Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 893: Inside Stephen Miller's Dark Plot to Build a MAGA Terror State

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Inside Stephen Miller's Dark Plot to Build a MAGA Terror State | The New Republic

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I'm counting. I am counting. Today's long form day, Cecil. And, you know, every, I've mentioned this before. but Cecil sends me a list of articles, and I look through them, and I think, let's pick this one. And I usually feel pretty good about my choice. I read this article, and then I read it fully, and then I listened to it. And I thought, I wish we picked something else.

Yeah. This is dark as fuck. It is an important article, however, it's from the New Republic, inside Stephen Miller's dark plot to build a mega terror state. He is descended from Russian Jews, you know, the kind of people who were once denounced as alien and unassimilar, Today his project is to unleash government persecution of those he deems alien and unassimable. How far will Miller's sadistic designs go?

That's a long sub. It is a long sub, yeah. For sure. So dark article, that's not a bad summary at all, though. No, it really, really encapsulates it. I think we start at the beginning with the idea that Miller comes from a group of people that assimilated into this country. Right. And I think that there is a push often in all kinds of different.

types of walks of life, et cetera, where if you get in, sometimes there's a group of people who try to close the door behind them. That happens in all these. It happens in corporate America, right? Where like, you know, it happens with law firms when there's a partner, right? It happens with, you know, it happens with hobby groups. It happens with all kinds of other things. And it happens with the immigration. I think we want to make some changes to who gets in. Yeah. We want to make sure that. this is a more exclusive club now. I don't want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member.

That's pretty much it. But really, it's like I want to make this more exclusive. I want this to be more exclusive right now. And I belong to a group called the SCA. And this happens in the SCA all the time with the different groups of people. Because there's like groups of people that, you know, where we give each, we sort of give our recommendations on who should be part of that group. Okay. And often what will happen is, is, you know,

like the best fensors, for instance, I'm a part of that group. And that group of people will talk about all the up-and-coming fencers to be like, who should be part of that group? And often there's people who like, no matter what you do, once that person gets in, there's nothing that anybody below them can do to make them worthy of being in that group. And this is something I think happens. It happens with immigration all the time. And just look out over at the, very specifically at the Cuban group of people that are in this country.

right? Like the, they left a oppressive place. They came here and then they vote Republican to stop immigration. Yeah, right, which is fucking wild. Right? And this is what this is based off of. There is always been, one of the things I was thinking about related to this article is there, there has always been a moving goalpost and a redefinition of who the right white people are. Yeah, for sure. So we've had, you know, throughout the course of this country's history. We still haven't figured it out. We still haven't figured it out. No, there's not, because there's probably not a lot of good right. But there's always the same answer, right?

So who the right white people are is the white people in charge. That's always been the answer, right? So there was a time in this country where Irish people weren't the right kind of white, and Italian people weren't the right kind of white, and Jewish people weren't the right kind of white, and Eastern Europeans weren't the right kind of white. And there was always the same arguments. The arguments are the arguments have lasted the fucking ages. Like it's a generation.

Generations have told the same story about why that next group, that next demographic isn't the right kind of person to be an American, right? So they are not the right kind. They will not assimilate even though studies show, in this article points that studies show that, you know, pretty much there is no demographic of people that does not assimilate pretty much at the same rate over the course of time into American culture. But they'll all say the same thing. Oh, they're not going to learn the language.

They're not going to assimilate into our culture. They are some different lesser type of person. They are not quite human in the same way. There's a quote from this article. The article is long, so it'd be hard to find. I should have written it down. There's a quote from this article that basically says, like, look, if people don't come from the right kind of cultural background

and then also like the right kind of heritage, they cannot be a part of the progress and process of civilization. And if you think in those terms, and Miller clearly thinks in those terms. Yeah, that was like a Miller quote. Yeah. If you think in those terms, what you're saying is there are no new groups that can be added because nobody can change their heritage. Nobody can change their cultural background. So it has nothing to do with your skills.

