Valuetainment - “Trump Red Pilled Me” - Nick Fuentes REVEALS How MAGA TRANSFORMED Conservatism

00:00:00.000 So, Nick, I don't know much about you except for the clips I've seen, respectfully.

00:00:03.900 To me, the way I've made my money over the last, you know, whatever, 25 years in insurance and finance

00:00:11.420 was watching who has talent.

00:00:14.760 And I would watch somebody, I would say, this guy's got what it takes, right?

00:00:19.440 First time I had Charlie Kirk on at 23 years old, I said, there's something very special about this guy.

00:00:24.280 At 23, I came to my insurance company, I said, this guy's going to be the president one day.

00:00:27.800 Watch this guy closely.

00:00:28.720 First time I watched Tucker, unbelievable talent.

00:00:32.660 When you watch him, humor, sarcasm, intelligence, pushing back, subtle, he's making fun of you,

00:00:39.380 you don't know it, the audience knows it, he knows the art, Candice, talent, Dave Smith, talent.

00:00:45.720 We used to have a comedian working here called Marcelo Hernandez, who is now on SNL.

00:00:49.680 I don't know if you know who he is or not.

00:00:50.880 Incredible.

00:00:51.360 He used to produce Adam's show.

00:00:53.720 And I said, this guy's going to do something special.

00:00:55.620 Now he's on SNL.

00:00:56.360 Vinny, talent, I see you, the way you communicated.

00:01:00.240 Very, very talented.

00:01:01.620 Very capable, very talented.

00:01:03.620 And I've expressed this before on the show before.

00:01:06.600 But I want to know a little bit more about how you became who you are today.

00:01:10.320 And then we'll cover a lot of different topics.

00:01:12.040 So go to high school.

00:01:13.580 14 years old.

00:01:14.560 Who is Nick Fuentes?

00:01:15.900 Well, at 14 years old, I was already very political.

00:01:18.680 I've been political since, really, I was 12 years old.

00:01:22.260 Why is that?

00:01:23.140 Well, I just started to develop an interest in politics.

00:01:27.460 There were a lot of political conversations happening due to the rise of Obama, actually, in 2008, 2012.

00:01:34.840 And I wanted to know basically everything about it.

00:01:37.900 You know, when you turn around that age, you start to ask questions about the world and how we all got here and, you know, about things that happened before.

00:01:44.820 And so the first thing I ever watched, actually, was Thomas Sowell on Uncommon Knowledge with, I think, Peter Robinson.

00:01:52.820 Yeah, they're both excellent from the Hoover Institute.

00:01:55.720 And that was actually the first thing I ever watched.

00:01:57.300 And I just devoured it.

00:01:58.480 I devoured everything.

00:01:59.660 At 12?

00:02:00.640 Yeah, 12, 13, 14.

00:02:01.860 Who introduced you to Thomas Sowell?

00:02:03.440 I just Googled it.

00:02:04.720 A buddy of mine in school was telling me about the private sector.

00:02:08.420 I said, what is the private sector?

00:02:10.020 You know, what is the economy?

00:02:11.800 And so I just Googled it on YouTube.

00:02:13.160 And that was the first thing that came up.

00:02:14.620 And I watched the whole thing.

00:02:15.800 And it was just, I was enamored by it.

00:02:18.160 And I told my mom, I said, I want Free to Choose by Milton Friedman.

00:02:22.220 That was the first political book I ever read.

00:02:24.860 And one day I came home from school and it was there on my bed.

00:02:27.260 And I read it.

00:02:27.460 First book is Free to Choose.

00:02:28.720 Yes.

00:02:30.040 Capitalism, free market capitalism.

00:02:31.700 And he was, it's really him and Thomas Sowell.

00:02:35.060 I think he came before Thomas did, right?

00:02:36.800 He did, yes.

00:02:37.240 Right.

00:02:37.840 Yeah, well, he was from the Chicago school.

00:02:39.600 So it was Friedman, Sowell, and all the others.

