn't we have him for four years? What kind of dictator

00:01:48.480 takes this long? Pretty lazy dictator, isn't he? He's like, I'm just waiting for the right moment.

00:01:52.560 So it doesn't really, I mean, you see this last ditch effort about not only this being the most

00:01:57.280 important election, and that's usually something like, you know, it's important for, you know,

00:02:02.400 the purse of the government or your pocketbook. This is something that is kind of refashioned,

00:02:08.080 that it's the most important thing, because America might end. And I find it kind of a,

00:02:13.840 not an anti-American thing, but somebody who doesn't believe in America in the way that I do,

00:02:18.800 in the sense that I believe in the robustness of the institutions, and I believe in the people

00:02:23.200 themselves. And I don't believe that if Donald Trump, for instance, was reelected and decided that

00:02:28.240 he wanted to stage an actual coup, which is typically done by, you know, taking control

00:02:32.160 of the army and actually not a bunch of yahoos running around the Capitol. I don't think that

00:02:37.120 would happen here, you know? And I just, and the people who say this, this is the most important

00:02:41.360 election ever, are now framing it in that way, which kind of offends me. Well, there is the other

00:02:47.280 side argument, which people like Elon have been advancing, which is this is the last election the

00:02:52.480 right can win, because if Kamala wins again, they will import millions more immigrants who

00:02:58.080 will then vote for the Democrats. And then you're forever in California, basically.

00:03:02.560 No. So both sides are making it. Yeah, both sides are wrong. I mean,

00:03:05.440 we have this, I went to Texas to shoot a documentary in Star County, which is the most Hispanic county

00:03:14.240 in America. It's not a big county, it's a 20,000 people, but it's like 98%. There's like three white

00:03:20.080 guys left who are just trying to find their way out of there, but no one speaks English.

00:03:24.240 So this is a very Hispanic. And I went there for the purpose of talking about this, the swing,

00:03:30.480 right? So 2016, it was like 45 points. I'm just off the top of my head, 45 points for Hillary. So

00:03:37.600 like a plus 50 kind of thing. Now, Democrats won again in 2020. It was like plus five for Biden,

00:03:46.080 six. And so I went there and these are Tejanos, you know, multi-generation Mexican Americans

00:03:52.480 and recent immigrants. And I talked to these people, you know, if they think importing people

00:03:57.760 means that these people are going to just become Democrats, if anyone actually has that idea,

00:04:02.800 just go to Texas and talk to Hispanics. I mean, the idea of Hispanic drives me crazy too. I mean,

00:04:08.400 this is something that is very- I quite agree. It's Latinx.

00:04:10.960 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because I mean, I don't want to, I want to include everyone here,

00:04:15.120 but I mean, you can't talk to a Nicaraguan who has a positive view of a Venezuelan,

00:04:19.920 who has a positive view of a Honduran, who has a positive view of Mexican. So, I mean,

00:04:23.520 all the people that I talked to were big Trump supporters and you would ask them this question,

00:04:27.680 you know, like he said this, he said that, you know, the rapist line, which I think is,

00:04:32.320 people often misunderstand, but they were like, look, we don't want more immigrants ourselves.

00:04:37.360 Well, these kind of bring up the drawbridge immigrants. They're like, we should be the

00:04:40.480 last ones. So the idea that this is going to import people and ultimately over time,

00:04:45.760 there'll be an amnesty and then they'll vote for us would be very short-sighted and wrong. I just,

00:04:53.120 I don't think that's true. Isn't that what happened to California? That's Ceylon's argument.

00:04:56.960 Well, I think there's a lot of things that can happen to California. I mean,

00:05:00.400 the collapse of California, I don't think when you go to LA or you go to San Francisco,

00:05:05.120 is migration is the first thing on your mind. If you're in the tenderloin of San Francisco,

00:05:10.160 you think maybe the border is the issue of fentanyl and, and, you know, drugs. But I,

00:05:15.840 I don't think that immigration is number one, what collapsed California.

00:05:20.160 No, sorry. The argument isn't that it collapsed California. The argument is that it was a

00:05:24.560 play for state, which became a mono state politically because of mass illegal immigration.

00:05:31.760 Yeah. I mean, I don't know the exact numbers on this, but it would surprise me if that was

00:05:35.440 the factor. Right. I mean, people go to California for a particular reason. They,

00:05:39.920 I mean, look, you see in America, we have this wonderful federal system where there's so much

00:05:44.320 competition, right? You can move, people move to Texas. I mean, you guys have been to Austin.

00:05:49.040 The number of people that used to be the big liberal place. I mean, now it's the home of Joe Rogan.

00:05:53.600 Right. And people are like, Oh, they're changing. I mean, there's a,

00:05:56.000 there's a t-shirts all over Texas, which I saw when I was last shooting something there in this,

00:06:01.040 the, the expression was don't California, my Texas, all these people from California are coming.

00:06:06.000 But the thing that that t-shirt misses is that they're leaving Texas because California is being

00:06:10.400 California. They don't want to import that there. So, I mean, look, you see that in Florida,

00:06:15.440 Texas, those are big immigrant States and they're trending right in so many ways.

00:06:21.040 And it also depends where you, where the people come from. For example, Venezuela,

00:06:26.160 you're not going to get many Venezuelans who are like, ay, ay, ay, el socialismo.

00:06:29.920 Yeah. I mean, this is, there are three groups that you see very common in, in Miami. Of course,

00:06:34.720 everybody knows Cubans, right? Unless they have the right wing Cubans. I think that's changing a

00:06:37.920 little bit, but Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans, three countries of people that are refugees from

00:06:44.080 socialism. These are not people that are desperate to vote for Kamala Harris. And that was, I mean,

00:06:50.000 I, I, I went and did a piece with this Cubanos con Biden, this like, and it was like this outcast

00:06:55.360 group that they were supporting Biden. And they were upset that all the Spanish language radio

00:07:00.480 was, you know, appealing to Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and saying, this, this guy's a socialist. And they

00:07:06.080 said, oh, he's not a socialist. It's like, it doesn't matter if he is, you are appealing to these

00:07:10.880 people in a very particular right of center way. And it works, it works. And there's, I mean,

00:07:15.520 there's no uniformity of Hispanic voters in this country.

00:07:19.280 I, I look at Kamala and I think to myself, how can a woman like that have got to the top of the

00:07:27.200 Democrat party? When you look at the way she can, she speaks with, with her ideas, with her rhetoric,

00:07:35.280 you're like, this is really scraping the barrel here. What's going on in the Democrat party?

00:07:39.840 They're being very generous in calling it rhetoric. I don't know what it is. I don't know what she's

00:07:42.880 saying. 95% of the time, I don't think she does either. Um, should we be honest about this? I mean,

00:07:49.360 how is a person who, you know, is running in 2020 and drops out before she competes in her own state

00:07:58.000 in California? Because all the polls suggested that she wouldn't even come close to winning

00:08:01.760 her own state. She got zero delegates. And of course, zero delegates this time around too.

00:08:06.640 So what, what is this? Who is this person? And why are they at the top? Well, I think Joe Biden

00:08:13.120 was quite clear about why she was chosen. And I think that there's this weird thing in American

00:08:17.600 politics where people argue like these vociferous arguments about affirmative action. And they say,

00:08:24.080 we need this for X, Y, and Z reason. Okay. That's an argument you can make. When you point out what it is

00:08:30.080 in action, that people are deeply offended by it. So it's like, no, but this is the thing you want.

00:08:34.480 And then the thing that you like, fine, I disagree with you on this. But when we talk about it,

00:08:39.760 you say, how could you dare you say that you're undermining her credibility. You're saying that

00:08:44.160 she has no qualifications. And I say, you're making my argument now about why affirmative action,

00:08:48.400 I think is poisonous in so many ways. But I think that's it, right? And then you have the argument

00:08:53.440 that, and this is one that they're going to have to really revisit if Donald Trump wins this election,

00:08:59.200 is that how would it look? And you talked to all the Democratic Party grandees,

00:09:04.000 when they're pushing Joe Biden out the door, how will it look if the first black female vice

00:09:09.520 president is not anointed, if we don't have a coronation? How does that look for us? Well,

00:09:15.200 it might look like you lost, because that's kind of what's going to happen, I think. I mean, we have no

00:09:19.920 idea. But I mean, these polls are too close to tell. But you have a candidate who I think should

00:09:25.360 really be winning in this situation now, because there's a lot of inputs here that would suggest,

00:09:30.880 you know, it's a good time for a sensible Democrat who's not Joe Biden.