It's not a meritocracy. There's a lot of fucking lip service being paid in meritocracies. It's got nothing to do with like what you would offer you individually don't actually have any control. because what they're saying, the most important thing about you is your ancestor. Yeah, yeah. I mean, of course he thinks this now that he's in. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

There's a piece of this I want to talk about. It's in the beginning. He says that many Americans didn't think people like Miller's ancestors were fit to become part of the United States, and they were targeted by a virulent strain of nativism towards those from southern and eastern Europe that was largely about race. The new arrival suffered from social degeneracy and social inadequacy. And what do we see right now? Look at how they're treating people from other countries.

Trump came down a fucking golden escalator and said they're all rapists. Yeah. Right. Look at what he said recently about the Somali population. Look what he said about shit whole countries. Right? Look what he said about garbage people. Garbage people.

People eating cats and dogs. Cats and dogs. Yeah. Yeah. That is, that sentence that you just read, I mean, it really is very much at the heart of what it means to have this kind of policy or this kind of worldview. And then I think distressingly to take that worldview and then to institutionalize it with policy. I think for a long time, we were moving away from institutionalizing those kinds of ideas. We had sort of, I would sort of gotten together.

I remember again, I feel so old. I remember being in school and learning about the idea of the melting pot. Do you remember this? Sure. And the idea of the melting pot was this idea that like all of these different cultures come together and they form this melting pot of people. And that is the culture that is actually America. America is not a homogenous culture.

America is a culture formed by the amalgamation of many cultures. And from there is our strength. And this is very much the sort of ideas that I grew up holding, not just as historically true, but also as, like, morally true, right? And just socially true and things that we should work toward. The idea of nativism in America as a value is patently insane. It really is, genuinely stupid. It does not hold.

How can you be a nativist? in America and not just be a liar. Like just straight up like, what? Yeah. What? Yeah. Well, no, absolutely. And lie to yourself about where you are and how this land was even, how this colony was even colonized. Right. You're lying to yourself because none of us belong here. Right. It's not our land. We just fucking took it. That's what happened. And that whole concept of, of, you know, nativism doesn't make

any sense at all because none of us are natives. None of us are natives. Yeah, sure. Is there a a native possibility here? Yeah, sure. We fucking subjugated them. Yes, right. So that's not a group of people who have a large voice in our community. They're not somebody who has a large voice. Think about all the times you've seen people, though, that have been so unbelievably excited. And this is years ago. I don't know that I've seen it as much lately. But I remember growing up, and they would show those people who would be naturalized. They would take their test and then they'd have to take their oath. And they'd be so fucking excited that they were now part of the United States.

I also lived, but I also worked right down the street from one of these places. Oh, really? And so once in a while, you would see those people come out. And they would be ecstatic and they'd be taken photos and they'd have their whole family there. And it would be a whole thing to be like this person is now a citizen. Yeah. They're a citizenist country. They're just like everybody else.

And that's the other thing too is like it always felt like, and I know this is bullshit, but there is something to it that being a citizen of this country means you all start at the same level, right? There's some sort of feeling, right? We have this sort of idea in our country that you all sort of start at the same level. You're a citizen. You have just as much opportunity as I do. Now, I know it's bullshit overall, but there is some truth to it, right?

There is some truth that you get a modicum of ability to have some sort of social upward movement the moment you get to become part of this country. And I think a lot of people were very excited to do that. And there was a lot of celebration for that sort of thing. And you think about all those people, too, that are like part of this country now, that's a really important part of their life.

Now, that's a really, and that makes America strong. That makes America great. That is what makes America great. Is that diversity, that group of people who are excited to be here, right? Not a group of people who are trying to close the door behind themselves, but the people who are welcoming other people to make them, it's going to make America strong. It's good. It's a great thing.

And to see, you know, to see the way we are now. I can't imagine somebody being as excited now as they were when I was a kid and you saw that sort of thing. Do you know what I mean? I do. I do. I feel like they would probably be excited, but that excitement now has to be tempered with threats from the administration to denaturalize. Yeah. Right?