00:02:42.720 And so I read all that stuff in middle school and high school.

00:02:45.600 And at that time, I was really a libertarian because that's just what was out there at that time.

00:02:50.340 That was during the Ron Paul revolution.

00:02:52.520 And the Fed.

00:02:53.560 Right.

00:02:53.980 And the Fed.

00:02:54.460 And there was so much online digital content.

00:02:57.420 This is early 2010s that was being put out by young libertarians.

00:03:01.840 So that's just what was out there and what was available.

00:03:04.240 And so I just, I worked through all of it.

00:03:05.940 Basic economics by Thomas Sowell and read about all the Chicago school, even then the Austrian school, the really more libertarian economic stuff.

00:03:14.200 And in high school, I was in model UN, student council, speech team.

00:03:19.340 I was very active in high school and, you know, one of those precocious autodidact type young guys.

00:03:27.260 And were you like this?

00:03:29.360 Were you this vocal?

00:03:30.560 Oh, yeah.

00:03:30.900 Were you this intense?

00:03:32.280 Yes.

00:03:32.780 So did you get in trouble a lot?

00:03:34.160 Did you get in a lot of fights?

00:03:35.180 Did you get picked on?

00:03:36.020 Did you have bullies?

00:03:37.380 I was, I was very outspoken.

00:03:40.060 I was very extroverted about politics.

00:03:42.020 I was always getting in political debates in class and in model UN, but I didn't really get in trouble as much.

00:03:48.820 What's really funny, this might interest you actually, and I've talked about this before, but when I was in model UN, I was one of the best guys on the team.

00:03:57.120 I would win first place every week.

00:03:58.760 And because if you don't know model United Nations, you go, you simulate the United Nations general assembly or the different committees.

00:04:05.940 And it's like role play.

00:04:07.000 It's like a role play game, but for the United Nations.

00:04:09.680 And anyway, so I was one of the better guys on the team, and my junior year of high school, I became the head of the team.

00:04:16.320 I became the secretary general of the team.

00:04:18.940 But I had a major falling out with the guy that ran the team.

00:04:24.020 He was ethnically Arab, I think, extremely pro-Palestine.

00:04:28.940 And I, at that time, was very pro-Israel.

00:04:32.180 I was on Prager University and Breitbart.

00:04:35.200 And so I downloaded all the dogma from the conservative movement at that time.

00:04:40.040 And so I remember we were sitting in the study hall one day, and they had all the flags of the world hanging up on the ceiling.

00:04:45.940 And I said, why do we have the Iranian flag hanging up?

00:04:49.000 I said, they're the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world.

00:04:52.260 It shouldn't be up.

00:04:53.020 And he told me, you've got to read The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Waltz.

00:04:58.660 He said, you've got to look at the other side.

00:05:01.060 And we had this, like, vicious back and forth about it.

00:05:04.940 And that is kind of the only major problem I had with faculty over politics, ironically.

00:05:10.460 So he was faculty?

00:05:11.800 Yes.

00:05:12.360 Okay, so how many years older was he from you?

00:05:14.680 Oh, he must have been in his 40s.

00:05:16.200 And this school, walk me through the demo of the school.

00:05:18.940 Is it a public school?

00:05:19.780 Is it a private school?

00:05:20.600 It was a pretty affluent public school, mostly white, outside in the suburbs of Chicago.

00:05:27.340 Naperville, what area?

00:05:29.200 It was Lyons Township in Western Springs.

00:05:31.280 Okay.

00:05:32.020 So it's not like it's Chicago, Chicago.

00:05:35.100 It's a good area of Chicago, mostly white.

00:05:38.200 And would you say politically center, left, don't care, Republican?

00:05:42.880 What would you say the demo was?

00:05:44.040 I would say it's pretty center-left.

00:05:46.660 It's very Catholic.

00:05:48.340 Some Catholic, some Protestant.

00:05:50.000 But what's interesting about it is very liberal, but not leftist, not very progressive.

00:05:56.340 So even though we were in the middle of a very progressive revolution under Obama, I mean, these guys were all liberal, but they weren't communists.