00:09:37.440 Look at the town hall. I don't know if you watched this town hall with her and Anderson Cooper.

00:09:42.320 She does one answer in which she studied it, right? She knows what she's doing. She's got this one back

00:09:48.480 to front, anything a little off. And she's looking around confused. I mean, the word salad, David

00:09:56.560 Axelrod, you know, I mean, is there any more of a Democrat than David Axelrod? They come back to

00:10:01.760 CNN to the panel, David Axelrod, use the phrase word salad, David Axelrod, about the woman who he

00:10:08.320 wants to be president. And people got nervous. There's a couple of stories about this. After that,

00:10:12.800 people in the party were like, okay, we're in trouble now, which is precisely what happened

00:10:17.360 when Joe Biden went for his debate. The Democrats keep putting people up. It's like, we're in trouble

00:10:21.840 now when they're in front of a camera. How is this happening? Well, and even voters didn't choose.

00:10:28.240 That's right. Voters didn't choose. Interesting. I get what interests me about your answer is before

00:10:33.600 we started. Yeah. You were saying you're not going to vote in the election. I will vote.

00:10:39.040 Not for president. Sorry. You're not going to vote for president. However, I asked you, well,

00:10:43.920 who would you vote for if you did vote? And you were like, it would be really tough. It'd be really

00:10:47.920 tough. But listen to what you just said about Kamala. Yeah. And it would be really tough.

00:10:54.320 Well, I could do a similar kind of thing about Trump. Yeah. Like what's wrong with Trump?

00:10:58.320 Look, I mean, there's a lot. It's a very long list. I actually think it's an important question.

00:11:06.720 Yeah. No, I totally agree. The reason I ask it, by the way, is I'm aware that

00:11:10.640 this is all coming off as very pro-Trump. Yeah. I want to hear the other side.

00:11:15.040 Yeah. Well, the other side is- If Kamala can't speak and can't think

00:11:19.040 and can't run anything and is totally incompetent and is basically what you've said,

00:11:22.880 which is an affirmative action hire who doesn't deserve to be there. Yeah.

00:11:27.200 For it to be difficult to make a choice, Donald Trump must be really awful in some way.

00:11:33.280 I mean, he's really off in a lot of ways. I mean, look, where does one begin with Donald Trump?

00:11:39.840 I think, and I want to move out of rhetoric too, because the rhetoric bothers me. Sure.

00:11:44.400 And I think it's, I don't like, you know, hearing the things like poisoning the blood of America,

00:11:49.600 which I think is deeply- Yeah, no, let's talk about the facts.

00:11:51.680 ...discomforting in a lot of ways. But as far as facts, I mean,

00:11:55.040 I don't like that Donald Trump doesn't have a core ideology, right? And I think that's the one thing

00:12:00.960 that so many Republicans, and you talk to them, are very upset about is that MAGA-ism is vibes in

00:12:07.840 a lot of ways too, right? 20% tariff on anything that comes into the country. Everybody that I talk

00:12:14.560 to who is supporting him, and I know a lot of people, and I respect a lot of them too,

00:12:18.400 say the same thing. They've been saying it since 2015. Watch what he does, not what he says.

00:12:22.880 I don't love that in a president. I love somebody who says, this is what I'm going to do. No,

00:12:27.520 no, I'm just threatening. You're threatening what? You're threatening who? The voters?

00:12:31.360 And saying that this is not a tax on the, like a 20% tariff on everything coming into the country

00:12:37.280 is madness. And if you ask any economist, and then people say, well, yeah, the economists have

00:12:41.760 been wrong about everything. They haven't been wrong about this. And this is a pretty basic thing.

00:12:45.440 So that kind of thing, which I suspect would be like, you know, sort of free market conservatism,

00:12:50.480 a more libertarian view of the world, a more Milton Friedman. And that's kind of where I like,

00:12:55.040 he's not in that universe at all. Does it mean that she's better? Well, I mean, she's kind of

00:13:01.600 better on tariffs, I would say, which is bizarre because nobody in the media gets a chance to

00:13:08.480 question her. When they do, they don't usually follow up and say, well, you know, the Biden

00:13:13.760 administration kept so many of those things because they want to keep labor happy, right? But look,

00:13:17.840 that kind of thing really bothers me. That, for instance, I don't believe that he is this kind of

00:13:24.400 isolationist candidate that so many people say that he is. I worry about Ukraine. I don't worry...

00:13:32.560 Flesh that out. You don't believe he's an isolationist, meaning what?

00:13:35.200 I don't believe he's an isolationist. Look, he's, there's so much wish casting with Trump,

00:13:39.840 right? There's so many people on the kind of, you know, I would say isolationist right. That's like an

00:13:45.760 old American isolationist, libertarian, right, who are isolationist, who say, well, he didn't start

00:13:50.800 any new foreign wars. There's a lot. I mean, he killed Soleimani. There was a 75 missile strike

00:13:57.680 into Syria, a lot of operations in Iraq. New, okay, we can parse those words and everything,

00:14:03.600 but I don't think he's somebody that is going to withdraw from the world as everybody on that

00:14:10.560 kind of edge of politics thinks he will. So I think that that's probably a good thing,

00:14:14.080 that that's not going to happen. I do wonder about something like Ukraine. I mean, you can hear

00:14:20.720 somebody say, it would never have happened under my watch. Okay. Well, write a novel about it. It

00:14:26.480 already did happen. What are you going to do? I'm not getting anything that gives me confidence. Well,

00:14:32.560 when I come in there, two days, it'll all be solved. I didn't believe that, right? Israel.

00:14:38.080 Well, on Ukraine, sorry, let's just explore this. On Ukraine, my understanding is

00:14:44.880 he's going to do a deal, which is Ukraine gives away land.

00:14:48.640 And the only question is, and this is why I agree that it's important to understand what

00:14:55.280 that plan is or whatever, is what is the deal going to be? Yes, Ukraine gives away land. What

00:15:00.480 does it get? That's the question. And Mike, if I had to worry about that aspect, I think he'd be much

00:15:05.760 better on Ukraine than Kamala, by the way, because she'll just keep the wall going without helping

00:15:10.400 Ukraine win. That has been the problem of the Biden administration. Yeah. Which as a big supporter

00:15:15.440 of Ukraine's stand for independence, I think is the worst thing that Ukrainians could possibly have.

00:15:19.840 Simultaneously being told to keep fighting and then not being given the help to actually win.

00:15:23.920 And again, we're going to stay in Ukraine, but Israel is the same way with the Biden administration.

00:15:26.960 Yeah. So that's bad. With Trump, the concern is he comes in, he tries to do a deal. And because

00:15:33.040 he's promised to do a deal on day one, that means that he's given Putin leverage over him because

00:15:39.600 he can keep the negotiations running for a long time. And then Trump's electorate is going to be

00:15:44.000 like, well, you said you'd end it on day one and it's been two weeks. And then he's going to give them

00:15:49.120 way more than otherwise in a deal he should. That would be my concern.

00:15:52.720 That's one of my concerns. Okay. What about Israel? Because objectively,

00:15:58.400 Trump was one of the most pro-Israel presidents in American history.

00:16:02.080 Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think that on Israel, it's a slightly different thing. I mean,

00:16:06.080 that's another one of these things where you, you know, you stop in your tracks when someone's

00:16:10.960 calling them a fascist, right? I mean, fascism is, it's supposed to be redolent of Nazism. It's not like

00:16:17.280 a corporatist Mussolini. It's saying you're Hitler, right?

00:16:20.000 No, they just mean our group. Yeah. Yeah. They just mean our group, right? And so

00:16:24.320 you see what, if you look at these polls in Israel, 75, 25 for Trump. I mean, I was,

00:16:30.480 I was up in the Golan and we were driving by a village named after Donald Trump. It's called

00:16:36.320 Trump Heights. Literally, it's in the Golan. And it is, I was like kind of hilarious. I'm like,

00:16:41.840 Trump Heights. But yeah, that doesn't bother me as much. I mean, it's funny, this guy who's an anti-Semite

00:16:48.320 and he's a, you know, Hitlerian who has a son-in-law who's Jewish, who he entrusted with,

00:16:54.400 you know, getting, I mean, the Abraham Accords were very impressive. That is great.

00:17:00.560 I don't trust Kamala Harris. I mean, you saw the other day, there's a protester at a Harris rally,

00:17:08.080 yelling about Gaza, um, and is pushed out by security. And before he can leave the building,

00:17:15.600 she says, well, he has a point. He has a point. He's yelling about genocide, right? He has a point.