So I didn't even know that was a fucking thing. I'm not even sure that it is a thing. I don't think it is a thing. You know? But like there is a threat from the administration to denaturalize the wrong kind of citizens. to strip people of their citizenship. And it's not going to be fucking white people, man. It's going to be 0% white people.

It's going to be people that are the wrong kind of cultural background to fit in. The asylum, I mean, because of Stephen Miller and like the fucking policies that he's influenced and enacted, like the asylum system used to grant asylum to something like 100 some thousand people in a year. Yeah, 125,000 people under Joe Biden. And now it's down to 7,500 refugees. And there is preference within that 7500 for white Afrikaners. Yeah, because they're facing what they call ethnic cleansing, and it's white genocide is what they're calling it.

And Trump just the other day, and I know it's about Stephen Miller, but Stephen Miller is really like the... Trump is the puppet in this case. Trump is the puppet. Stephen Miller is driving this whole, like, immigration and racism shit, but like he can only do it through this sort of like arm of a sympathetic dictator, right?

So, I mean, just the other day, Trump said something like, you know, the vote, I'm paraphrasing only slightly, referring to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that like this created a lot of problems for white people and reverse discrimination has become a real problem for white people. And now there's preference for white Afrikaners, to come over and the rest of the 100 and what 17,500 people that would have previously gotten asylum could just fuck right off. There's no subtlety to any of this. Like there's no subtlety to the racism

that we are institutionalizing right now. No, you're absolutely right. I think, you know, when you mentioned the refugees, I want to read part of this because it's important to note that this isn't just a United States law. It's true. we belong to. So it says, in the article, it says the 1965 law to end ethnic quotas guaranteed henceforth that immigration slots would be doled out on a race-neutral basis. And that subsequent measures, which created the contemporary refugee and asylum system, drew heavily on the international human rights treaties that the United States and many countries signed on to after the war. Subsequent U.S. law has enshrined the right to seek refuge here and protections

against getting sent home to face persecution or grave danger and a set of values that theoretically at least have been to some degree a bipartisan consensus for decades. And this is where they get into. Well, Trump has basically said that all these things that we've already agreed to, right? United States has already made up their mind. We made up our mind based on how many people we're going to accept into our country. And it's a small amount. 125,000 people isn't a large amount of people as it is. It's not.

It's not. Right? Especially when you consider all the global conflicts that are going on and things that we're creating in the world to create those global conflicts. And take that 125,000 people and just simply divide it by 350 million. And that is as a percentage of the American population, it's de minimis. Yeah. It doesn't matter.

So like there's there's that, you know, I was thinking about this when I was, reading this article too. I'm curious what your thought is. I feel like I have a feeling, Cecil, that after World War II, people kind of looked around and said, God, we cannot let that happen again. That, the concentration camps,

the singling out and the murder of six million human beings, the global chaos, the death and destruction on a scale that up until now had been unprecedented, the cruelty, all of it, we've got to do something about this. We're going to create these international human rights treaties. We're going to try to rewrite our laws and rewrite our social systems in ways. And it takes a generation or more to do this work.

But there was, I think, a real recognition born from the horrors of World War II, where we said we need to embark upon a different kind of human project that focuses on and relates to and drives to enhance rather than destroy the humanity of other people. It is from the ashes of World War II that, like, in Britain, the NHS was born, right? And many social programs were created. Because I think people were like, fuck, like, we can't, we cannot be brothers in arms in the foxholes and then, you know, ignore and destroy each other back home. and I feel like we're dismantling all of that.

We're breaking all of that down. We're unlearning those lessons. Because I was thinking, why Cecil, do I, as a 47-year-old guy, why do I have embedded in my consciousness and in my heart the ideas and the values of that melting pot America and so many people now in charge seem to have gotten a different message? How can that be? Because you got the same message in school, right? Sure.

Sure. And I'm sure that that influenced your thinking. And I just keep thinking like, well, didn't we all grow up with the same cultural value? But we clearly didn't. We didn't. We didn't. We clearly didn't. And shame on me for thinking that we did. Shame on me for thinking that we had, that we wanted your tired, your poor, and your huddled masses and that this was a poem that reflected a value, a commonly held value. Because I look around and I'm like, I think we're dismantling the human project. born from the reaction to the misery of World War II. And I think the result of that will inevitably be a repeat of the human misery. Oh, yeah. On just now a larger scale.

If nobody can stop it, yeah, I don't disagree. Does that seem insane? It seems like, I don't think so. I think, and I think, I think it's easier to not pay attention to that lesson. And I don't want to come off as, I don't know, like anti-rural.

But I think the more you're around a very specific set of people that is very homogenous. Is homogenous the right word I'm thinking of? Is it? Yeah. That you basically are not going to, you're not going to, I just don't think that you have the same sort of exposure to a large group of people and you just don't, you don't understand and figure out why different types of people have value, right? I think that being sheltered and being cut off from the rest of the world makes you care about the things that are around you and not about things that are outside of that circle.

And I think that is the heart of conservatism today. And I'm recalling when Obamacare was getting, was in the works, right? So Obamacare is in the works. It's going to be the thing that's going to come out. That's going to be what they're pushing. It's what the government's been talking about. And I remember getting into conversations on Facebook about it. Right.

So this was like when Facebook was really big and new and a bunch of. And I was also friends with a bunch of people who were small towners, right? So these are people who were tiny towners, be the people who went to my high school or people who lived around me because I lived in a small town at that time. And I remember seeing the comments there that very much had a very, I got mine. I'm not going to help anybody else out, right? This sort of isolationist, like, I got what I need. I don't need to help anybody else out. I won't.

And these are people who you thought might have been somebody who should be empathetic in some way, right? We want to try to make sure that everybody has care. No, no, no, no, no. I got my own care. You worry about yourself. I'm not going to help you. And I think, like, that to me showed me that I think a lot of these conservative bastions of rural America very much don't have empathy for anyone outside of their small circle.

and that leads me to believe that they would have that same sort of feeling toward anybody who's an immigrant as well. So tell me what you think of this, because as you're talking, I'm thinking of many of the same experiences I've had in like rural America. And I was like, at first I was like,

I don't know how to square the truth of what you're saying, because it's true, the truth of what you're saying with the sort of like contrasting vibe that I've always gotten from those same rural people where it's like, hey, I need you to help me dig a hole or move a thing. And like it, there's a, there's a sort of like cultural value. Like, yeah, we're going to help.

Absolutely. Like, all hands on deck. Well, I'll show up and help. Like, there's a shirt off your back kind of a mentality. And I'm like, these things feel at odds. But the, and I couldn't, I was trying to think as you were talking like, how do you square the circle and you square the circle with racism? Right.

That's the only thing that squares that circle. Sure. Because it's like, yeah, if you're part of my tribal group, then I'm a shirt off my back kind of guy. I'm not a I got mine, fuck you kind of guy. At an individual one to one level, I very often, in my experience, have had very generous interactions with people like that.

But as soon as it's like sort of outside that fucking two levels deep locus of influence, then all of a sudden it breaks down. And I was like, well, why does it break down? I don't understand why that seems to break down. Why does that sort of generosity of spirit? Why is it feel so hyper-local? and yet so culturally valued.

And I'm like, well, we have racism. Like, it's just that answer just ports right in so easily. It's hard not to think that that's it. Right. And I also, you know, I want to caveat it by saying, I don't think all people who live rurally are racist. No, no, no. And I don't think all people who live rurally are unempathetic.

Right. But I am saying that I think that there is something to being around groups of people that are not like you, that get you to understand. and accept the differences of human beings. I think there is some, there's a lot, I think there's a lot less people that live in big cities

that are like this than there are people who live rural. I just think that that's natural because I think you just have to, you just have to learn to live in a place where that is multicultural. Yeah. I think voting patterns definitely show this. Sure. I think that's the case.

And again, like we're speaking in very broad terms. Like I want to echo that. Yeah, yeah. Like not everybody living in the city is a, fucking progressive. Absolutely not. There's plenty of racists who live in cities. I don't know. 100% agree. 100% agree. But I think like I'm talking about general terms. Yeah, right. What I've seen in my life, I think that I think that it opens your eyes up to what multiculturalism can be when you're confronted with it. Right. When you never experience it, you don't know what you're missing. Right. There's a great clip that's going around and I don't know what podcast it is. And they'll be perfectly frank. I don't care what podcast it is.

But there's a lady who essentially is saying from this show that, hey, all these very, very white guys, they enjoy a lot of benefits of multiculturalism, especially when it comes to food, right? You get to sit in these Mexican restaurants and you get to eat. Right. And yet you want to throw every Mexican out of the country. Right. And, you know, like it's not just Mexican. It's anybody who's from any part of Central or South America they want to get rid of, right? But there's this thought that they're benefiting from multiculturalism when they want to.

Sure. But then they don't want us to take any responsibility whatsoever on the world stage to accept people from other countries to come here if we don't think that they match that level of whiteness that we have on our scale. Right. So, and I think it's very true. It's super true. You see these people there. There's a picture of Carolyn Levitt from a Mexican. restaurant sitting outside.

Somebody took a picture of her. And yeah, absolutely. 100%. Like, this is a person who's demonizing anything that is Latin America. Right. Yet enjoying things that are part of those. And like, as you're talking, I'm like,

I mean, like, we've always engaged in that exact same co-opting process. Sure. You know, I'm thinking of like music. Yeah. Like music. Like the, we have, white people have stolen music and co-opted music from black communities since the fucking

very beginning of our interactions together right? And like we've enjoyed the fruits of those labors while at the same time you know, denigrating and institutionalizing like subjugating. Yeah. Right. Yeah for sure. You're exactly right.

And I feel like that like the human project to sort of like recognize the dangers of tribalism is fading. We're sort of, we're walking away from that project. And Stephen Miller is asking us to walk away from me. He's demanding, let me rephrase that entirely.

He is demanding that we walk away from that project and that we begin a new project. And that we begin a new institutional, moral, and national project that is built to homogenize America into a vision that he has decided are the right kind of Americans, the civilizable, those who can be a part of civilization. talks a lot about who can be and who cannot be a part of a civilized world. And all of his ideas are like these really, like boring, honestly, like bad, shitty, milk toast. Racist ideas. That's it.

That's all there. They come right out of racism, right out of what they called scientific racism from back in the day. That's where they come from. And he hasn't changed. This shows you that somebody hasn't changed their thought process and is still listening to people. they'd be like listening to somebody who's trying to tell you how to fix your computer and they're for like they're carrying a buggy whip. Right.

Like why would you listen to that person? But this is a person who's getting their ideas from antiquated ideas. That's where they're pulling their stuff from. The other thing you mentioned earlier, you said denaturalized. But one of the things they want to do too is take away temporary protected status. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So TPS is a big deal in our country. Temporary protected status.

That's what the people who were from Haiti, who they, they, they. called out during the election. Those people had temporary protective status. These are people who belong here. They belong in the United States. There's a path to citizenship for those people. We want to help protect those people, and he wants to take it all away. There's another part of this article where they're talking about how he wants to change

the amount of arrests per day from 1,000 a day to 3,000 a day. His goal is millions of people to be arrested. And what we're finding is that with the... quotas of people that they want to try to find and get rid of, we're finding that he has to just, they just have to grab anybody at this point. Lots of times these people are citizens or they belong here, they should be here, and it doesn't matter. They'll just grab whoever they can because they're trying to basically fill the wood chipper

that he created. Yeah. I read that same piece. And I've read other, I've read other articles about the problems with these quotas. I mean, obviously any kind of a quota system on justice is inherently unjust. Right. You cannot fill a quota of justice today. How many justice units did we have?

We had 19 justice units, sir. Yeah. Like, that is, what this is, is how many of the wrong Americans can we round up and put in the box cars? That's what we're doing. Like, we're putting, we're rounding people up. We're putting, we talked in last week's show, we're rounding people up with a general illegal police force and we're creating a

new designation for them. We're stripping them of all of their due due process rights. We're housing them in ways that they are unsafe and then we're just saying that this is our concentration camp. Yeah. What's the like

we're like a fucking one Zyclan B away. And we're close. And I'm not convinced. And the rhetoric we won't get there. And the rhetoric around it. And the rhetoric around it is. Like, here's some quotes from Miller. Why would any civilization that actively wants to preserve itself allow for any migration that is negative to the country as a whole?

Do you know what happens to a civilization that allows large-scale migration of people who hate it? And then he calls it an invasion, right? Calls it the assisted suicide of Western civilization. Yeah, yeah. What a line. This is a disgusting pig who thinks, who's basically saying everybody who's coming, who doesn't match this chart that I've created, those people hate this country.

Why the fuck would they be here then? You're going to walk. Imagine, imagine, like, imagine the person he is trying to, the boogeyman he's trying to create here. This is a boogeyman who wakes up one day in, you know, Central America and packs up what they can carry and grabs their family or doesn't grab their family and starts literally walking.

and walks. Can you imagine walking a thousand plus miles through dangerous, dangerous physical terrain, dangerous political terrain to come to a country that you hate? Why would you do that? Nobody would do that, right? They would co- these people are coming to a country that they hope they can get a better life within. You don't think you're going to get a better life in a country you hate.

Right? That doesn't make any sense. there is a draw of the United States to people who are in need because they have historically seen us as a beacon of safety and prosperity and a place where you can build a life and maybe it'll be dangerous for me to do it because I'm undocumented

but if I can get here and I can build something for myself then my family and my children and other generations will be here legally and they will be able to have a better life than the place I've come from. That is historically part of the sort of international narrative around immigrating to the United States, right?

But what he's saying is no, these people are walking a thousand miles, crossing the Dary and Gap, dying of thirst and hunger, being robbed, beaten, raped, and killed in order to arrive at a country they want to destroy. Why would you do that? It doesn't make any sense. He doesn't believe that. No. The goal is to weaponize those people.

Great point. in such a way that he can whip up and foment enough viciousness among supporters that he already has in order to accomplish his other goals. Yeah, no, that's a great point. And I think you're absolutely right. I think what he wants to do is tune up that group because they're going to be the people

who stand behind him and scream and they're going to be the ones who join ICE and they're going to be the ones who are his foot soldiers to do this work. If he can tune them up, he's one. He's one already. Ask yourself this when you're talking. about that trial.

Would Stephen Miller do that to become American? Right, yeah, right? Stephen Miller would Donald Trump walk 10,000 miles with his cancels? Right. Would he walk here? Would he walk 100 feet? Are there hamburgers stations? Would he walk 100 feet to be an American?

No. Right? Like, look at the privilege, the luck of this people's birth, allowed them to be here. Think about how hard these other people have to work to become Americans. and none of the people who live here would work that hard to have the same rights they currently have. Absolutely. Yeah.

Absolutely. It's like if you're here and you're happy that you're here, you're here by accident, almost certainly. Really, unless you are a naturalized citizen, unless you came here on purpose. Right, right? I didn't. I didn't either. If the reason that you are a citizen is because you were born here, you, of course, didn't deserve or earn anything. There's no earning by birth.

You cannot earn something by virtue of birth unless you're a racist. Yeah. Right? Because if you're a racist and you believe that some people are lesser by din of their birth, then you believe you are greater by din of your birth. So the idea of, and I really do think this, I think that part of this, I was thinking about the idea of birthright citizenship. And why do these guys hate birthright citizenship so much?

Because the wrong color people are being born here. Exactly right. Yeah. That's why. You're exactly right. If the thing that gives me access to America is that I was born here, and you get the same access because you were born here, but I'm white and you're brown,

then I can't take pride in it anymore. So what I have to do is I have to break that for you and keep it for me. So that's the reason they want to bust up this birthright citizenship thing, because it necessarily just knocks them off that podium or off that pedestal. I want to read a piece of this. This is something that I think is, it's important for the other show I do. Immigration, including undocumented migration,

spawns new forms of community and solidarity. You know who understands this perfectly well? Joe Rogan does when he calls it horrific to arrest normal, regular people who have been here for 20 years in front of their kids. So I want to talk about a clip that's been going around. This is a clip that is making the rounds in the news talking about the Gestapo, how our government, do we really want to be the Gestapo?

Do we really want to tear kids away or tear people away from their families, et cetera? He says it in a show. The show that he says it in, he is talking to Senator Rand Paul. This show is one that we actually cover this week on the No Rogan experience. So on Tuesday, this comes out Thursday. On Tuesday, we will have covered it. So you could go listen to it if you want. But the media got this 100% wrong.

They're making it seem like Joe Rogan is on this a podcast. tour saying, oh, or at least his, the leopard is starting to nibble on his face. Right. Yeah. The leopard is, the leopard is sort of trading his cheek as an aperitif right now. And the thing is, is that's not true at all. If you listen to the whole episode, he is both siding it and carrying a lot of water for ice throughout the whole episode, blaming victims throughout the whole episode. There's not really a moment where you can point to and say, this is a guy who regrets what he did to get Trump elected. I don't think that there's any of that. But what the media is seem to be saying, and there's a ton of headlines that echo this,

is that Joe Rogan has changed his mind. Joe Rogan is souring on the way in which ICE is treating people. And that's not true if you listen to the whole episode. But they've clipped and torn a piece out of this that out of context makes it sound like there's some sort of redemption tour for Joe Rogan, don't let that fool you. That's not the case at all. And this is also something that I think we need to pay attention to

with all the rest of the people who are involved with immigration and with Trump is don't let those things lie to you. Right? Don't let the media change this because they want this story to be true. Let me ask you a Joe Rogan question because now I'm curious. If I'm Joe Rogan and I just did this thing and then the media takes this piece out of sort of out of context or maybe less out of context but just doesn't have it within its full frame, right? So like, sure. And I look at that and I think, well, people are reacting really positively

to that. Maybe I will change my position to that position. I actually mentioned this on the show. I said, I said, because I think Joe is susceptible to being nudged in the right or wrong direction. Joe got a ton of media backlash for Ivermectin and for COVID misinformation, right? He did that on his show for realties. Yeah. And then he, and then he, what he did was, he took it very personally, and he has tried to confirm his biases about COVID since then. So what he has done is dug his heels in and tried to find ways that he could be right. There's got to be a way I'm right, and I will find it, and I will reject all information that says I'm wrong. And so that's kind of been Joe's M.O. when it comes to that. And I've seen that he is somewhat susceptible to the media when

they make a comment about him. And it's my hope, and I said this on the show, it's my hope that this does change him and change his positions and that he leans more into those places. Marshes threw a little bucket of water on me. And his comment was essentially he's in a lot of spaces where people will not reinforce that. So if he goes to Twitter, he will receive an inundation of people rejecting what he did

or saying you shouldn't be soft on immigration. Here's a story. Here's an image, an AI image of some immigrant killing someone and you'll believe it, right? Then there's also people on a speed dial. And these are people from the administration. Yeah. So there might be some very direct influence

from the administration to reach out to Joe Rogan because they realize that that's a great mouthpiece to have. Yeah, yeah. And they might say, hey, you need to knock it off with shitting on the administration like this. So Marsh, of course, brought me back down to earth, but I had the exact same thought you did. Well, and like, as you were talking, too, I was like, yeah,

but the other thing was like, Joe Rogan just agrees with whoever's in front of them. Yeah, that's true, too, yeah. It's not like he holds a strong position on anything. Yeah, no, he doesn't. He didn't hold a strong position in this either. Right. Don't let the media fool you. That's the, he did not hold a strong position.

This was not him denouncing ice. He's not getting into a fucking debate, like throwing down. Not at all. He was blaming the victim and worried about people doxing ice. That was most of the conversation. For a guy that likes to fight, he's really non-confrontational. It's one of the most,

it's one of the softest interviews you could possibly get. I'm surprised he doesn't massage people while he's talking about. You know, when you get to the end of this, you know, genuinely it's a horror. Like this whole thing is a horror. Stephen Miller is the architect of all this.

He is the person who's standing behind the curtain and Trump is the puppet that he's moving as he moves his levers. Stephen Miller's a young man. I know. You know, it's not like Stephen Miller's going to eat a hamburger and things are going to go wrong for him. Stephen Miller is a real problem for this country. I think Stephen Miller needs to be out of politics in a big way after this administration.

If this administration eventually leaves, it's my hope we never hear the words Stephen and Miller together ever again. Ever again. Yeah, I am worried about Stephen Miller's ascendancy. I'm worried about his control. of power and power he is as you mentioned he's young that scares the hell out of me a lot of these guys a lot of these guys scare the hell out of me

there's a lot of young dudes that are ascendant on the right that holds some really fucking extreme views and I wonder like to some degree Donald Trump is as you've mentioned he's just a giant fucking puppet you know for some of these guys and like he's also got his old man

yells at cloud kind of fucking flare to him like these young guys are scared in a lot of ways. Yeah. They are scarier. I agree. I agree.

I think, you know, and this isn't, the thing that you have to understand, too, is that Stephen Miller isn't alone, right? This isn't just him. He's surrounded by other people who are 100% racist, right? These are people who are also racist, also anti-multiculturalism, right? In this article, the person who's writing it is texting with Steve Bannon, who's willing to 100% talk about where Stephen Miller gets his thought process from what writers is he reading?

And they're all racist. And he doesn't even care. He just sends it right back. He's like, yeah, sure. Oh, there's a racist book that he has. You know, the other frightening thing to think about, which is great, hey, I think about this too. The other frightening thing to think about is, you know,

the connection that the Stephen Miller's have with the technocrats. Yeah. And when you combine those things, You've got like these guys with these horrible ideas and they're very young and they're very powerful and they're very politically influential. And then who controls the flow of information are people that are very, very sympathetic to these same ideas and who are very interested in finding ways to amplify these ideas and to make these ideas more flavorful and like palatable for the American consumer. It's not great. It's bad. Like Zuckerberg has proven himself to be one of the worst human beings to have ever sprouted legs.

Yeah. Fucking Elon Musk, we don't need to say more about Peter Thiel. We don't need to say more about... Mark Andresen. Mark Andresen. I mean, most of the guys in charge of the technological infrastructure that allows for information to flow are... They're Stephen Miller's and Stephen Miller adjacent.

Yeah. Yeah. That's not great. That's not great. That's not going to get any better either. Awesome. Hey. I don't know what to do about that. All right.

So that's going to wrap it up for this week. Fuck. We're going to be back on Monday with a full show. But we're going to leave you like we always do with the skeptics creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-babelon bullshit. Couched in Scientist. Tician double bubble toil and trouble

Pseudo quasi alternative acupunctuating pressurized Stereogram pyramidal free energy healing Water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch Late night info docutainment Leo Pisces cancer cures detox reflex reflex Foot massage death and towers Taro cars psychic healing crystal balls Bigfoot Yeti aliens churches mosques and synagogues

Temples dragons giant worms Atlanta's, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts. Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this.

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