00:06:03.020 It wasn't like New York or Portland.

00:06:04.640 So what year is this?

00:06:05.440 When you were a junior in high school, this would make it what?

00:06:07.720 2015.

00:06:08.380 2015.

00:06:08.700 Okay, so this is – has Trump yet announced anything?

00:06:13.200 So he announced August 2015.

00:06:15.340 So it was actually right around that time.

00:06:16.760 Got it.

00:06:17.380 Okay, so you're there.

00:06:18.380 You're getting into these debates in junior year, and then Trump announces, and then what do you do?

00:06:22.860 So after Trump announced, this is right around the time – so actually he announced in June 2015.

00:06:28.420 And so I was very political, obviously super engaged with the election.

00:06:32.720 And at that time – so this was going into my senior year of high school – I had a radio show on the high school radio station and a TV show on the high school TV station.

00:06:41.200 I did both.

00:06:42.320 And one of my first shows I've ever done in my whole life was talking about the election, and that was a very crowded primary.

00:06:48.520 It was like 17 candidates.

00:06:50.760 I don't know if you remember back then.

00:06:52.240 It was Trump in this huge field.

00:06:54.200 Yeah, it was everybody.

00:06:55.240 And so I went through all the candidates, and initially I was very anti-Trump because I was a libertarian.

00:07:01.320 So I was in it for Rand Paul and then Ted Cruz.

00:07:04.920 And it wasn't until April or March 2016, about seven months in to my senior year, that I really went in hard for Trump.

00:07:13.780 And Trump, I would say, is the one who red-pilled me, quote-unquote.

00:07:16.940 Out of all these guys, these are the guys we're looking at, right?

00:07:19.180 Right.

00:07:20.240 That was a – Jeb Bush started with $140 million.

00:07:23.980 He was supposed to win it.

00:07:25.560 Carson had a little bit of momentum.

00:07:28.240 Cruz was one of the guys that people thought could do something.

00:07:30.860 Right.

00:07:32.100 Nobody thought Trump up until I think Ann Coulter's like, who do you think today is going to win it?

00:07:36.240 She made the comment that I think it's going to be Trump on Bill Maher.

00:07:38.240 Everybody starts laughing.

00:07:39.160 Right.

00:07:39.520 Okay, so you're in this moment.

00:07:40.700 Trump red-pills you first.

00:07:42.260 Yes.

00:07:43.120 He red-pills me on immigration, really.

00:07:46.160 Because at that time, I am preoccupied with this notion of individualism, very much like you.

00:07:52.060 I mean, a lot of the stuff you say in your show, I agree with you 100%.

00:07:54.880 I guess he reoriented my perspective about individualism.

00:07:59.740 Because what I started to understand is that, you remember, in 2015, it felt like the left was unstoppable.

00:08:06.020 It felt like Obama and then Hillary Clinton were going to lead this progressive revolution,

00:08:10.800 and it was just going to get more left every day forever.

00:08:13.580 More pro-woman, more pro-gay, more diverse.

00:08:17.080 And at that time, what felt so suffocating was this kind of political chokehold the country was in.

00:08:23.460 The media's left wing.

00:08:24.820 Hollywood's left wing.

00:08:25.900 The press is left wing.

00:08:27.060 And what woke me up about Trump is one day I was watching the primaries, early primary elections,

00:08:32.160 and Trump was winning all of them.

00:08:34.220 One, he didn't win the Iowa caucus, but he won in New Hampshire, won in Nevada, won in—

00:08:38.520 And I remember the media was beside themselves, calling it every day for him.

00:08:43.220 And I said, the one thing that Trump has right is he understands in order to take power—

00:08:48.840 well, in order to do what you want to do, you've got to take power first.

00:08:51.980 In order to take power, you have to engage the media, because the media is really the enemy.

00:08:57.260 It's a very early kind of understanding of how politics actually works.

00:09:01.080 And fake news.

00:09:01.560 He hasn't even said fake news yet.