00:17:21.120 He's not wrong about this. That's why we need somebody who's decent to actually sit in front

00:17:26.000 of her and interview her and gets, I don't know what she believes about this because of course,

00:17:30.080 she's trying to be everything to everybody at all times. And this, the Democrats think is the

00:17:34.080 strategy, right? I'm for fracking, I'm against fracking, I'm for it and I'm against it. This has

00:17:37.600 happened, it's like watching a ping pong match in the past couple of months. The same thing is true of

00:17:42.320 Israel. The question is always answered that Israel has a right to exist. No other countries

00:17:50.080 have this as the first instinct. I agree that you can exist. Let's start with that. And then

00:17:55.040 I won't answer the question. I think Trump is good on that. Every American president said,

00:17:58.960 we're going to move the embassy to Jerusalem. He did it, right? From an Israeli perspective.

00:18:02.800 And I think that, I think that I would prefer him on that issue, but by a lot. Yeah.

00:18:07.360 But let's focus again on his weaknesses. So we, cause we then started to talk about,

00:18:12.080 look, he's going to be better on geopolitics by and large than Kamala. What are his major

00:18:17.040 deficiencies? Because for me, I see it as temperament. I see it almost in the way that

00:18:22.160 I look at an addict and I go, he can't help himself. Yes. He can't help. His advisors say

00:18:27.520 the same thing. People who are close to him say the same thing. People have told me that. I mean,

00:18:32.560 I, you know, it's funny that in 2020, I interviewed Steve Bannon in October and he told me he's not

00:18:40.160 going to concede. Before the election, Steve Bannon told me this. The fact that people like that know

00:18:46.480 things like this, that is dangerous, right? The idea that you cannot concede the election

00:18:52.080 is terrifying to me. It's unacceptable to me. And I think that is hugely disqualifying to say,

00:18:57.280 you lost. And there are people in his orbit that has been reported that he knew he lost,

00:19:01.840 that he knew it. And that he was keeping this myth up for, for his audience, which does believe it.

00:19:08.400 And I don't like the cultish nature of the MAGA universe, but I think that the election stuff,

00:19:15.920 it's hard because you have to separate yourself because so many people who I hate

00:19:20.240 just really bang on about this issue. But it is true. The fact that Donald Trump said,

00:19:25.680 I won this election, stuck to it without any evidence. The number of judges who threw these

00:19:30.880 things out, 70, 80 judges, a majority of them, I think, were Trump-appointed judges.

00:19:36.000 I mean, there was no basis to this whatsoever. They've shifted the goalposts on this, by the way.

00:19:40.320 I talked to somebody the other night at dinner, who's a big Trump supporter. And he said,

00:19:44.160 well, the Hunter Biden laptop. I said, well, that's a different thing.

00:19:46.800 That was election interference.

00:19:48.400 Yeah. I mean, it is the media doing what it does to try to get a candidate to win. Election

00:19:54.640 interference is- No, no. I mean, the banning of that story.

00:19:57.280 Sure. I mean, as- That was election interference.

00:19:59.040 You know, as different than election is stolen.

00:20:01.600 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the media is interfering all the time in these ways.

00:20:04.800 But the fact, like that stuff is, and it gets to the temperament issue. That is, I mean, economic

00:20:09.920 stuff bothers me. Temperament stuff bothers me more than anything. There's, I, yeah. The list is long,

00:20:16.480 but I think those two things- But didn't you say the American institutions are strong enough to deal with it?

00:20:20.480 Yeah, but I don't want them tested. I mean, the fact that they, they can withstand this stuff

00:20:25.440 doesn't mean they should all the time. But yeah, I think the American institutions are strong. I know

00:20:31.200 a lot of Republicans who worked with him and don't trust him and think that he's bad for the country

00:20:36.640 for a variety of reasons. I mean, you can look up people like, you know, not even just Millie and

00:20:40.800 Kelly and HR McMaster and Bolton and these people who just say, look, this is not a guy who should be

00:20:46.800 behind the wheel here. And a lot of it is temperamental stuff.

00:20:50.400 But that is a really dangerous position for a country to find itself in. And it's an incredibly

00:20:57.120 dangerous position for the United States to find itself in. And because of that, the world,

00:21:02.880 when you have somebody who is temperamentally unsuited to being president, to put it mildly.

00:21:08.080 Let me put, before you answer, let me put a counter argument to that. I'm not saying I necessarily

00:21:13.280 hold this view, but I think it's worth discussing as part of this conversation about temperament.

00:21:18.640 So I was having lunch with somebody here in New York a couple of days ago who used to work with

00:21:24.160 Trump in the real estate business. And he is, I think, undecided about how to work and probably

00:21:30.400 leans towards Trump, I think. It doesn't matter. My point is he's fairly kind of, he's not,

00:21:36.480 his experiences with Trump did not radicalize him in either direction. And he was like, well,

00:21:41.600 you know, the thing about Trump is if he owes you a million dollars, he'll call you up and he'll

00:21:45.280 say, I'll give you 300 grand or sue me. Yeah.

00:21:48.480 And it'll cost you a million to sue him. So you will take the 300 grand. And two thoughts

00:21:53.280 simultaneously entered my head at this point. Number one, what a douchebag. Number two.

00:22:01.840 The type of douchebag you want in Washington.

00:22:04.000 Who, not in Washington, but in the negotiation with the greatest douchebags in history who now

00:22:10.000 lead other countries, the Putin style douchebags, the Xi style, who only care about one thing,

00:22:16.080 which is getting something for themselves and their country. Right. So I understand people's

00:22:23.280 temperament idea. And I think it's really important that the person in the White House embodies a

00:22:29.040 certain moral code that you can see from a mile away. And that would be the ideal. I don't think

00:22:34.240 we have a choice of those candidates on either side. No.

00:22:37.600 So wouldn't we want the very best douchebag we have?

00:22:41.680 Well, that's presuming that he is. I mean, I think the temperament and the negotiation stuff

00:22:46.560 intersects in one way. I mean, the number of people who have been in negotiations with him

00:22:50.720 in a political sense, not in a real estate sense, slightly different, that say he is so vulnerable

00:22:57.920 to flattery that why did he go from little rocket man, you know, the sort of horrible Stalinist

00:23:05.360 dictatorship of the hermit kingdom to saying, you know, we trade letters and Kim Jong-un and I are

00:23:11.840 friends. And if you see the letters, it's just the flattery of Donald Trump. Putin did the same thing.

00:23:17.200 I think that the Russiagate stuff is an absolute, like a hoax is probably too mild for some of the

00:23:24.080 stuff we saw coming out of MSNBC from 2017 to 21. Well, actually still to this day. But I don't

00:23:31.520 get the sense that he's an amazing negotiator. If I did, he talks about negotiations. He talks about

00:23:37.280 deal-making. What are those deals? They bring the court? Look, that is, I mean,

00:23:43.520 do I think that that's him or do I actually think that that's Jared Kushner? I think it's

00:23:46.960 probably Jared Kushner, to be honest. I actually have, I hold him in higher esteem than most people

00:23:50.320 do. But I think that that, for instance, you know, getting NATO to pay up. I mean,

00:23:54.960 Obama said the same thing. He said the same thing. Maybe he performed well on that. People, you know,

00:23:59.760 debate about the numbers on these things too. But yeah, I don't see all these, you know, amazing wins.

00:24:06.160 I mean, in the United States, in the US, I mean, like American politics in the House,

00:24:10.960 polarized enough that I, you know, there's not a lot of bipartisan legislation in the US anymore.

00:24:18.000 It's not like there was so much recently anyway. But no, I think that's sort of done.

00:24:22.320 Do you think as well age is going to be a factor? I mean, Trump is how old now? 78. By the time he

00:24:26.960 gets out, it's 82. I mean, regardless of how fit, youthful and active you keep yourself,

00:24:33.760 at 82 years old, you do not have the capacity. Yes, we need a cap on how old you can be to run

00:24:39.040 for president. Yeah. I think that's true. Yeah. But that must be a serious concern as well.

00:24:42.960 It's a concern. I mean, it's, it's, it's a serious concern. I do think that the media reporting on this

00:24:48.160 recently, and you see all these, these desperate moves that come from media of like, the polls are

00:24:54.320 narrowing. I mean, Harris had about a four point jump at the beginning, and that's narrowed to almost

00:24:59.040 nothing. And it looks like it's going in Trump's favor. So now we have all this reporting, reporting,

00:25:04.000 or observational reporting that Trump is losing it. He's doesn't have, watch him on Andrew Schultz's

00:25:10.720 podcast. Doesn't look like a guy who's losing it to me. No, no, I don't know what these people are

00:25:15.680 talking about. At the moment, I think he's fine. Do I worry four years down the road? Hell yes.