00:09:02.960 So this is pre-him saying fake news.

00:09:04.540 Exactly.

00:09:05.820 But he would fight the moderators in the debates, even Fox News, because Roger Ailes had it out for him early on.

00:09:11.680 And I said, he's going to fight the mainstream media.

00:09:14.380 That's essential, because if you can't fight the media, you can't win.

00:09:17.400 If you don't win, you can't do what you want.

00:09:18.780 And then I thought about immigration and how it's affecting the voting patterns,

00:09:23.740 because I looked at one meme in 2016, and it said, this is what the 2012 election would look like

00:09:30.100 if only white men voted, if only men voted, if only—I'm sure everybody's seen it.

00:09:35.120 And what became clear is that if only non-white people are voting, they vote 90 percent left. 0.56

00:09:40.580 Blacks voted 97 percent for Obama in 2008, in 2012.

00:09:45.160 If immigration is making the country less white, and if non-white people only vote Democrat—

00:09:51.520 Asians is like 75 percent, Hispanics at that time 70 percent, blacks 90 percent—

00:09:56.000 I said, it's clear where the country's going to go, what direction this is headed in.

00:09:59.580 I said, so—and the reason this is happening is because these people aren't assimilating.

00:10:03.420 So before we can even think about individualism, the Constitution, et cetera, we've got to take out the media.

00:10:10.200 And by take out, you know, what I mean by that is you've got to fight back.

00:10:13.760 And two, you have to secure the border, because if the Democrats bring in all these illegals and legal immigrants, 0.97

00:10:19.880 they're going to flip taxes, and that's the way it's going to go.

00:10:22.940 And that was kind of the first realization.

00:10:24.720 That's what made me say, I'm all in it for Trump, even though ideologically I wasn't really with him just yet.

00:10:29.100 Because you were a libertarian at the time.

00:10:30.720 Right.

00:10:31.140 Right.

00:10:32.100 Okay, I'm following.

00:10:32.980 So now you're all in for Trump.

00:10:34.760 He's the closest thing to a libertarian.

00:10:37.140 I don't know—I don't think it was Joe Jorgensen, right, who was a candidate at the time for the libertarian.

00:10:41.760 Right, so you're not going to go Gary Johnson, right?

00:10:44.800 I think he got—is he the one that didn't know the capital of a country?

00:10:49.860 I don't know what it was.

00:10:50.880 Yeah, Aleppo.

00:10:51.580 Yeah, that's what it was.

00:10:52.420 And it's like, oh, my God, this guy can't be in, and they moved on.

00:10:54.780 That was an easy one for him.

00:10:56.020 So you're in that moment.

00:10:57.380 I'm going to go all Trump.

00:10:58.280 What happens next?

00:10:59.300 So I go all Trump, and I'm a big Trump guy.

00:11:02.460 I get my MAGA hat, and I'm all excited about it, and I volunteer for the campaign and everything.

00:11:07.620 And so he wins the primary in the spring of 2016.

00:11:11.500 Convention happens, I think, July 2016.

00:11:14.440 I enter college at Boston University in September 2016.

00:11:19.080 And this is the first time I've lived outside Chicago.

00:11:21.900 I've lived in the same place my whole life.

00:11:23.460 And it's important to impress upon you and maybe everybody, like, where I grew up.

00:11:28.960 It's like this pocket of America that never changed.

00:11:32.220 It's a baseball town.

00:11:33.480 Everybody's white. 0.95

00:11:35.120 Everybody's obsessed with baseball.

00:11:37.540 Everybody's Catholic.

00:11:38.380 So growing up, I'm going to CCD, which is like catechism class for Catholics.

00:11:43.000 Everybody loves baseball.

00:11:44.980 There's an annual parade where you go and eat hot dogs and play baseball.

00:11:48.660 So this is a place that is untouched by, like I said, even though they're liberal, they're not even really progressive.

00:11:54.440 It's untouched by the progressive politics, by a lot of the diversity, even the crime.

00:11:59.560 It's safe.

00:12:00.200 White picket fences.

00:12:01.420 Take a trip down to Western Springs, Illinois.

00:12:03.600 I mean, you'll see what I mean.

00:12:04.680 It's like the land that time forgot.

00:12:06.100 I go to college in Boston.

00:12:08.500 Totally different story.

00:12:10.100 Boston's obviously super diverse.

00:12:12.440 It's a lot of young people because it's all schools, all universities, and they're all from Asia, all foreign students.

00:12:17.340 And they're all Chinese.

00:12:18.680 They're all from these Asian countries. 0.99

00:12:21.200 And there's also – it's a little dangerous.

00:12:22.960 There's a little criminal element.

00:12:24.360 And everyone on the campuses, they're militant left wing.

00:12:28.180 And that was kind of a culture shock.

00:12:30.020 And I kind of realized in that moment, most of the country looks like this now, actually, New York, L.A., Miami, the big cities.

00:12:39.020 And most people live in the cities.

00:12:40.460 They all look like this because of immigration, because of left wing progressive politics.

00:12:44.760 And I kind of said in that moment, my slice of America that I grew up with is a dying breed. 1.00

00:12:52.980 It's literally going extinct.

00:12:54.660 And I like my upbringing.

00:12:56.320 I love my upbringing.

00:12:57.340 I want to – if I have a family, I want to raise my kids in a place like that.

00:13:01.100 But in 50 years, will there be places like that?

00:13:04.480 The country is going to become majority-minority in the 2030s. 0.82

00:13:07.820 So when I'm old and gray and I have grandkids, what is the country they're going to look like?

00:13:12.040 And you're questioning this.

00:13:13.460 You're questioning.

00:13:14.320 You're having this dialogue.

00:13:15.300 You're asking yourself, I'm concerned that I'm going to lose the identity of what it means to be an American.

00:13:21.100 Is it more that?

00:13:22.060 Is it more Caucasian? 0.89

00:13:23.140 Is it more white?

00:13:24.020 What do you mean it's going to lose its identity?

00:13:26.380 It's all of that.

00:13:27.140 It's all of that, that it's not going to be white people. 0.75

00:13:29.840 It's not going to be Christian. 1.00

00:13:31.140 It's not going to be speaking English.

00:13:32.600 It won't be safe.

00:13:33.660 No baseball.

00:13:34.480 No hot – like all these different layers of identity are kind of being blown up.

00:13:38.460 Who are you sharing this concern with at the time?

00:13:40.600 Are you talking to friends, mentor, peers, relatives, parents?

00:13:46.480 Who are you talking to about this?

00:13:47.700 It's all my friends in college.

00:13:49.220 Okay.

00:13:49.400 So this is on BU.

00:13:50.380 You're talking to them.

00:13:51.060 Yes.

00:13:51.480 And are they agreeing, disagreeing?

00:13:53.260 What are they saying to you?

00:13:54.600 Well, we all basically agreed.

00:13:56.900 So we all met at the – there was a watch party for the first debate between Trump and Clinton, all three of us, four of us.

00:14:02.420 We were the only Trump supporters on the whole campus.

00:14:05.000 And we all met at this watch party.

00:14:06.500 Is this the one that said you'd be in jail?

00:14:07.900 No, that's the second one, right?

00:14:09.240 Yes, that's the second one.

00:14:10.260 So it was at the first one we all met, and we developed this kind of tight-knit friendship.

00:14:14.380 What month is this?

00:14:14.940 Is this September of 15th?

00:14:17.780 September 16th.

00:14:19.260 September 16th.

00:14:20.280 Okay.

00:14:20.700 Got it.

00:14:21.380 Got it.

00:14:21.800 Right.

00:14:22.540 And so we all get together, and what was interesting at that time, and this was kind of like a cultural moment,

00:14:29.000 is that remember that Trump, when he came around, there was just this explosion on the right wing.

00:14:34.820 They called it the alternative right.