00:25:21.520 And do we want a guy who's, who's sort of default temperament is that to be kind of going over the

00:25:28.960 edge at 82, 83, 84? I would say no. But yeah, I mean, this is a problem that we have a bare minimum

00:25:36.480 age for running for president, and we don't have a, a ceiling. And I think that watching Joe Biden

00:25:42.960 and watching, I mean, nobody has asked Kamala Harris the question. One person didn't,

00:25:46.560 didn't get an answer of when did you notice this? When did you notice that Joe Biden was no longer,

00:25:54.640 you know, able to do this job? He's still the president. People don't forget this.

00:25:59.280 He's non-composentist right now, but he's still the president.

00:26:02.400 So, yeah. And that's another factor when it comes into talking about the Democrat Party,

00:26:07.440 is that they lied to, look, all political parties lie, all politicians lie, but they lied about something

00:26:13.520 as egregious as that consistently to the point he was, Joe Biden was bringing Vladimir Zelensky to

00:26:20.960 the stage as Vladimir Putin. Yeah. I mean, that was probably one of the, the lighter,

00:26:26.560 more hilarious ones. I mean, this stuff, if you look in the background is really crazy. And people

00:26:30.720 have been saying this internally, I think since mid 2022. But if you look at polls in 2000, was it

00:26:38.560 2022? We were on Bill Maher together. And I remember the poll because I was talking to the

00:26:43.680 Booker before this. And we had this conversation that a majority of Democrats, 65 almost, it was like,

00:26:49.920 I think it was almost 70%, said that their candidate was too old to be president.

00:26:57.280 Two years ago. This was not something in the last six months. This has been obvious to everybody.

00:27:03.360 They have been lying to us. But I think the only people it harmed was the ever diminishing

00:27:08.560 credibility of the mainstream media, because it's like, who are you going to believe me or your lying

00:27:13.280 eyes? Everyone saw this. Everyone knew this was happening. They can lie to you endlessly. I mean,

00:27:20.160 this is ultimately the problem with something like Pravda, you know, in the Soviet Union. I mean,

00:27:25.760 the hilarious nature of it being called truth, which is almost a joke, like nudge, nudge. Did people

00:27:32.000 believe that? No, they got used to it being whatever was in that was probably the opposite of it was

00:27:37.120 true. And I think Americans have really come to, I mean, you look at the trust in the media,

00:27:40.560 it's down in the toilet. But when everyone is saying that, you know, the Robert Hur's report,

00:27:45.920 where he said, you know, he couldn't remember when his son died, he couldn't remember X, Y, and Z,

00:27:51.200 the attacks were led by Kamala Harris, who said, this is a political hit job. This is a guy

00:27:57.200 doing a civil service job in producing this report. And he's defamed by the woman who ultimately

00:28:04.800 replaces Joe Biden because he's too damn old. So I don't believe in conspiracies usually,

00:28:11.680 but there is kind of a silent conspiracy for a long time that we don't want the other guy to win.

00:28:17.120 So we might as well just pretend that everyone who's saying this, I mean, we've seen this over and over

00:28:22.000 and over again. The COVID stuff, it was misinformation to say that it was the escape

00:28:27.920 from a lab. The mass stuff was misinformation. The Biden's age stuff was misinformation.

00:28:33.040 At what point did the American people just say, hang on? I think we're well past that point.

00:28:39.520 And that's where Trump's temperament and inability to control his compulsions, which again,

00:28:47.120 I use the term addict-like behavior because it is. He just can't do it. In a way that becomes a

00:28:53.440 strength because people look at him and go, well, at least he's honest.

00:28:56.480 And then you get a point which to add to the litany of things where I think he's unsuited for

00:29:03.760 the presidency, he says a couple of things after the 60 Minutes interview where they release a kind

00:29:09.280 of cut up version of it. Release the transcript. Why not? I totally agree. I think it was the debate

00:29:15.760 questions to also CBS. And he says we should revoke their broadcast license. I mean, conservatives

00:29:26.000 think this is okay? I mean, this is Chavismo. This is what Chavez did. I mean, they didn't,

00:29:31.120 he always said, you know, RCTV, we didn't take it. We just, we didn't really do its license.

00:29:35.920 It couldn't meet all these standards. It was a regulatory thing. That kind of language terrifies me.

00:29:41.680 And the fact that he does that as an extension of like the enemy of the people, I just, stuff

00:29:46.800 doesn't bother me. I've been in a number of Trump rallies when I'm sitting in the,

00:29:49.760 in the press pen and people turn around and boo you. And it's the least threatening thing in the

00:29:54.640 world. If anyone tells you what it is they're lying to you, you walk out and people say, oh,

00:29:57.920 hey, I saw you on this. And they just take a picture of stuff. It's wrestling. It's professional

00:30:01.760 wrestling. It's part of the whole thing. The man's in the wrestling hall of fame. He actually is.

00:30:05.440 So that stuff doesn't bother me saying the press, oh, they're liars. They're lying about me all the

00:30:10.320 time because they prove it pretty consistently. But when he goes that extra step and says,

00:30:17.200 and that is the kind of wannabe authoritarian in him, he has those instincts. And that is that,

00:30:24.000 so he's correct about that in a, in a broad sense. And it's very helpful to him. It's very,

00:30:28.160 been very helpful to the Republican party that the press who thinks they're doing something,

00:30:32.480 what does it matter that Taylor Swift says, I'm going to support Kamala when you're out on the

00:30:37.040 road with Bruce Springsteen, which she was the other day, no one cares. These are people that

00:30:42.480 don't have that much money in their pocket. And they're saying these billionaires support me,

00:30:46.640 these rich people support me. It's like, really this in the, in the media is attacking and being

00:30:52.080 on her side. It's like this bifurcation of Americans. I think that, that the Democratic Party

00:30:58.240 is, you know, complicit. And I think the media is ultimately responsible for it.

00:31:03.760 One of the big shifts that's happening, I don't think it's quite complete. I think by the time

00:31:08.000 of the next election, it will have been completed is the move away from the mainstream media to the

00:31:14.480 point where our space becomes the dominant space for actually where these conversations are happening.

00:31:20.240 It's starting to happen. Donald Trump has been more in the lead, I would say, in terms of doing podcasts

00:31:26.320 and doing stuff like this. Kamala has done a couple. I know for a fact that she was in negotiations

00:31:33.120 with Joe Rogan about going on her show. We learned today that she's not going.

00:31:37.600 Why do you think that is? The first interview she did where she said,

00:31:43.200 okay, I'll sit down and it's not going to be a softball interview from somebody from MSBC,

00:31:47.200 MSNBC, like Stephanie Ruhl. I believe it was 20 minutes, 25 minutes, something like that.

00:31:53.840 The next one was in that universe too. So you have presumably a lead up, some questions,

00:32:00.160 some niceties, and you're probably talking about 15 minutes of actual substance. Joe Rogan does two

00:32:04.880 hours, two and a half hours. Donald Trump did do four and a half, right? I mean, is it going to be

00:32:11.040 substantive? Is it going to be making sense the whole time? Absolutely not. Is it going to be funny?

00:32:15.200 Absolutely. I cannot imagine what she would be like over a 45-minute period, an hour period,

00:32:22.640 an hour and a half. And especially if somebody who is not on one side or the other and is going to ask

00:32:29.040 kind of curious questions and probing questions. And Joe Rogan is not somebody who's going to,

00:32:34.640 from watching him over the years, is going to allow a bunch of bluster and nonsense to

00:32:40.960 like pretend it's an answer. And she gets away with that. I mean, Anderson Cooper,

00:32:46.640 I don't hate Anderson Cooper. There were a couple of answers about the economy that I,

00:32:52.240 I mean, word salad is being generous. I had no idea what she was talking about. And she loops back and

00:32:58.560 they say, you know, like, what are you going to do on taxes? And she's, you know, I grew up in a

00:33:01.840 middle-class family. And it's like, oh, here we go. That is the indicator that everything that's going to

00:33:06.560 come after is absolute fluff. When you're sitting in front of somebody for two hours,

00:33:11.600 who is not a professional journalist, who just wants to know the answer of questions,

00:33:16.000 right, is not trying to please a constituency, you know, was, I think it was the biggest media

00:33:21.680 deal in the past decade, maybe, probably in history, with that single deal for Spotify.

00:33:27.120 He doesn't need you. He doesn't need your money. He doesn't express fealty to any party.

00:33:32.240 And you think he's just going to let you get away with this stuff?

00:33:34.880 It will be interesting to see what he does with Trump. I don't think he's going to take it easy

00:33:38.080 on Trump. Well, we'll find out by the time this interview comes out. But it's interesting. I have

00:33:42.960 two things to say. I think Joe is great. And one of the things I would say is he's one of the most

00:33:47.200 open-minded people I've ever met. But he will push back if you talk about something that he knows about

00:33:53.680 and he doesn't agree. And then he's like a pit bull and he will not let you get away with any

00:33:58.160 bullshit. But I actually think he probably would have been very generous to her, letting her set

00:34:04.960 her views out and whatever. And then if she said something dumb, then he would push back.

00:34:09.600 Yeah. But it's not Piers Morgan in all respect to Piers Morgan. But Piers Morgan, you come on

00:34:15.200 to have a fist fight. And that's what you expect. And he creates the guests that way and the

00:34:20.160 combinations that way. Whereas Rogan Cho, you're right. I mean, I've seen him with people I know

00:34:25.360 he disagrees with. You can kind of sense it. But there's a generosity of spirit there and he allows

00:34:30.080 people to actually respond. So I actually think it would be a good venue for her. And at this point,

00:34:35.280 with the polls turning in the wrong direction for her, she has nothing to lose. Well, that's what

00:34:39.200 I thought. But then, and this is the other point I was going to make, because I listened to you

00:34:43.680 and you're a friend and you're smart. And I go, and then I, and then I sort of like look down on

00:34:49.600 the situation and I go, here's a guy who's saying what many people believe, which is the one of the

00:34:55.600 two candidates for president who has a good chance of winning. It may not be, you may not be 50%,

00:35:01.440 even maybe 40%. That's pretty, pretty good chance of winning. Yeah. Can't hold the conversation for

00:35:07.040 two hours. Yeah. About her views about the direction of the country she wants to lead.

00:35:12.480 What the fuck is that? How is that possible? Well, I mean, I would add a little addendum to that

00:35:17.600 is how is it possible, especially considering she's been the vice president for four years.

00:35:22.000 And what you see with her is in, you know, depending on what the subject is,

00:35:28.400 she is the all powerful vice president. There's never been a vice president more.

00:35:32.080 She says, you know, we did this. I did this. I didn't do that as vice. I didn't ban fracking

00:35:36.480 as vice president. We don't have that power, but no. But then when she's asked the question

00:35:42.480 in the debate about Afghanistan, she's like, well, President Biden's policy, it's like,

00:35:46.960 she's running away from this all the time. She has no record to speak of, right? But her record

00:35:52.800 in the Senate, I mean, she's a cipher in the Senate too. And, you know, as vice president,

00:35:58.160 you would imagine she would have some accomplishments, number one. And number two,

00:36:01.760 have some fluency with government, some fluency with how to deal with these issues when you're

00:36:06.960 being pressed on them. When she's asked about the economy, look, I think that there's something that

00:36:12.560 is both her and the advice she's getting. I think there was a concerted effort to do two things.

00:36:17.760 It happened with Joe Biden to get used to this as a strategy, which they literally called

00:36:21.200 Operation Bubble Wrap. Keep Joe Biden in the basement. Don't let him out. He's going to

00:36:25.120 embarrass himself. They just continued that with her for different reasons. She's not,

00:36:29.600 you know, non-copus mentis. She's just not very bright and she's very bad at this.

00:36:34.960 So they keep her under wraps and make sure she doesn't give you an answer on anything.

00:36:40.080 The American people aren't that stupid. They start noticing when you say nothing

00:36:44.480 and when you say both things. Michael, but wasn't she like this ruthless

00:36:48.320 prosecutor who had an illustrious career, which is what propelled her into politics.

00:36:52.560 I mean, that's why I hear Democrats saying. It is amazing to me because

00:36:56.080 there was a story a couple of days ago. It's amazing that it's taken this long. Now,

00:37:00.560 granted it's a very short campaign. A short campaign for her is that she actually prosecuted

00:37:06.400 a handful of cases, 10, 20, something like in the courtroom. That this is not what she actually

00:37:12.000 doesn't have a ton of courtroom experience. And this was, look, I just read this the other day. I don't

00:37:15.840 know if it's true or not. It strikes me as watching her on stage that it probably is true

00:37:20.800 because she doesn't seem to have that ruthless killer instinct that you need to be to be a DA.

00:37:25.600 So she was chief prosecutor. Yeah.

00:37:28.000 And she only was in court prosecuting people 10 or 12.

00:37:31.760 That's what I, there's been some reporting on this recently that in actual, in the actual courtroom,

00:37:38.080 she was not often there. She was not often present. You can offload this stuff pretty easily.

00:37:42.640 I'm a Brit. I'm not the smartest person in the world. I'm not as au fait with

00:37:48.560 your ways of government. This is mental.

00:37:51.280 You have a lot in common with Kyle Harris.

00:37:55.840 Everything you're saying sounds insane. It just sounds like someone who has failed upwards

00:38:01.520 continually until they get the chance to be the most powerful person in the world.

00:38:06.720 Or to be the, the ultimate failure. Right. I mean, which I mean, November 6th,

00:38:13.440 she might have like, just put the Democrats back in the wilderness for a very long time.

00:38:18.720 Look, I think this is ultimately an indictment in some way of identity politics and just prizing

00:38:24.400 someone's identity, which is tells you nothing about a person over somebody who can actually do

00:38:29.760 his job. I mean, there were people that wanted to have like a real compressed primary so we could

00:38:35.600 actually have other options. That didn't happen. And the Democratic Party grandees like ask Bernie

00:38:42.080 Sanders what the Democratic Party is like as far as an institution. Right. I mean, they waged war on

00:38:48.240 him in 2016 when he was gaining neck and neck on somebody who is the literal definition of the

00:38:56.160 establishment. Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, Bernie Sanders coming up. And I interviewed him

00:39:02.640 after this. And yeah, he was like, they knifed me. And that's what they will do to anyone who's going

00:39:07.680 to step up to Kamala Harris. That is going to reflect poorly on the Democratic Party in the long run.

00:39:12.320 And they're going to have to reform this process because, you know, the same thing is true of

00:39:16.160 Republicans too, by the way. They lost the 2020 election, did not win the popular vote in 2016,

00:39:21.760 not in 2020. I suspect they won't do it again. Right. The 2022 midterms, they ran a bunch of these

00:39:29.760 dopey MAGA candidates who fed the base, the Herschel Walkers of the world, the Mehmet Oz's and

00:39:35.760 people like this. And they got steamrolled in elections they could have won. So I think there's

00:39:39.760 a lot of people that have to step back from kind of the social media way of running a party

00:39:45.600 and realize that we have to kind of reconfigure how these things work. Because Kamala Harris,

00:39:51.680 they had a process in 2020 and she dropped out before a single delegate. That tells you a lot.

00:39:57.280 Why do you want that person running against? And if it's between this and democracy,

00:40:01.760 if democracy is on the ballot and this is what you're prizing for your candidate and how the

00:40:07.200 candidate is selected, this is an enormous problem, isn't there? There's a huge problem.

00:40:11.680 So this is a question I've been thinking about a lot because we talk about all the different

00:40:18.560 facets of this election and they're all important. But the most important one for me is who is going

00:40:26.400 to be better for the regular American, the average American, the American who lives paycheck to paycheck,

00:40:32.640 who just about makes it through every month, who doesn't have a lot of money in the bank,

00:40:38.400 the regular person, who should they vote for? Well, I think I, I mean, I think they'll be voting for

00:40:46.560 Donald Trump as, you know, if we look at this, you know, just as a group. And this is kind of like

00:40:51.440 talking about Hispanics. It's not one, I mean, you have to disaggregate people in it. But there is a thing

00:40:57.440 about American politics for generations. And I remember nothing but people talking about the middle class.

00:41:03.920 We're going to strengthen the middle class. Hillary Clinton said that, George W. Bush said that,

00:41:08.320 John Kerry said that, et cetera. That is no longer the thing that people say in politics because of

00:41:13.520 Donald Trump. They talk about the working class. We have a very different type of class politics

00:41:18.400 in this country. And the class politics has been reintroduced by Donald Trump. We had class politics

00:41:23.360 in the beginning of the 20th century. I mean, like Robert La Follette and the progressives and things.

00:41:27.840 But now we actually have a class politics that was introduced by Bernie Sanders and by Donald Trump.

00:41:32.320 Michael, this would be really useful. Sorry to jump in for you to define working class and

00:41:36.480 middle class in American terms. Yes. Because in Britain, it's so different,

00:41:39.920 but the words are the same. So everybody gets super confused. So this is a really interesting

00:41:43.200 thing. On the podcast that I do, The Fifth Calm, we had this conversation about how one defines this,

00:41:49.520 because it is a kind of nebulous concept in so many ways. If you look at the guy who's the head of the

00:41:54.800 Longshoremen's Union, it was almost a crippling strike from the Longshoremen's Union about a month ago.

00:42:00.640 This guy has a big handlebar mustache. He looks like Lemmy from Motorhead.

00:42:04.640 And he has tattoos all over his arms. And he's got this out of boroughs Brooklyn accent.

00:42:09.520 And he has a Bentley. And he has a 60-foot yacht. And he has a mansion in New Jersey.

00:42:15.440 Is that person working class? I mean, culturally, people say, well, he's working class.

00:42:19.920 And people were referring to him as working class. You know, he's the head of the union.

00:42:24.080 And he makes a killing. So what is working class in America? You know, there's people

00:42:29.920 that live in Indiana that have good, you know, union jobs who have far more in their pocket at

00:42:35.920 the end of the month than I do. So there's the cultural thing, right? The cultural elites that are in

00:42:41.440 New York City, San Francisco, DC, LA, that have different kind of values. And then there's the

00:42:48.320 working class who are just like actually, you know, there's the ethnic divide too. Black working

00:42:54.000 class, Hispanic working class, etc. How is it defined here? I mean, there, you could put monetary

00:43:00.800 values on it. I tend to actually think that that cultural thing is important. Because I mean,

00:43:05.600 in the UK, you have how many people, posh people and living in crumbling castles with the plummiest

00:43:11.120 accents of anyone who have no money in their pocket? I would say that they're probably upper class,

00:43:15.760 right? There is that cultural element. Trump speaks to the working class in both an economic way,

00:43:22.880 because he actually talked about globalization in a way that I think is wrong, but I think the premise

00:43:29.360 is right. We did make a mistake when we talked about the endless benefits of globalization.

00:43:35.440 And there were huge benefits, not only just the people in India, Vietnam, the people that have

00:43:40.320 been pulled out of poverty at an insane rate. Also, it's been benefited us in the products that we

00:43:45.760 have, right? We all have iPhones, we have all this stuff. But we didn't pay attention to what that was

00:43:51.520 doing to America's factories and its manufacturing base. We have more manufacturing in America than we

00:43:55.920 ever had, but we do it with a lot fewer people, right? So those Rust Belt places, people ignored them,

00:44:01.840 right? When you tie that together in a very kind of ingenious and partially devious way,

00:44:07.200 when you tie that together with culture war politics, you've got an absolute home run.

00:44:13.200 Because that's what the left never did, right? They talked about working class politics.

00:44:18.080 And these people who are doing this, you know, have tattoos of Che Guevara on their neck. And they're

00:44:22.800 not talking about trans people in sports. They're not talking about immigration. Bernie Sanders used to

00:44:28.800 talk about this. Nobody remembers this. He used to talk about immigration, illegal immigration being

00:44:32.480 a bad thing because it depressed working class wages, right? A very simple argument.

00:44:38.160 They stopped that because that was no longer the kind of culture of the Democratic Party.

00:44:42.560 And that's where they went wrong. When you talk to people at Trump rallies,

00:44:46.000 they feel like the kind of depression in the 1930s. There's a great book about this by a woman named

00:44:51.200 Amity Schlaes called The Forgotten Man. The number of people, they feel like they're the forgotten

00:44:56.240 people. To them, it's just like they don't care if the guy from, you know, Grey's Anatomy TV show

00:45:03.520 supports Kamala Harris. It is so distant from their life. And the things that remind them of that distance

00:45:10.080 between the people on the coast, the people controlling the media. I mean, I've had so many

00:45:14.160 conversations with people about this and it's always the same thing. And I sat there and said,

00:45:19.040 you know, I'm a journalist doing on the road stuff, which I didn't do really before 2016.

00:45:24.880 Why were there nobody in sort of political consultancy that were out here saying,

00:45:29.440 these people are like crying out for a candidate who speaks to them in what you never hear anymore.

00:45:35.120 But you heard in 2015, oh, a billionaire, Donald Trump from Manhattan is going to talk

00:45:40.800 to the working class. Yeah, yeah, he is. And they could care less because it's not about him being

00:45:46.960 a billionaire. What do they think about him being a billionaire? They're impressed by it. He's like,

00:45:50.240 he worked hard. He had a little seed money from his father, but he worked hard. He's a great

00:45:54.560 businessman. They respect that. It's not class warrior politics left that like, you know,

00:45:58.960 eat the rich. It's like, we want to be the rich. We just want to have those opportunities.

00:46:02.480 And Trump, will he manage to do that? No, I don't think his economic policies

00:46:07.680 are going to do what he promises that they will do. But it is a absolute earthquake in American

00:46:14.160 politics to actually talk about class. We are not a class-based country. We are. It's

00:46:20.480 never been a thing that has been the anchor of our politics in any way. And now I think it is.

00:46:25.120 And I think one, that was a brilliant summation. I think there's one piece that you missed out,

00:46:30.800 which was the contempt the elites have for the working class. I mean, it's particularly prevalent

00:46:38.000 in the UK, but it's prevalent here as well. And it was time after time, these people who had

00:46:45.760 the absolute heart ripped out of their communities, the places that gave them work,

00:46:51.840 structure, dignity, gone. And when they complained about it, and when they complained about things

00:46:57.120 like immigration, they were told they were racist, stupid, rednecks, white trash, whatever else.

00:47:02.080 Guess what? You do that to people, they're going to tell you where to go pretty quickly.

00:47:06.240 And they have every right to. That, by the way, is, I think, the key.

00:47:10.560 One of the things that I missed is that the idea of otherizing people in a sense that they are

00:47:18.160 racists, they're homophobic, they're transphobic, et cetera. You know, the UK version would be like,

00:47:22.480 oh, you're like a BNP voter or something. You're a national front because you're in this working

00:47:27.520 class community. They closed the pit in 1985. The version of that here is people say, you know,

00:47:34.080 there's always these shirts. And I swear to God, if you go to a Trump rally, you know,

00:47:37.520 in Pennsylvania this week, you'll see people that show it like, you know, call me a racist,

00:47:42.240 blah, blah, blah. I don't give a shit. Like, that's the kind of message of the shirt.

00:47:45.760 I think that there is a culture that changed so fast and had no interest in bringing those

00:47:52.800 people along with them because it was so alien. It's like, we're in New York City, we're in LA making

00:47:57.680 these things. 2020, it had been happening before. I think 2014 is really when it starts with

00:48:02.480 Ferguson in this country. 2020 is the year that made me think that he's going to win again

00:48:09.920 in 2024. The George Floyd stuff, the capitalizing black in newspapers for no reason whatsoever, just

00:48:18.000 changing these weird rules because it felt right, because it seemed right, but it felt right for who?

00:48:23.280 You know, I mean, I will say this because I hope nobody will see this bit. I went into a school

00:48:30.960 in this city, uh, the other day. It's true. I was in a high school and I walked around and I was like

00:48:38.880 looking in here, looking there and I have photos of this too. I can show you. I saw four or five trans

00:48:45.120 flags. Okay. You want that in your school? It's a private school. Do whatever you want. There wasn't

00:48:50.240 an American flag anywhere, but there wasn't one on the premises. I mean, you know, I grew up pledge

00:48:56.560 of allegiance and things like that. I think when people see stuff like that, they do the thing,

00:49:01.760 which is not like, how do we correct this? They say, where has my country gone? Yeah. And that maybe

00:49:07.200 is a, you know, alarmist vision or something because I think these things can be rolled back

00:49:11.520 because I don't think the majority of people actually believe this stuff. And that was the thing

00:49:15.760 about cancellation was that, that made people crazy about this was that you're being canceled

00:49:22.400 for views that a majority of Americans have. That shouldn't happen. Over 50% of people believe X,

00:49:29.920 you say it in your job and you're never going to work again. That culture war stuff, which weirdly the

00:49:35.840 Republicans have not hammered on much this time. Not much. It's a little bit, Kamala Harris said she wants,

00:49:42.000 you know, prisoners to have transition surgeries that taxpayers will pay for,

00:49:46.160 which sounds so outrageous and weirdly is actually true. She actually didn't say that

00:49:50.240 because that was the different Kamala Harris. Why is Kamala Harris and why is the Democratic Party

00:49:55.280 not emphasizing that Kamala Harris? Why? They're acknowledging that no one agrees with them.

00:50:01.600 They're acknowledging that the voters that they need, a majority of Americans thinks this stuff is crazy.

00:50:07.120 You're saying we're past peak woke. I think that we are not past peak woke in the institutions,

00:50:13.040 because I think it's very hard to dislodge these people from the institutions. But I think people

00:50:18.320 are getting to the point where companies, you know, right after the George Floyd thing, it was like,

00:50:24.160 you know, Toys R Us is like, you know, it's saying, you know, give money to Black Lives Matter,

00:50:30.000 all this stuff. That's gone. I don't think the outward facing stuff that we have to do this

00:50:35.680 because we'll get in trouble if we don't. Someone said, hey, guys, do you guys realize that this is

00:50:40.080 25 people online and not America? And I think that what happened was Bud Light happened.

00:50:46.880 And when the Bud Light thing happened, people say, well, it actually wasn't an ad campaign.

00:50:51.200 It was just a sponsorship. It doesn't matter. It seemed like that. And what happened was they lost,

00:50:58.320 you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. And then they hired Shane Gillis.

00:51:01.360 Who wins? It's not them. It's not that worldview. Because that worldview is an academic worldview.

00:51:07.360 It's what the one, I mean, academic in the sense that it's within the academic institutions,

00:51:11.360 those people matriculate, and then they gather in New York City, in Brooklyn, in Park Slope,

00:51:16.800 in DC, in LA, San Francisco. And then they make believe that everybody in the country believes

00:51:22.240 what they believe. So I told you guys a story about a MAGA hat, the guy that I ran into,

00:51:28.320 and someone in dinner coming over and saying, how dare you wear that hat at this dinner? It's true.

00:51:34.080 One of our mutual friends was there too. And the amazing thing is I wanted to look at this guy.

00:51:39.680 I didn't say this because I was so caught by surprise. I want to look at this guy and say like,

00:51:43.040 65 million people voted for him. You're acting as if he has a swastika on, which would be a little

00:51:49.440 alarming. But this is just like, yeah, there's people who have this point of view.

00:51:54.400 I saw a clip of Kamala Harris, and she was talking about staying woke. And the moment she said that,

00:52:01.440 I immediately thought you have lost every white working class blue collar worker.

00:52:07.360 Yeah. And black male working class voter too. Yeah.

00:52:11.120 Yeah. And it just seems to me that the fact that they're hammering this shows a complete disconnect.

00:52:17.360 Yeah. Because you talk to anyone, white working class, mainly the people I talk to in the UK,

00:52:24.400 they hate this stuff because they realize that when it comes to things like wokeness,

00:52:29.760 the ones who get discriminated against primarily are the white working class. Because the upper whites

00:52:35.920 have their connections, their privilege, they know how to be able to work away around it, whatever.

00:52:41.280 But if you've got no connections, if you're at the very bottom, if you're economically compromised,

00:52:47.200 and then you struggle every single day of your life, and someone goes to you,

00:52:50.160 hey, mate, you're privileged, that's when you reach for the gun.

00:52:53.200 John, would you see immigration in this country? I mean, Democrats for a long time,

00:52:59.280 progressives for a long time framed this as a race issue, more or less, you know,

00:53:05.200 racism versus anti-racism, generosity versus, you know, a kind of Scrooge-ish, you know,

00:53:12.240 eugenics. It's like crazy how these conversations happen. You see it now. And I did a story with

00:53:18.800 black men who are voting for Donald Trump or trending in that direction, not ideological people,

00:53:24.400 not people that join a club, not people who have ever joined a party. And one of the things that

00:53:29.120 you notice, and you see this in Chicago, especially, there was these city council meetings, you can

00:53:33.600 find the videos online, where people were very upset about migrants, and they were all black.

00:53:41.040 Why is this weird? Well, because we've been imbued with this identity politics that you're on that

00:53:46.720 team. You guys are all the same. You're black, you're Hispanic. No, no, no. The black voters that

00:53:52.080 I talked to in Wisconsin, I talked to them in Milwaukee, and that you see in Chicago, and you

00:53:56.960 see here in New York City, in New York City, there are people that for a couple of years now

00:54:03.120 have been getting hotel rooms, $220 a night. Not like motels by the, you know, airport,

00:54:12.640 $200 plus dollar a night hotels in Manhattan, which were actually making it hard to get hotels

00:54:17.440 if you were a tourist too, by the way. And then at some point, they were giving a swipe,

00:54:22.000 like a debit cards, which was so crazy that I thought must be untrue. And it turned out

00:54:27.600 to actually was true. I was like, this can't be real. Imagine you're a poor person in a really

00:54:32.560 rough neighborhood in New York, and you've been there for generations. That neighborhood is never

00:54:36.720 changed. It is, people have promised you things for years. And then you see somebody who's just

00:54:41.600 picked up a backpack, walked across the border, which they see as breaking the law. That's your

00:54:46.240 first illegal act. And then they're getting rewarded for it where they've gotten nothing.

00:54:51.200 Who did, like, I mean, if Donald Trump didn't do anything about the border, and he did a lot less

00:54:55.920 than he promised, they're going to build the wall, Mexico's going to pay for it. But he talked about

00:54:59.360 it in a way that showed a sense of concern for these people. And it's not about whether he's a good

00:55:04.400 guy or whether he'd be a better president or be better at this issue in practice. It's the fact

00:55:09.440 that nobody speaks to these people. They think of them as black. We have black voters. What is Kamala

00:55:16.000 Harris releasing these ads now to appeal to black men? They never would have done this before. Why are

00:55:22.800 they doing this? Because they believe the polls. They know the polls are true. That black men in

00:55:26.640 particular are moving away from Democrats. Why? This guy said something to me. He said,

00:55:33.120 I've lived in this neighborhood, I think in North Milwaukee, for my entire life.

00:55:37.840 Nothing has changed. What do I have to lose?

00:55:41.760 What do I have to lose? They're not going to put me in a camp. I mean, that's what people on TV say.

00:55:45.600 I have nothing to lose. I have lived in squalor, in penury for 45 years. At least he's talking about

00:55:53.840 us and saying, you know, the migrants in here are getting free stuff and I'm not getting anything.

00:55:57.840 And again, it doesn't matter if that's an accurate representation of what's happening.

00:56:03.360 That is the perception from a number of working class voters. Black, white, Hispanic, doesn't make

00:56:08.800 a difference. And there is nothing more infuriating than if you're an immigrant to this country,

00:56:15.280 you came here legally. Like I know, like my relatives come from Venezuela. They come here legally. They

00:56:21.840 struggle, they work. And then you see come in the gang illegally and causing mayhem and destruction.

00:56:30.480 And you're thinking, I am barely afford, I can barely afford to live. And I have done everything

00:56:37.280 correctly. And then you have these criminals and they're allowed to do whatever they want.

00:56:42.720 There's also a strange thing about that of refugees in that sense, is that so many people that you

00:56:48.880 talked to have had Polish, you know, Russian, you know, Italian, Irish forefathers. I mean,

00:56:55.840 this is true from just generational, it's not even country specific, that people came for a better

00:57:01.440 life. You know, people who said, I'm not going to speak Italian to my kids because I want them to be

00:57:06.480 American. And then migrants that come and get all these sort of benefits. And you know that they're

00:57:13.440 waiting for the economic situation in their country to get better for Chavez. I mean, for Maduro,

00:57:18.080 Chavez 2.0 to leave for Castro or, you know, Danny Ortega and Nicaragua to leave and want to come back.

00:57:26.640 And I think that also offends people too, is that coming here is a commitment. Coming here to be

00:57:31.520 American is that you leave that culture behind, you keep aspects of it, you celebrate aspects of it,

00:57:37.360 but you kind of become part of the whole. And that's changed a lot. I just, I know that because

00:57:42.240 I've had conversations with people about this who have told me pretty much the exact same thing, you

00:57:46.320 know? So we've been talking for an hour and right at the beginning, we talked about the fact that

00:57:54.960 it's close in your mind and also the election is very close. But after that, but if I've listened to

00:58:01.040 the hour conversation we've just had, you really want me to vote for Donald Trump, don't you?

00:58:05.280 I don't, I don't know. It's actually not what I want. What I really want is to explore something,

00:58:12.160 which I think is very interesting because I think there are actually quite a lot of people

00:58:16.320 who say exactly what you say. I hear from these people. The fact that I'm kind of torn,

00:58:24.880 but then they list all these things, the terrible things that Democrats have done.

00:58:28.560 And then they just go, but January the 6th, basically. Now you've added, other than that,

00:58:35.200 the only other things you've said is tariffs. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I, I'm trying.

00:58:41.120 I'm looking at the scales and they're kind of like this and you're going, it's very close.

00:58:44.960 I'm trying to kind of, you know, give my top, top three or four or something. And I would say that

00:58:52.720 not necessarily January 6th, I would say that lying about the election is very, very bad.

00:58:59.680 Telling people, lying to your supporters who really, I don't like the cultish nature of MAGA.

00:59:07.280 And I've seen this up close. I mean, you've seen these MAGA churches that have people are really,

00:59:11.840 I mean, all these people at the Charlie Kirk thing, touching Donald Trump and praying together.

00:59:16.240 That is terrifying to me. That's a, that's a bit of a, like reddling of Jonestown in a way.

00:59:21.600 The problem I have with that more than anything is I don't like that people are being taken

00:59:25.280 advantage of and lied to. And they're told that the election was stolen. There's all these wild

00:59:33.280 theories. And I have asked people about this. I don't get mad at them. I don't, I don't look,

00:59:38.240 how do you think this? It's like, they live in bubbles. They live in kind of echo chambers that

00:59:43.520 we all kind of live in, like in their Facebook groups are very Facebook oriented, in these kind

00:59:48.640 of media spheres. Donald Trump has, has perpetuated that lie, which I think is a lie that allows people

00:59:59.040 to do crazy things. If you believe your government is occupied, if things have been stolen from you,

01:00:04.800 this isn't even a legitimate government. You know, you can't even fault people for saying,

01:00:10.320 I want to pick up a rifle at this point. Cause this is a, you know, this is a fake government.

01:00:15.600 That stuff I think is really bad. Particularly when I think I know he knows that it's not true.

01:00:20.960 He lies constantly. I mean, we know that. I mean, he makes things up all the time.

01:00:24.080 You know, I always said that the Donald Trump, when he says the word, sir, you know, he's lying.

01:00:28.640 It's like, somebody came to me and said, sir, when that happens, like, oh, here comes the bullshit.

01:00:32.320 Right. But that is not even really a January 16th. I mean, that's obviously related. Right. And that's why

01:00:38.240 that happened. Um, but I think that the overstatement of that from some people,

01:00:42.960 the armed insurrection was not armed. I mean, nobody, no, was it an insurrection by the way?

01:00:47.360 No, no. I mean, I don't think that either. I think that it was a disgusting,

01:00:53.040 sickening riot that if somebody who was a conservative should think is everything about

01:00:57.920 this is opposed to conservative principles from attacking the seat of government to beating up cops

01:01:03.360 with, with don't like, uh, the blue lines, the, the, uh, cop flag, whatever they call it,

01:01:09.440 uh, thin blue line flag, attacking them with the flag. I mean, good Lord, that stuff is sickening

01:01:14.240 and on almost every way. Where they lose it is overstating. Kamala Harris the other day

01:01:18.960 said people were killed during the January 6th uprising. She's not talking about Ashley Babbitt.

01:01:26.480 She's talking about police officers were killed. That's not true. I mean,

01:01:30.160 it's not really not true. It's been disproven. Like you are lying about this

01:01:33.920 in a very sinister way of saying that this man is controlling

01:01:37.760 this mob who goes and kills people in the Capitol. They did bad stuff.

01:01:41.680 They didn't kill anyone. So yeah, I think that stuff is bad. The, the, where Trump loses me,

01:01:50.000 look, I think it is like rhetoric is so much of it. And you know, I think it is probably true.

01:01:55.760 I don't like that. This is true that you have to look at what Donald Trump does and not what he says.

01:01:59.920 And as I said before, I want a president who does what he says, like full stop. You don't have to

01:02:05.280 get the decoder ring. Yeah. But this is the issue, Michael. And I'm just stress testing your

01:02:09.360 argument. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. This is the issues. Yeah. You don't have that choice. No,

01:02:12.720 I don't. You don't have the choice. No, I don't. You do not have the choice of a president who does

01:02:16.400 what they say and says what they're going to do. Yes. Right. You have a choice by your own description

01:02:21.840 of a candidate who can't say what she's going to do. Correct. Because she can't fucking talk. Yes,

01:02:27.280 which is objectively true. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. Right. And Donald Trump,

01:02:31.920 who says a lot of bullshit, but if you actually look at his record, did do a reasonable job the last

01:02:37.920 time he was in. Two things about that. One counter argument is that the number of people

01:02:42.720 that were there to check Donald Trump before have all gone. They've all written books. They've all

01:02:48.480 said, you know, Donald Trump is a fascist, which I think is, you know, John Kelly said the other day,

01:02:52.960 which I think is crazy. But there are people that, you know, John Bolton was one of them. And they've all

01:02:59.520 said it's too difficult to work with him. He's too erratic. He shouldn't be president. And you wonder

01:03:06.800 who's going to staff the administration. That's a worry for me. Um, because the heritage foundation

01:03:11.840 have this 30,000 list of people that they're going to, which is also terrifying because the

01:03:16.000 heritage foundation used to be like a Reagan Republican thing. And it's become a bit,

01:03:20.400 a bit weird, but I would say that's the first thing that concerns me. Yeah.

01:03:24.240 The second one is I want to present another choice. Um, and the other choice is voting for

01:03:33.280 somebody else, a third party. They're not going to win. Doesn't make a difference. My job as a citizen

01:03:40.240 when voting is to express disgust, right? If we, you know, or pleasure, but I never have ever

01:03:47.680 experienced that. I want to reelect this guy because he's so great. It's never actually happened in my

01:03:52.080 life. And one way of doing that is either not voting, which is a choice. If turnout is low,

01:03:58.960 it tells you something about your political society or voting for somebody who's not these

01:04:03.760 two people in a, you know, in a way is saying, try harder guys, you can do better than this.

01:04:10.480 We want somebody who is actually, you know, relatively sane, is stable, is not going to act

01:04:16.240 like a complete nut all the time, or can actually put a sentence together and agrees with my fundamental

01:04:21.680 values. And it's not going to lie to people to tell them what they want to hear,

01:04:25.840 to get the votes and then not do anything about it. You know, I think that voting for

01:04:32.240 whoever the libertarian is, I don't even know. I'm sorry to the libertarian candidate that I don't

01:04:37.680 know. For me, that is also a choice. And that I think is a choice to show that you have utter contempt

01:04:45.360 for where this two-party system has landed. What a fantastic, uplifting note to wrap up.

01:04:50.560 So you're a silent Trump vote today. Yes, maggot all the way.

01:04:56.480 Well, thanks for coming on, man. Awesome to have you. Thank you guys so much.

01:05:00.400 The last question we always ask is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that

01:05:04.720 we should be, before we go to Substack and ask you questions from our supporters?

01:05:07.920 Before Michael answers the final question, at the end of the interview, make sure to click the link

01:05:14.160 in the description where you'll see this. How do you think a win for either candidate will play out

01:05:20.400 across the rest of the world? What will Trump do to bring about the demise of red China and Russia?

01:05:25.840 And what would Kamala do? What's the biggest single mistake that each candidate has made

01:05:30.960 so far in the campaign? And what's the chances of another possible fatal one before the election?

01:05:35.520 And who of the two is more likely to commit it? What we're not talking about, I think we're talking

01:05:40.480 about everything too much and in the wrong ways. My concern is that we talk about things in the

01:05:44.960 wrong ways, not that we're not talking about it. I'm trying to think if there's some underappreciated

01:05:49.200 issue. I can't think of one off hand, because I think the problem with this is having your own

01:05:54.720 podcast, when you feel like there's something to talk about, you talk about it like ad infinitum,

01:05:59.120 and you think everyone else is talking about it. So there's maybe something that we talk about in

01:06:02.960 the fifth column podcast that America is not talking about. The fifth column podcast is what

01:06:08.960 you really want. I'm going to plug it. Michael, here's an opportunity to talk about the things

01:06:15.200 that really matter in the world. My podcast. It's still a true statement. I think it's the only thing

01:06:21.680 that matters. Head on over to Substack, where Michael will answer your questions by plugging his podcast

01:06:26.560 again. Vote Trump. Is the failure of Kamala Harris, chosen as a DEI candidate, going to impede women

01:06:37.120 who are actually good candidates? Does this add fuel to the fire in the US that women cannot do the job?

TRIGGERnometry - October 30, 2024

The Most Important Election in History - Michael Moynihan

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