00:14:36.580 That had a very different connotation in 2016 than it did in 17, because in 16 and even 2015, what it meant up to that point,

00:14:45.060 the GOP and conservatism meant kind of like one thing.

00:14:48.040 It meant like Rick Santorum, like cultural conservatism, traditional –

00:14:52.320 Karl Rove.

00:14:53.520 Right.

00:14:54.060 All that kind of stuff.

00:14:55.480 And Trump comes along and says, well, I'm kind of agnostic on health care.

00:15:00.020 We just want to take care of everybody.

00:15:01.880 He was more of a Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis-like nationalist.

00:15:06.040 And so there was this explosion on 4chan and on Twitter of a lot of young right wing guys that were asking,

00:15:11.780 well, what does it mean to be right wing?

00:15:13.360 And so there's guys like Stefan Molyneux and Jared Taylor and Steven Pinker and Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro.

00:15:20.180 All these guys come into the fold, and it's much more aggressive.

00:15:23.460 It's younger.

00:15:24.160 It's more dynamic.

00:15:25.260 It's a lot of new ideas or maybe old ideas presented in a new way.

00:15:29.060 And so we were kind of holding like this salon, like this intellectual salon at the Tasty Burger by Fenway,

00:15:34.720 talking about all these new people that are coming around, Richard Spencer for that matter,

00:15:39.520 Peterson, race – and ideas like race realism, like Western chauvinism, people like Gavin McInnes.

00:15:45.620 And we were all kind of developing our ideas and what we thought was right.

00:15:49.140 And ironically, none of these guys were even white.

00:15:51.560 One of them was Turkish.

00:15:52.580 One of them was actually Assyrian.

00:15:54.040 I know you're Assyrian.

00:15:55.060 Who was that?

00:15:55.860 He's an Assyrian guy from Australia.

00:15:58.280 Wow.

00:15:58.380 Yeah, some young man.

00:16:00.940 Was he a Christian man or no?

00:16:02.500 He was Christian.

00:16:04.660 Assyrian man from Australia.

00:16:06.360 Mm-hmm.

00:16:06.720 Interesting.

00:16:07.580 Okay.

00:16:07.880 And one of them was Jewish even.

00:16:09.660 And so he was Russian-Jewish.

00:16:11.020 And a lot of people say about me, I mean, I'm an American ethnic.

00:16:13.680 I'm not English or German.

00:16:15.500 Fuentes.

00:16:16.160 What's Fuentes?

00:16:16.780 Mexican.

00:16:17.540 And your dad's Mexican?

00:16:19.100 My father's half Mexican, yes.

00:16:20.480 What's his other half?

00:16:21.480 Irish.

00:16:22.100 And then mom?

00:16:22.880 She's all Italian. 0.98

00:16:23.820 All Italian.

00:16:24.400 Parents, when we're talking to the crew, they're telling me that mom had some influence political.

00:16:30.400 Is that mom and dad had more influence politically or dad?

00:16:32.820 I really wasn't too influenced in that way.

00:16:35.600 Really more by my grandmother, by my mom's mother.

00:16:38.120 She was very conservative.

00:16:40.320 Who did she believe in?

00:16:41.480 Who was her hero?

00:16:42.780 She would say, Nick, you got to follow this guy.

00:16:44.720 Nick, you got to read this book.

00:16:45.940 Nick, you got to watch this.

00:16:47.320 Who would she talk about?

00:16:48.440 She loved Mark Levin.

00:16:49.480 I got it.

00:16:53.200 Okay.

00:16:53.920 So, super safe, conservative, pro-Israel.

00:16:58.640 This is who your grandmother was.

00:17:00.160 Okay.

00:17:00.980 Hi, I'm Nick Fuentes.

00:17:02.600 If you want to text me or call me or ask me a question, you can find me on Minect.

00:17:06.980 If you enjoyed this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here.

00:17:10.900 And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.

Valuetainment - September 23, 2025

“Trump Red Pilled Me” - Nick Fuentes REVEALS How MAGA TRANSFORMED Conservatism

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript