Digital Social Hour - The Truth About Systemic Racism, DEI & The Political Divide | Adam Mockler DSH #1209

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

🔥 Adam Mockler on Politics, Media Manipulation & The Future of America 🚀 In this raw and unfiltered episode, we sit down with Adam Mockler, political analyst and content creator, to talk about the future of America, Trump’s second term, media narratives, and the power struggles shaping our society. Topics Covered: ✅ Trump’s second term and its impact on America ✅ Elon Musk’s role in government and the power he holds ✅ The truth about media bias and political manipulation ✅ The corruption within Congress and the Justice System ✅ Systemic racism, DEI, and the political divide in America This conversation challenges both sides of the aisle and offers insights you won’t hear anywhere else! 📲 Follow Adam Mockler & Learn More: 🔗 YouTube: @AdamMockler 🔗 Instagram: @AdamMockler 🔗 Twitter: @AdamMockler ⏱ CHAPTERS ⏳ 00:00 – Adam Mockler on Trump, Media & The Political Divide ⏳ 02:30 – The Ukraine War, Trump’s Stance & Global Politics ⏳ 06:15 – How the Media Manipulates Public Opinion ⏳ 11:45 – Elon Musk’s Influence in Government & Free Speech Concerns ⏳ 16:30 – Corruption in Congress & The Broken Justice System ⏳ 21:50 – The Truth About Systemic Racism & Economic Disparities ⏳ 28:10 – DEI Explained: The Misconceptions & Reality of Diversity Policies ⏳ 35:20 – How Social Media Has Created Political Echo Chambers ⏳ 41:00 – The Future of the Republican & Democratic Parties ⏳ 48:30 – The Problem with Political Extremism & Misinformation ⏳ 54:00 – Adam’s Final Thoughts & Where to Follow Him 💪 Get yours now at Lumati.com and feel the difference! 🚀 🔥 Apply to Be on the Podcast & Business Inquiries: 🎙 APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application 📩 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail]

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you don't even have to like paint Trump in a negative light, you just have to cover what Trump is doing and it seems negative. That's true. Like I don't have to paint Trump, I don't have to lie about Trump's Ukraine take, I just have to show Trump's tweet about Ukraine

and you can see that he's kind of taking Putin's side and he's also saying that Zelensky was the one who caused the invasion not true he also said that Zelensky is a dictator who doesn't hold election like as a conservative you seem open-minded as well I'm pretty open-minded yeah can you see how it's scary when the president of the United States is saying that Zelensky is a dictator when Putin is the one who has doesn't really hold real dictator when Putin is the one who has doesn't really hold real elections like Putin is the one who has been in power for 20 years I think maybe 25 years at this point he is the actual dictator I just don't know how the president can call Zelensky a dictator can you see how that's backwards? Yeah I can see that

All right guys Adam Machler here today first time in Vegas. Yes sir. Let's go. What are your thoughts so far in Vegas? It's insane. I got in pretty late last night. A lot of bright lights. I stayed at the Venetian super nice hotel. It's my favorite.

I love Vegas. Yeah, it's super sick. I want to come back and not on a work trip so I can just chill for a weekend and enjoy the surrounding area, see some shows. Yeah, that makes sense. So we're a month into Trump's first, well, not first presidency, but his presidency. How are you feeling overall so far? Um, man, you know, kind of a mess. It's kind of, there are certain areas where he's really

gone below my expectations and I'm already a liberal, so I already had low expectations. But dude, we can just dig in with what he was saying about Ukraine yesterday. Yesterday he was trying to place the blame on Ukraine for their invasion, even though Russia invaded, also called Zelensky a dictator. I just think that is beneath the pale. You can't be doing that as the US president. But I mean, you want a broad overview on what I think about most things that have happened so far?

I think that right away he did a flurry of executive orders. I think that's the Steve Bannon flood the flood the zone strategy if you've seen that, where Steve Bannon's like, if you can do a hundred different things at once, you can sort of overwhelm your enemies and they don't know which one to start to attack. So Trump did all these executive orders. Some of them got challenged in the courts, like when he tried to challenge birthright citizenship. A Reagan appointed judge actually challenged him on that.

Then there was the whole trade war. We could talk about that as well. Or the almost trade war where he was threatening Canada and Mexico. I think that was mostly performative. And then, man, the Ukraine stuff was the truly offensive. I think it's not a good position for our president to have. So that's a lot right there.

Yeah, that is a lot. We'll start with the trade war though with Canada and Mexico. How do you think he handled that situation? I think that it was all performative with no real concessions right. So I was on this debate show the other day and they were asking me about this. I was debating someone about it and I asked the conservative can you name me a single concession that Trump actually got from Scheinbaum or Trudeau because you can look you can look.

You can look this up on the Canadian government website. They announced this $1.3 billion spending package back in December and then Trump sends out a tweet declaring victory in mid-January saying, hey, we secured this $1.3 billion spending package. So it was all performative. I know you're more conservative. So I think that, what was your opinion on it? I think he did the tariff stuff as a negotiation tactic.

I don't think his plan was to ever actually do that. Yeah, I agree. And you could see the shreds of it when he was doing it with Colombia. He threatened tariffs on Colombia. But did he actually get anything from Mexico and Canada? Didn't they send troops to the Border though yeah, but they did that before is shine bomb already did that. Oh, right in a few times

Oh, interesting. I didn't know that actually yeah No shine bomb sent troops to the border under Biden and under Trump's first term and then What Trump did was acted like this was some new grand revelation He acted like this was a massive victory and then people are like oh shit Trump's a master negotiator he did the same thing with true did you know that Trudeau had a 1.3 billion dollar package beforehand no and then Trump declared you can look this all up to like I'm not even bullshit you can look it all up there was already a 1.3 billion dollar border package all that he got from Trudeau was the borders are

there's a new thing called the borders are. But it's like, did you have to almost start? Do you think he could have done that without starting a trade war? Probably. Yeah. So you think he basically did it as a sign to assert dominance? Did he do that? But he's also a showman, right? Like we can agree on that. Like the dude is a showman. He knows how to grab the headlines. He knows how to be performative. And I sometimes think that he can be performative without actually getting results. So you could say it was to assert dominance.

I think it was to get a sort of superficial victory. He got this victory in the form of like 50% of the country right now thinks that Trudeau and Scheinbaum basically kneeled in front of him. They were like, OK, you win. You win this trade war. But it was all just performative. So I think it was to get a performative victory.

And I think that a lot of the stuff he does is performative. Yeah. I can agree with that. I mean, he comes from reality television. But it works, man. I mean, what am I supposed to say? I mean, he beat the Democrats. They have all few chambers of Congress.

So I can't say that performative theatrical stuff doesn't work to get voters. But I just think there's a difference between marketing yourself and actually governing. The governing part is a little bit harder. How shocked were you with the results of the election? There's two different pieces. I knew going into it that it was 50-50.

I'm a big believer in Nate Silver's model and stuff like that. I was like, okay, it's 50-50. It's a coin flip. I totally think he can win. But on the night of when he actually took the victory just thinking about Elon Musk having that much power Started to kind of blow my mind the night up how shocked was I on a scale of one to ten like a four? I wasn't that surprised but yeah, it always sucks to lose right it always sucks I just I was more surprised by the the victory margin. Yeah, like I wasn't surprised

He won but the fact that it was basically a landslide. When I saw the popular vote, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say it was a landslide electorally. Well, he won all the swing states. Yeah, he won all the swing states. That's normal. That's very normal. The swing states basically always go in one direction. I think what was more surprising is that he won the popular vote. Republicans never win. It's been a while since they won the popular vote. I thought what was more surprising is that he won the popular vote. Like Republicans never win. Like it's been a while since they won the popular vote. I thought that was pretty wild. You've been over 40 of his rallies.

Has he ever said anything that like impressed you or changed your opinion on anything at those rallies? Um, him and his supporters change my opinion on things all the time. I wouldn't say. Yeah. Trump has taught me a lot. I don't know about if impressed is the word. I don't know if I've ever heard something that Trump has said and be like, I am so incredibly impressed. Like

that is deep. Trump's never opened my eyes on anything, but he has taught me a lot about how the world works regarding the interactions between two people. Like when I see him use these negotiation tactics, and it sounds bad, when I see him use these like quote unquote negotiation tactics and he tries to bully other countries or he tries to use the anchor. I start to see it a lot more in the business world now. So after I hear Trump talk about like his, I see Trump do this, I see it more in the business world behind the scenes, even in the industry that I'm in.

I see people using Trumpian tactics. So he's taught me stuff in that regard. His supporters, I've had a lot of good interesting conversations with them. They've taught me some interesting stuff. So you are open-minded. That's cool. Definitely open-minded. Yeah.

I mean, I'm incredibly open-minded. I'm actually pretty center-left. Like I am a capitalist. I agree with Trump on capitalism. I don't think socialism would work. I think to a degree, you need to have like welfare nets, basically, nets to catch people. But I don't think that, yeah, I mean, dude, the Trump supporters are very cool. They're very cool people.

It's kind of odd because I'll talk to these people and it's like my aunt or my uncle from a different reality. Super nice people. They love me. This dude gave me the gloves off of his hands. He was like, I see that you're cold. Here are my gloves. But then he'll say some weird race realist stuff, right? There is that section of MAGA, for sure.

But overall, I think MAGA gets painted in a really bad light on the media. Sort of. But they kind of do it to themselves. When Charlie Kirk and Benny Johnson and Tucker Carlson, when all the people out there, like the loudest voices, are saying crazy shit. Or I can cuss, right?

That's not a big deal. I should have probably asked that. No, you're good. But when they're out there saying crazy stuff, you're kind of asking for it. And I do think the media can be unfair. I mean, sure. But yeah, I mean, MAGA does have a lot of crazy.

You don't even have to paint Trump in a negative light. You just have to cover what Trump is doing and it seems negative. That's like, I don't have to paint Trump. I don't have to lie about Trump's Ukraine take. I just have to show Trump's tweet about Ukraine. You can see that he's kind of taking Putin's side. And he's also saying that Zelensky was the one who caused the invasion. Not true.

He also said that Zelensky is a dictator who doesn't hold elections. As a conservative, you seem open-minded as well, right? I'm pretty open-minded, yeah. Can you see how it's scary when the president of the United States is saying that Zelensky is a dictator when Putin is the one who has, doesn't really hold real elections? It's like Putin is the one who has been in power

for 20 years, I think maybe 25 years at this point. He is the actual dictator. I just don't know how the president can call Zelensky a dictator. Can you see how that's backwards? Yeah, I could see that. Yeah. What are your thoughts on the Ukraine situation?

I wasn't a fan of his take. Yeah. I think, yeah, it doesn't look like he's going to end that war like he said he was going to, right? Yeah, he said, within 24 hours of taking office, I'm going to end that war. And it seems like maybe he's getting a little bit frustrated because now we're exactly a month in he hasn't ended the war in Ukraine prices haven't gone down but

that's to the side I just feel like he's now siding with Putin after one phone call which I think is weird that is weird who knows there's a game behind the scenes that the public doesn't know about too, I feel like. Yeah, you could say that, that it's like 3D chess, 4D chess, I hear that argument a lot. And there are times when I thought, going into the tariff, going into the tariffs, when he was threatening Canada and Mexico, there are times when I felt like,

is he just, is there an end goal here that I'm not seeing? Is he negotiating with them and trying to get some massive concession or get them to fall in line? But then, like I said earlier, at the end of those negotiations with Canada and Mexico, Trump got no actual real concessions. They were all just stuff that had previously been conceded. So I don't know if there is this 3D chess.

I think Trump is actually just kind of ignorant when it comes to the Ukraine situation. I think he had a phone call with Vladimir Putin. Putin changed his mind. And then Tulsi Gabbard, his director of national intelligence, she also has the same take that it was Biden's fault. It was Zelensky's fault that Ukraine was invaded.

So she's giving him his daily briefings now. I'm sure that's not helping. And you just have to remember when he says that the invasion was Biden's fault, Ukraine got invaded in 2014 as well. Crimea got invaded in 2014, which is like, how can that be Biden's fault? Yeah, I didn't know that actually. That's good to know. Yeah, Crimea got invaded in 2014.

Georgia, which is another country in Europe, got invaded in 2008. Basically, Putin always has these imperial ambitions. All Putin wants to do is take land. He wants to take the next country and the next country. I mean, Putin's like a dictator. He's literally a dictator in the most literal sense. So when Trump is trying to claim that Crimea, or sorry, when Trump is trying to claim that Ukraine was only invaded because of Biden that's BS Ukraine has been invaded before a decade ago so it's just it's interesting to see him falling for that. Yeah now I know you're not a fan of Elon Musk but can you agree that the stuff he's been exposing is good information for the people to know.

I guess but yeah I mean it's good information but it was already out there before. The social security numbers. Not the social security numbers I don't even know the validity behind what he's claiming there. I've seen multiple reports that when Elon Musk claims there's millions and millions of dollars being spent on people above certain ages, I don't even know if that's fully true.

I thought that they found out that there were a few different theories. Number one, it could have been a type of code in the database. What is it called, COBOL or whatever, where the code actually goes up to 150. Or there is a chance that the, someone, I read some article saying that those payments weren't actually being sent out to the people after they die.

I don't know. I think there's a more rational explanation. Here's the thing. If Elon Musk actually exposed tens of millions of dollars being wasted in social security I would think that was a good thing, but I'm having trouble buying it. I just don't go to that So you just don't believe it's not I think that there's a more rational explanation I don't think our social security was so corrupt that I think what do you say 60% of it was going to other and

When it comes to his him exposing up Like 10 million dollars going to Mumbai or 10 million million going to like Dubai Bisexual clubs, whatever the fuck. The condoms. Yeah, whatever the hell. Number one, this was already publicly available data. This was all in Congress bills. Congress appropriated this, and that's all public stuff.

So Elon Musk isn't really, again, it's the performativeness of it. I think he's kind of performatively doing all this. But I will say, yeah, if he can make the government more effective, I'll be behind him when he does that. Liberals in general want the government to be more effective, it's not like I want the government to be a huge bureaucracy. I'm open-minded to that. I'm open-minded to making the government trim down.

But I think the way Elon Musk is doing it is kind of scary sometimes. Yeah, proposing mass layoffs, right? Yeah, and just doing it. He keeps saying he's doing it with a lot of oversight, but it seems to be selective oversight, right? So when Elon Musk is the one that's running the Doge account and the account that

tweets out all this stuff, they are selectively releasing certain documents. Real oversight would be having some sort of external validation, some sort of external oversight committee that can come in and see what Elon Musk is doing, but he's kind of blocked that time and time again. When people tried to go into the USAID buildings, they weren't let in. They tried to go into the Department of Education, they weren't let in. There are reports that CNN tried to put in a FOIA request for Elon Musk and to see

what his clearance was. And Elon Musk fired the entire FOIA team. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole team, I think it was called the Privacy and Communications Team or something. The privacy team in the government was actually fired by Elon Musk and the people. So if he wants to make the government more efficient with oversight, that's fine. But there are legal avenues to do that. You can take waste, fraud, and abuse to certain courts.

And yeah, that's just... I think there's a way to do it where it doesn't have to be so breakneck. It's interesting. Did you see his interview with Trump on Fox News the other day? I didn't realize how much power Trump is giving Elon. Yeah, yeah. Trump pretty much said at any time he writes an executive order, Elon is there to enact on it.

Yeah, yeah. That's pretty crazy, right? It's's wild and I think that Elon Musk has too much power. Does that scare you that Elon Musk basically bought his way into that position? Yeah well it scares me when any single person has that much power you know what I mean just in general. Yeah especially when they're unelected and there's no way to really hold Elon accountable. That's the thing about unelected bureaucrats. Right. It was really like if Elon Musk did something absolutely heinous

and Trump just like looked the other way, we can't vote Elon Musk out. We can't really like we can't do anything because he's rich as fuck and he could just buy his way out of any lawsuit, not buy his way, but he could just pay

the lawyers and get it, get out of any lawsuit like that. So yeah, I mean, having someone by their way into the most powerful position, or I guess second most powerful position in the world is kind of scary, in my opinion. Yeah. Do you what do you think about the argument that if George Soros were doing this with the Biden administration, conservatives heads would be exploding? Like, could you imagine for one second if George Soros? Oh, no, that's two on the nose. Let's just say, could you

imagine for a second if before the 2020 election, Bill Gates and Joe Biden were just walking around together. Bill Gates and Joe Biden were courtside, chilling out at a Lakers game, and Bill Gates bought Facebook and then used Facebook, leveraged that to make sure that Joe Biden has propaganda in his favor. While Bill Gates was doing this, he was donating hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to Joe Biden. Now do you think conservatives would be okay if after Biden wins the election Bill Gates

is in the White House helping him draft policy and act out. It is scary. I don't know if I'd be cool with that. Yeah yeah so it's just interesting that conservatives are not I'm not talking about you when I say conservative like the MAGA conservatives are oddly okay with Elon Musk being well I definitely mean that way I've actually never voted. Oh really. But I lean conservative. Why've actually never voted. Oh, really? But I lean conservative.

Why have you never voted? I don't know. Interesting. Just never voted. When you, I was going to say, are you open-minded enough to ever vote blue? Yeah, I mean, I grew up in Jersey, and my family was blue probably my whole childhood.

So yeah. I would do it if it made sense to me. If the candidate was right? If the candidate was right. If the candidate was right. What if it was like Mark Cuban next election versus Marjorie Taylor Greene? Yes. It's like Mark Cuban versus a far right MAGA support.

I would go Cuban. Yeah. I like Cuban. He's a cool guy. He's got some wild takes, though. I wasn't a fan of the DEI take yet. Yeah, where he was in favor of it. Yeah.

I think that there's a nuanced view. See, the thing is, you have to be open-minded on this, all this stuff, because when you go online, people are so black or white. There's a take on the DEI that I think liberals and conservatives can both get behind. And I'm still drafting the best way to say it, articulate it, but a lot of the DEI programs

are actually pretty terrible, and liberals need to be admitting that. A lot of the DEI programs are actually pretty terrible. And liberals need to be admitting that. A lot of the DEI programs are antithetical to what we actually want, which is diversity, equity, and inclusion. But there are ways to draft them where everybody is actually included. I don't know. Mark Cuban's DEI take wasn't fully wrong. He was just looking at it in a very nuanced way. I agree.

I just, as a capitalist and as an entrepreneur, DEI never made sense to me. Yeah. I guess it depends on what's your working definition of DEI. What do you usually think? When I think of DEI, I think of just hiring certain ethnicities to fill the job position. Yeah. I think that there's a way... Here's the question. If there's a talent pool of a bunch of very highly

specialized people, and you have two people, they both have the exact same qualifications. So they both had a 4.0 GPA in high school, they both have the exact same college degree, they even went to the same college, but one of them grew up in a worse family, like they had a worse family life. They were able to accelerate their career much faster

and get to the same position as the other person who had a great, really wealthy life. Do you think it's okay to hire the person who had a worse off life? Because that's a form of DEI. Oh, is it if they came from not as rich of a background, basically? Yeah, like it's not even just diversity in

race or more women in the workplace. It's a diversity in lived experiences so you want people from all different types of backgrounds even if it's a white dude who had a less privileged life growing up yeah and then a white dude who was super rich growing up DEI would still be picking the white dude who was less privileged. Would you think that's okay? No, I didn't know that. I thought it was just ethnicity. Would you think that that was okay if that's a form of DEI? Yeah, I mean, for me, I just I don't have a huge company, so I hire people based off if I like them or not in skill.

Like, that's all that matters to me. Yeah, I think when Mark Cuban was talking about DEI, I don't think he was talking about because like, it really depends on your working definition. I have I grew up in Indiana. So I've got a bunch of Trump supporting friends. And we had this conversation recently. And they were saying essentially, DEI is just hiring black people just for the sake of hiring black people or women hiring a woman just because you think you need more women on the team. I don't think that's the case. I think it's looking at a very highly qualified pool and making sure when you're pulling from this pool of highly qualified people, you have a diverse portfolio of people on your team. So I think having people from lesser privileged backgrounds, more privileged backgrounds, you want a highly qualified black person,

you probably want women on a team. So you just want some sort of diversity, but you don't wanna force it in there. No. I think the liberal idea of forcing it in there is pretty. That's what pisses people off, I think. Yeah, people feel smothered by that. Like I was trying to say this earlier,

there's a middle ground to it. There's a middle ground to DEI where you're not pushing it in people's faces or making sure that people can't get jobs because of it, but you're actually making sure you have a really high qualified diverse functioning team Yeah, where everybody is like really super good at what they do. Would you ever vote right Republican? Um, I could I mean it depends I know for the modern-day Republican Party hell

No, like advance ran next election. No. No, I couldn't see myself voting for Vance I'm just so diametrically opposed to him on basically every belief. If I were ever to vote for the Republican Party, it would have to be a completely different Republican Party. But I don't vote just based on, it would be very ignorant for me to say I'm only going to vote blue for the rest of my life. Right, because a lot could change over time.

A lot could change. Who knows? If the Democratic Trump comes out in 30 years, and the Democratic Trump somehow just has terrible positions on everything, then maybe I'd vote for the more Republican. somehow just as terrible positions on everything, then maybe I'd vote for the more Republican. It just depends on what the party looks like.

But do you feel like the Democrats, because I hear this a lot. Do you feel like the Democratic Party has changed a lot over the years? Yeah, I'd say so. I mean, over how many years though, because I'd say 1520. No, I don't. I think that the Republican Party is the one that has gone really far to the right. The Republican Party is a side that has gone off the chains. Have you ever seen that meme that Elon Musk posted and all these people post where it's

like, I didn't leave the Democratic Party, it left me. It shows the Democratic Party going way off to the side. I think that's not true. The Republican Party, the mago wing of the Republican Party is the one that has gone far right. Because if you look at 2008, who was the vice president? In 08 that was... Joe Biden. 09, 09. Joe Biden. If you look at 2008, 2009, Joe Biden was the vice president. 15 years later, Joe Biden was the president of the United States. So the party really hasn't moved that much. It's gone from Biden as the VP to Biden as the president.

Maybe he got a little bit more progressive. But if you look at the Bush era of Republicans to the Trump era of Republicans, dude, it is night and day. Think about the Bush Republicans. Think about what they cared about, which was like NATO, which was not expanding the deficit too much, which they did. Going to war and stuff, they loved that.

And compare that to what the modern day Republicans are, it is night and day. So I think the Democratic Party from 2008 to 2025 hasn't really changed that much, but at the same time, the activist wing of our party is kind of dragging us down. Right, and that's what people associate with on social media, that every Democrat is like that. Every Democrat is like the college blue-haired activist.

Destiny. Yeah, yeah, like Destiny. And it's fair to flip it on the other side. People think the craziest MAGA supporters are every single Trump supporter. That's not true at all. But I think that there is some truth to the idea that our activists don't usually make it into Congress.

Actually, our activists vote against us. So these far-left people, when you look at like Hassan Piker, he doesn't even vote blue. He doesn't even tell his audience to vote blue. He's so far left. He's way farther left than the Democratic Party. So our activists give us a bad name. Like those pro-Palestinian protesters

who give us a bad name, they didn't even vote for Biden. But then, when you look at the far right people, they're actually given a seat in Congress. I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is definitely farther right than both of us. She pushes a lot of conspiracy theories. Half of Republicans in Congress, maybe even more, say they believe the 2020 election was stolen. So you've got Republicans in Congress actually believing conspiracy theories.

Meanwhile, it's just our activists that make the Democrats look bad. You know what I mean? Yeah, I can see that. Do you feel like there's a lot of corruption within Congress? Define corruption in what way? So I see these charts of who's funding who, basically. APAC's funding some people in Congress. Big Pharma's funding Bernie Sanders. I see these.

Where's the money coming from? Do you think that's corrupting them in a way? No, I don't even know if that's corruption. Well, it's hard. If we want to play with terms a little bit. It's not corruption because you're kind of just using the system as it's set up. When you're getting money from lobbyists or a company, or not a company, but a lobbyist like APAC

or from certain lobbyists, that is just kind of how the system works. I wouldn't say it's corrupt, but you can say it's guiding the way people vote in Congress, for sure. But that's kind of just how the system works. I wouldn't say it's corrupt, but you can say it's guiding the way people vote in Congress for sure. But that's kind of just leveraging the system as it's supposed to be leveraged. I mean, I give you money, then I have a little bit of control. I have your ear. I can tell you what to believe. And yeah, I don't know. I think the thing with Bernie and Warren being funded by these big Medicare companies, I read an article about that, that it wasn't actually big Medicare companies funding them

It was small donors that worked for Medicare like worked in hospitals It was nurses people like that making small-time donations that added up to like these huge numbers because they want to see reform But um, so that counts as the company funding when that's the case. I don't even know if it was the company I think that uh, maybe we're talking about different things But from my understanding I thought Bernie Sanders was being funded by a bunch of like smaller time people that work in health care, but Yeah, I mean is there corruption in Congress? I'm sure yeah, well with the stocks stuff. That's not debatable Yeah, yeah, yeah, the stock stuff and like even Menendez who's a Democrat. He recently got

Arrested and charged and yeah, he's oh Republican. And Eric Adams, as a Democrat in New York, the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, super corrupt. So there's corruption between mayors, between Congress people. But I just think that, not to take it back to Trump, but the level of corruption Trump shows is just next level. I like that you call out your own party, though. That's respect, man.

Yeah, I mean, right now is the time to do that for sure when um when we took a massive f and loss Call out your own party and yeah, I'm not I'm definitely not like a far-left hardliner Who's crazy about the Democrat? I'm a Democrat for sure. I am liberal to the core, but I can call out when my party Has messed up. What did you think about? What did you think about Trump's meme coin? I didn't buy it. I was actually in DC when he launched it and I met a ton of people that made money off it. Damn, I was in DC as well.

Oh, you were? Oh, you went to the inauguration? I covered the rally the day before, but then when they moved the inauguration inside, we decided like, I'm just gonna go back to the studio and do stuff in the studio. But yeah, I think the meme coin was wild. I wasn't, I'm in crypto, by the way. I wasn't a fan of it I'm gonna be honest it's just a bad look did

when the president launches a meme coin like meme coins are for like degenerates literally presidents launching it it's kind of weird to me the president launched it but the worst part is he used the hype of his own inauguration to kind of like boost it he did it I think 48 hours before the inauguration and then Melania launches a coin that next day. That was terrible. Dude, how? That crashed Trump's coin. It crashed Trump's coin.

I remember that. People that had just bought it and basically were freaking out because they bought it at Trump's coin. But yeah, it's pretty insane that the president of the United States is openly doing degen stuff. I just think that like, I think it enriched him too. I just think that when people talk about both sides, like both sides are corrupt, you can say that the

Democratic congressmen and women do stock trading like that. But that's a wholly different level of corruption than the president of the United States leveraging his inauguration to launch a meme coin. I think it's just two different sides. Well, crypto is not as regulated. So you could get away away with stuff like that, but yeah the stock stuff blows my mind I don't know how they're getting away with that I like how AOC always vows to never buy individual stocks AOC

I think she doesn't own any stocks or indexes or anything because she just says you know Would you vote for her if she ran in 28? Yeah, if she ran against JD Vance in 28, I would. But in the primary, probably not. I think that AOC needs a little bit more time. So if there was a primary full of a bunch of experienced people, as much as I think AOC is probably the most charismatic messenger in the party right now, when she talks,

I listen. She's really good at messaging. I think that if a few clips of Kamala from 2019 could nuke her campaign, like those clips of Kamala saying far left stuff, they have ten times as many clips of AOC saying really far left stuff. As recently as 2022, AOC is saying super far left stuff. So I just think that would nuke her. Yeah. Well, she was on the pronoun wave for a bit. Yeah. And I also don't know if, I don't know if Kamala Harris,

or sorry, I don't know if AOC, yeah, I just, I don't know if she's ready to make a presidential run. I know it's a bit early, but who do you think would be the best right now, Newsom? Newsom's a little bit, I don't even think Newsom. I think that, let me see, it is really early. Here's the thing that I always say, in 2004, the Democrats took a massive loss to Bush and the party was kind of in shambles and nobody knew who the Democrats would have in

four years and Obama comes out of nowhere and takes the whole country by storm. And then in 2012, the Republicans, Mitt Romney lost to Obama and I remember the Republican Party was like, we are so cooked for a decade. The Republican Party is fucked. Four years later, Trump comes out of nowhere and wins. So you never know who's going to come out in four years. But if there was a ticket, I like a Shapiro, maybe a Newsom Shapiro could work.

Newsom is a little bit too slicked back sometimes. This is nothing against him personally. I don't trust him. I think he's probably a good guy, a really charismatic guy, but he's got this California slicked back hair, like you'll shake your hand and then talk shit about the scenes right after. Yeah, that's how I feel. But I think he's probably a good guy. I would vote for him. I would vote for AOC. Buddha Judge. How do you feel about Buddha Judge? I don't know. I don't know him enough to be honest. Yeah, I'm not as deep in the space as you. He's really cool. He's really cool. Where do you think about Buttigieg? I don't know him enough to be honest. I'm not as deep in the space as you. He's really cool. Where do you rank Trump just being totally objective out of presidents in your lifetime in terms of effectiveness?

Presidents in my lifetime in terms of effectiveness? Um, last. Just be objective though. Put your differences to the side. Okay, it depends on what you mean by effective. There's a few things that you could say. Has he signed a huge amount of executive orders? Yeah.

But to what end? How effective is it to sign an executive order that gets blocked by the courts? And the thing is, Biden was way more, I know that people will disagree with this. Biden was way more effective than Donald Trump. Biden is the negotiator Trump dreams of being and I can back that up. Biden took office and due to his massive amount of experience

in Washington he was able to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, a massive COVID bill, he was able to pass the Chips and Science Act, the PAC Act, he was able to pass all of this stuff and a lot of times get Republicans to sign on. Meanwhile Donald Trump has to do everything via executive order. If Trump was actually effective, as effective as he claims to be, then he would be able to pass this stuff through Congress and get both sides to come together.

But he has to do executive order after executive order after executive order. So to answer your question, where do I rank Trump on effectiveness? Well, in his first term, we can go off that. He ran on building the wall. It didn't really happen that much. said he was in a lock-up Hillary didn't really happen nothing I would want it to he said that he was a all he

got done was his tax bill the tax cuts that he did in 2017 the tax cut and jobs act so I don't think he was out effective in his first term now there is an argument to be made that during a second term he's been effective because he signed like a hundred executive orders but, Congress hasn't really passed anything. Trump doesn't really have his landmark piece of legislation. Like for Obama, it would be Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act. Biden, probably the Inflation Reduction Act. I just don't know if Trump has been that effective at passing legislation, but Trump has reshaped

the entire Republican Party in a way that no Democratic politician. Yeah, you gotta give them that. There's yeah there's things I can reach across and give Trump certain things like Trump is incredibly good on camera and a lot of liberals won't even admit that but when Trump goes on camera This dude is fun to watch. He's funny And I disagree with him on everything, of course, but this dude is like he's fun to watch on camera He's he's also to watch on camera. He's also a really good marketer. Some of the slogans he comes up with, some of the stuff they come up with is pretty clever.

I think he's a pretty good strategist. I think there are times in politics when he outplays the Democrats or he baits the media into saying something about him. So I do think he's actually a pretty smart political strategist, but I don't know if he's effective a pretty smart political strategist but I don't know if he's effective at governing. You know how I was saying earlier that there's a difference between marketing yourself and actually governing? I think that he's effective at marketing himself but not a very effective governor.

Yeah I guess time will tell. We'll see how his second term goes. Yeah very true. You're right though he doesn't have that landmark thing. I've seen old videos of Biden and it's actually impressive the way he used to talk. Biden was sharp. He was a good politician. I think recency bias plays a role in people's perception of Biden because I think he can't talk or walk or whatever but I've seen old videos of him. He was sharp back in the day.

He was very very sharp. Even in 2011-2012 he was given really powerful speeches and I think that history will look back fondly on Biden's presidency I hope because he passed a lot of stuff. It's really easy to overlook what Biden passed, because he couldn't really articulate it much. He couldn't really speak about what he passed. He couldn't speak at all in that debate and market himself. So I think that hopefully history

will vindicate the Biden presidency. And we'll see what Trump. Time will tell. Well, I think conservatives were just upset. They were hiding it, his mental decline. And there's still people like Harry Sisson saying he didn't have any mental decline, but come on now. He clearly had a level of mental decline.

Clearly had a level of mental deterioration. But I still think even a mentally declining Biden would be better than Trump, who is currently alienating NATO and our allies and putting Ukraine down. It's like, I would take a mentally deteriorating, steady-handed president who could actually speak with Zelensky and not bully him, then someone who's... It's not like Trump's that far behind Biden. He's really old.

78, right? 78. And that dude's starting to slur his words a lot too. Well, with his diet, I mean, drinking Coca-Cola every day, eating McDonald's. True, true. And that dude, he does work a lot. I mean, you have to be in that position to be in the presidential role. But when I was covering his campaign, it would tire me seeing the amount of events that he

and Kamala do. It applies to Kamala as well. But Trump used to sometimes do four to five events a day. He would be in a, he would be in, and Kamala would do this too, but Trump would be in Philadelphia, then he'd be in Arizona, then he'd be in like talking to farmers in Iowa, like every single state, swing state he would be hitting. That's pretty wild. That's nuts.

What'd you think of his pardons? I know the Silk Road one was probably the biggest one, right? The Silk Road pardon, I don't really have a strong opinion on that. I thought the J6 pardons were pretty abhorrent. Really? Yeah, I don't think the J6-er should have... You don't think any of them? No. I've had a few on the podcast.

Oh, you've had a few on? Which ones? I had the guy with the horns. There was one in Vegas, Nathan DeGrave, and then John Strand. Yeah. I think there's a lot of disinformation that floats around about how they were treated. Were they saying they were actually treated terribly in these prisons? Because... Uh, yes. All three of them said they were. As far as I'm aware, they got the same amount of due process that everybody else got. Really?

So, they got access to a team of lawyers. I mean, wasn't the dude that you talked to out on like bail or whatever? He was like out. Yes. The one with horns was out. Yeah. So, I mean, if he was being treated so horribly, then why did he get a team of lawyers? Why did he get everybody to help him get out of prison? I think that if the prisons treated them bad, that's more of an indictment on US prisons

and how US prisons operate. But every single J6er got a due process. They got a team of lawyers, just like anybody else. They got to give their arguments in court, a lot of them actually were out on bail. The vast majority of them were out of prison. The ones that were staying in prison were on like seditious conspiracy charges.

And I think it's just abhorrent that the president pardoned people who like stuck tasers in cops' necks, they beat the shit out of cops with American flags, and he then emboldened these people to do it more. I don't know. You've seen a few of them have already been rearrested, right? Oh, no, I haven't. A few of the January Sixers got arrested on gun charges. One of them got arrested with child solicitation charges.

One of them got shot and killed because he got in a fight with a cop. Yeah, one of the J Sixers got in a fight with a cop. And he got shot and killed, actually in Indiana, where I grew up. And it's like, what do you expect? If you pardon somebody who got in a fight with a cop, and you call them a patriot, then yeah,

they're gonna feel emboldened or above the law, and they're gonna feel like they can fight with cops further, and eventually it's gonna lead to death. So the fact that like five or six J6ers, within a month, have already ended up back in jail or dead, is kind of just an indictment on how these people are. They're just impressionable. That's crazy.

Easily radical. So I don't think they should have gotten all pardoned. I think they should have gone through the legal system. I think that if you try to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, you should go to jail. So do you like pardons at all? Do you think there's a place for pardons in general? Yeah, presidential pardons are fine. You think so?

I know that Biden did a ton with his family as well. And I had mixed feelings about that. But I think that pardons definitely have a place. You can't blanket pardon 1,500 criminals, 1,500 people who try to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. You know all the January 6 arguments, right? About how Mike Pence was inside the Capitol that day. Is January 6 something you think that Trump went too far on? I was surprised when he pardoned everyone, yeah.

I think the ones that committed violent crimes shouldn't have been, personally. Cause it's like, yeah, cause Mike Pence, on January 6, like 4 years ago, Mike Pence was in the Capitol, certifying the election results, and you had all these people trying to break in years ago, Mike Pence was in the Capitol certifying the election results. And you had all these people trying to break in to essentially stop Mike Pence. And Trump was tweeting out, Mike Pence didn't do it. It needed to be done. So it just made me wonder, I don't know.

All these people don't need to be pardoned. Is there any cabinet picks from Trump that you agree with, or do you dislike all of them? I don't dislike all of them. I think when Marco Rubio got confirmed, I didn't really have a problem. Marco Rubio seems to be like a clear-headed, normal Republican who didn't really

oppose Trump back in 2016. Now, what Marco Rubio has done since has been kind of, I haven't liked it. But that might be the only one I don't have a problem with, because all the other ones are sort of characters. They're real characters. It goes back to what I was saying earlier. Trump prioritizes showmanship over governing, right? Like this dude, he would rather put

on a good show than actually have effective policies. So when he picks people for his cabinet, he picked a bunch of TV stars. He pulled Pete Hegseth straight off of Fox News. Dr. Oz he chose. He chose a bunch of people who are straight up just like TV personalities. And I think that it's because he wants to, he wants to have a good like propaganda network on TV so that he could show people, I don't know,

he could place it up. Like also the mass deportations that he's claiming are happening, it's all performative in my opinion. from every single fact that I've seen. He's not even beating Biden's daily deportation rate. It's about the same or maybe a little bit above Biden's daily deportation. But what they do is they plaster it on all the TVs and they have. Yeah, they have like Dr.

Phil out there. They have all these TV personalities claiming these are crazy mass deportations That was a major selling point for his last campaign the deportations. Yeah. Yeah, so it's just people were scared actually I got a lot of friends that were really scared about that getting deported. Yeah. Yeah, what do you think about them? I think if they're here just you know not committing crimes making honest work. I don't see why they should be deported personally I think that's what the average American Yeah, like that's sort of the most average view. It's I agree now Here's the thing if you commit a crime you can get out of the country

Especially if you're a repeat offender we should kick those people out No liberals gonna disagree with that like Trump is always saying stuff to the effect of Liberals want to flood the country with criminals. It's like number one You're the one that pardoned the January Sixers Those are a bunch of criminals who are now on the streets. But number two, liberals will say, if there's an illegal immigrant here who committed a crime, get them the hell out.

But if there's someone who has a family here and they're just working, you don't have to deport them. Mass deportations seem kind of cruel, especially for a country that was built off of immigration. And again, he's not even doing the mass deportations. I keep going back to this back to this point of like showmanship over actual results. So what does it tell you when Dr. Phil is on TV making a show out of the deportations, but then you check the

numbers and we're not actually beating what Biden was doing in his presidency. We're on track to this do the same. That's crazy. I didn't know Biden was supporting that money. Biden, there is a normal level of deportations that happen every single year. And with Obama, you know they used to call him the deporter in chief. I've heard that, yeah. Yeah, Obama would deport the hell out of it.

But it's not even like him. It's not even Obama sitting there pulling the lever. It's just that ICE has a normal level of deportations. And yes, it went down after Obama actually. Obama's last year went down and throughout the Trump presidency it was kind of low. Trump's first term didn't beat Obama's second term. And then Biden's presidency, it was rather low at the beginning due to COVID and then it picked back up. And right now, I think Trump is slightly beating Biden in the deportations. I think he's doing a little bit more per day, but it's like not what he campaigned on.

It should be more though based off all the number of people that got in during Biden, right? Yeah, they're saying 10 million plus. Yeah. Yeah, they say that. I don't know what the actual number is. It's hard if they're undocumented if they came here legally or sorry illegally, then how do you know that it was 10 million? I think people just throw a number or Trump just like throws numbers out there, but um yeah, if uh Imm immigration should be streamlined. Liberals want to streamline the immigration process. There's a lot of misconceptions about what liberals believe. From the liberals that you've talked to,

Harry Sisson, I know you've talked to Beasley. Pacman. Pacman too. Does it seem like any of us actually want immigrants to be flowing in, like committing crime or anything? No. Yeah, yeah, it's not actually like that. So both sides have these warped perceptions of each other where Trump will try to make it

seem like liberals really want immigrants coming in here, killing young women or whatever the hell is not true at all. And yeah, I mean, there's probably a middle ground that people could... Yeah, that's why I keep multiple perspectives around me, because you could easily live in a bubble. And you see that with politics people living in DC especially oh yeah now everyone's leaving DC you see that they're listing their houses yeah yeah I I've been in DC a few times over the past month actually and it's uh it's always interesting what's the energy there recently for you um well before the

Trump term it was kind of doom and gloom a little bit like I went there in December for a White House event White House invited a bunch of creators. It was kind of like a last hurrah. I saw that one. Yeah, our last time in the White House. You were with Hunter Biden. Yeah, we were with Hunter Biden. Yeah, yeah.

He's a cool guy. But we were all just kind of talking about what's to come. And I think that, yeah, it's probably a dark place in DC because a lot of civil servants are having a rough time. They're getting fired from the government. Damn. Yeah. I think he just declared remote work is no longer allowed with the government.

What do you think about that? Again, there should be a middle ground with these things. You don't have to say blanket ban and all remote work. That actually caused a bunch of clutter in DC. There was this one, I can't remember the exact station, but they have 4,000 parking spots, and 18,000 people were coming back to work on the same day because they were all supposed to come back. So there was a huge traffic jam in DC

because they're not very thought out about some of these executive orders. Should people work in office when they can? Probably, but there should be a middle ground to it. I mean, you should be able to have like a certain amount of days you work from home. I agree, I work from home and I love it personally. I love it too, I feel like there's also this

old saying, I don't know if it's a saying, but it's like if you work for eight hours at the office, you probably only spend three or four hours working and you use the other time filling in the gaps, figuring out what to do. You can actually be more efficient at home, I think there's an argument. But if you're only working at home,

you're losing a lot of crucial social interaction that you need. Which is needed, yeah. So there's a middle ground. That's why I come here a couple days a week and then work from home the other three days. Yeah, there's a middle ground. That's probably healthy.

Absolutely. So Cash Patel looks like he's going to get confirmed today, right? He got confirmed. Oh, he got confirmed? Yeah. What do you think about that? Not a fan. He seems like he's going to get confirmed today, right? Oh, he got confirmed? Yeah. What do you think about that? Not a fan.

He seems like he's really interested in weaponizing the Justice Department for Trump's end goals. And it seems like we already have the Justice Department kind of clashing with certainties. I don't know if you've been following this at all, but Eric Adams, the mayor of New York. Kind of. I saw Tucker's episode with him. all, but Eric Adams, the Mayor of New York. Kind of.

I saw Tucker's episode with him. Yeah, yeah. So Eric Adams is very corrupt, brazenly corrupt. And he's a Democrat, too. So I'll say that he's corrupt. And his charges are about to get dropped by the Trump DOJ because they cut a deal. Wow. And it's corrupt.

It's total corruption. It's totally illegal. Everything about it is illegal. And they basically said, hey, Eric Adams, if you follow our immigration policy, if you help the Trump administration out with immigration, we will drop your charges. So Trump is already weaponizing and abusing his Justice Department. And I think that's part of the reason why Biden thought... Here's the thing. Here's what I'll say. Seeing Cash Patel get confirmed today makes me understand a lot more why Biden

pardoned his entire family and pardoned all these people. Because when Trump is appointing people who openly will weaponize certain departments to target people, Cash Patel, I don't know if you've read this, but Cash Patel had a list. He had a list of people that he wanted to target if he got into power.

And it was like Liz Cheney. I think it was Jack Smith, all the people that Trump hates. And yeah, we probably shouldn't have people like that in power, especially when Trump loves loyalty and he loves to have people that will just do anything for him. But wouldn't you say the Justice Department was already weaponized? I don't think so.

I don't think it was. Because the attorney general before was Merrick Garland. And he was like the biggest, honestly, pussy ever. Like Merrick Garland, here's the thing. So are you getting towards that Trump was being targeted unfairly by the Justice Department? Almost every single, I just don't buy that for a few reasons. Well, Tulsi too.

Tulsi Gabbard, she got put on that no flight list or whatever, the watch list. Yeah, yeah, but I think there are valid reasons for all this. OK, so there's a few things. When I think of the Justice Department being weaponized, you need to have clear communications between the president and the Justice Department saying, hey, go after Donald Trump and target him. There's no clear evidence of that.

There's no evidence at all. And also, all of these indictments were brought by prosecutors and confirmed by grand juries. So before the indictment can even be brought, before Trump can even be charged in New York, for example, in the Manhattan case, a grand jury of his peers had to make sure that the indictment was fine. And then Trump and his lawyers got to choose the jury for the actual jury pool. The process is called voir dire, where you got to choose the jury for the actual the actual jury pool It's called the process of the process called of wadi air. Yeah, where you pick people for the jury pool. They picked people

They said these people are impartial or they can put their biases aside And then Trump was found guilty by a jury of his peers of Democrats of Republicans of men of women So I don't know if the Justice Department was being weaponized to target Trump when it's like a jury It's a jury pool the whole time. That's of citizens of other citizens. And yeah going back to the first point There's just no real evidence. That's interesting because I asked when Charlie Kirk came on I asked him what the biggest threat to America was he he answered the threat of Justice system being compromised basically I would argue that Charlie Kirk is pushing

the justice system to be more weaponized than it was before, because again, Merrick Garland was the AG and this dude did nothing. He didn't go after Trump at all. In fact, he slow walked all of the cases against Trump and he said, we want everything to play out very slowly essentially. We don't wanna throw Trump in jail.

We want this to be a process where he has a fair trial. So what he does is he drags it out. Trump has four years of not being in jail. He didn't go to jail once because the process was being slow. If they were truly weaponizing the Justice Department Trump would have been in jail within like a year probably, a year or two of Biden's admin. But yeah I mean they didn't end up doing that and I also just think yeah that's a good segue into Trump's recent tweet he who saves his country does not violate any law yeah that is why I just feel like that's wild to say as the president of the United States first of all he's

quoting Napoleon who's an emperor you can't't quote Napoleon with an emperor quote and say that you're above the law. I mean, you agree that he's saying he's basically above the law there, right? I could interpret it that way, yeah. Yeah, or he's at least laying the groundwork to begin to violate the law, which is kind of scary in my opinion. Right. Yeah, I mean, as I was saying earlier, the Justice Department with the whole Eric Adams

thing, it seems like they're already starting to violate the laws. And there was a court that filed a temporary restraining order against Trump, right? Not against Trump, but against this whole admin, because Trump tried to freeze government funding. He tried to freeze all the funding from the government. So a court issued a temporary restraining order. And what happened is Trump just ignored the court order. And a judge had to come out and say, dude, the president

is currently ignoring the courts. We're about to have a huge constitutional showdown. And while this is happening, Trump tweets out, the president is above the law. Wilder. Do you believe America should be funding any wars? Yeah, some of them, for sure. Ukraine, we should be funding in the sense that we

send our old military equipment. They get our old military equipment. They get to fight. They get to fend off an authoritarian threat. And we get to benefit. We get rid of our old equipment. Ukraine gets to protect their border. We get the new ally of Ukraine. Europe is strong. I think that other wars we probably shouldn't be dipping our toes in. I think that if we want to go into the Middle East again, if Trump actually wants to go boots on ground in Gaza, or take Gaza as US land, we shouldn't be doing stuff like

that. Because I see this argument all the time. It's like, why can't we help our own people, our own homeless? Why are we funding these wars? You see that too, I'm sure. Yeah, definitely. Well, you can do both. Like like I said when we're sending money to Ukraine. It's not actually money It's largely just military equipment, so we send them tanks. We send them shells have you heard this argument before yeah

Yeah, so we were sending them a lot of military equipment So it's not mutually exclusive like are we gonna send our homeless people tanks or whatever? No, like we could send the tanks over to Ukraine and still allocate money towards our homeless people But Republicans don't want to do that every time there is actually a program that helps veterans or helps homeless people Or helps any like minor any group that's in pain Republicans slash that or they shoot it down like right now They're stripping the VA the Veteran Affairs, because they want to downsize the government. But it's like, so we're not helping the people at home.

We can help both. I think that's true. But I think that people using that argument don't understand how we're actually helping other countries. Yeah, I got a lot of veterans, veteran friends. They're struggling. So if they're stripping down the VA,

that's pretty scary for them. Yeah, and they are. The VA is being stripped. And I just think that when you're moving at breakneck speeds like that, when you're trying to slash the government, you're going to have unintended consequences. You're going to do things that end up screwing people over,

and you don't realize it until after. So did you read this article? A few days ago, they fired the entire team, the entire nuclear stockpile division in some US like institution and then 24 hours later they were trying to rehire those nuclear people already because they realized holy shit we made a massive mistake these were highly specialized uniquely trained people who are supposed to be maintaining our nuclear stockpile we can't just cut that division so when

Elon Musk is going through and slashing and burning and cutting all this stuff and saying we'll fix it afterwards if there's a problem there are real problems that can arise with veterans or with the nuclear stockpile yeah yeah that's good to know you see this Fort Knox stuff with the gold yeah yeah yeah I didn't see that there's a lot of concern over gold right now yeah yeah I didn't Trump I read an article about it late last night but Trump made a post about it recently how did he's gonna go check yeah yeah I'm not too caught up to speed on that okay particular story JFK documents

hopefully those drops soon you got any predictions for what happened um a lot of conspiracies on that one I tend tend to move away from the conspiracies where it's like, where it requires a bunch of people to be keeping something secret for decades and decades and decades. When it comes to JFK or a 9-11 investigation, those conspiracies are all the same to me where it's like you really think hundreds to thousands of people are all colluding quietly and there's been no leaks about this or that. I think it'll all be of nothing burger Conspiracy theorists will find something to point out either way about it. So you're not a fan of Candace Owens done She's a big conspiracy theorist, I mean she did expose BLM, you know for what I came for like money laundering basically

Oh, yeah, you remember that one. Yeah. Yeah, I do remember that one They bought a some one of them bought a house. Well, a bunch of them bought. Yeah, probably shouldn't do that. But I will say to make to do the lived argument, defend BLM. There is different organizations. There is this BLM parent organization, which is super corrupt. It's like the people that bought the house.

They funneled all these donations. But there's also all these grassroots movements across the United States I'm pretty sure BLM was one of the largest grassroots protest movements which means that there were like 1500 protests that were all decentralized they had nothing to do with the parent organization that was corrupt so I will say that corruption which exists it's real I'm not gonna say it's not it shouldn't take away from the fact that they were actually protest about systemic violence. I can see that.

Do you think, can I ask you a question? Do you think that systemic racism is real, in a sense that BLM makes the argument? Like people are racist towards black people? I guess the definition of systemic racism would be that, well here's the thing, just to back up. A lot of people think that systemic racism means that either black people are just put down every single day, black people are pushed

aside, but it's just, my definition of systemic racism is that there were racist laws on the books in the 60s and way before that too. And there are still downstream remnants of those laws. Would you say that that's something that- Yeah, so I'm not familiar with those laws, so I can't speak on that. But I would say racism exists. People were racist to me growing up.

But here's the thing, there's the victim card from there. You can say people were racist to you and then play victim. But instead, you can choose to just ignore it and move on. Yeah, well, I think that, so to point out some of the specific laws, in the 60s, there were redlining laws that said that black people couldn't take out loans to buy houses in certain areas. So only white people could take out these loans. Therefore, white people were getting houses disproportionately compared to black people. And there are downstream effects like decades later. This was in the 60s. My grandparents were alive. And you could see how if the white family is allowed to buy a house, build that generational wealth, and then continue to build on top of that,

build on top of that, then black Americans are left behind. And when people say like, hey, you can't play victim or you gotta pull yourself up by the bootstraps, can you see how it's like, sometimes it's outside of your control, outside of your circumstances. In that situation, yeah, if they can't even buy a house, that sucks, I mean. Yeah, or they couldn't buy a house 60 years ago

and now there's downstream effects. Or, can you understand how the system, the institutions can screw over black people, even if there's not personal racism involved? So I'm not even talking about a KKK member with a hood. Do you think that the institutions can make black people's lives harder? I think so, yeah.

They have the power to control where the money goes. So in a sense, they can control how many people get this amount of money, right? Yeah, yeah. That, and there's also just statistics like black and white Americans smoke weed at roughly the same rate. Like, we smoke weed at roughly the same rate. But black Americans are arrested and charged at a four times higher rates. And it's because it's not because of any laws on the books.

There are no racist laws, but it's because at an individual level, some judges or some cops may be more inclined to pull over and arrest. Yeah. I mean, that's, I hear that one all the time. When black people get pulled over, they're going to get arrested. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I guess my broad definition of systemic racism is just the cyclical pattern

over the years of how people are kind of sucked in to the system. So for example, like the war on drugs disproportionately affected black Americans. They've literally put drugs in majority black neighborhoods and that creates a fatherless household. Right. So then that kid has no role model growing up and they grow up into the same sort of system and they get arrested for pot with the judges that we were just talking about. And then there's like you can see how the system sort of creates this cycle where it makes black people's lives harder not based on anything they did just based on the color of their skin. I have heard that theory where the government planted drugs in those neighborhoods. They did.

You believe that? Oh yeah, it's not even a theory. Like the government put crack in black people's neighborhoods. Wow. Was that the CIA? I don't know if it was the CIA in particular. It might have been. Damn.

So they really planned this out for a while. This is like a long term plan. It's not even that. I don't even think it was planned out. It's just the black Americans have always gotten the short end of the stick like even when have you heard the monopoly analogy? No, can I explain it to you? Yeah, so there's an analogy. I'm at you've played monopoly. Yeah, all right classic Imagine you're playing monopoly and there's two separate teams. There's the a team and the B team now the a team is able to number one spend 400 rounds building up wealth,

acquiring properties, or wait, let me restart. There's an A team and there's a B team. The A team is able to spend 250 rounds building up wealth, acquiring property, building wealth for generations with all of these different houses and businesses. And then, Team B is forced to play for Team A. And this is equal to white Americans and black Americans. It's like, white Americans brought over

black Americans on ships and they enslaved them. So imagine you're playing Monopoly and the second team has to work for the first team to help build wealth for years and years and years. And then about 200 years into the game the white team says okay the black team is allowed to play now you're allowed to have cards on the board you're allowed to play well the black team is inherently going to be behind right they're going to be behind because they don't have the generational wealth they don't have the property that the white

team has in fact they've spent the past few years building wealth for the white team. So then they're kind of released, and they're saying, like, that's like, hey, the playing field's supposed to be even now, but it's not gonna be even if the white team had 200 years head start. I kind of explained it in a botched way, but you get what I'm saying.

No, I get it. That's a good comparison. Yeah, if you're playing Monopoly and you have a few hundred year head start, then how are the teams supposed to be equal at the end? You can expect there to be an equal playing field right because you're going to own all the properties black people have to rent from you right yeah the black people have to rent from you and the big key point there is that the black people black americans were building wealth on behalf of white americans for for generations so then the idea that black americans can come and

just like pull themselves up by their bootstraps, just because in the 60s, things were made equal. Things weren't made equal until the 60s. So that's why I said there's 250 rounds, because 250 years since. You've definitely opened my eyes. I did not believe in systemic racism before this. Interesting.

Yeah, now you've definitely opened my eyes. Thank you. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm glad I could. That's the thing with both sides. A lot of it's definitions. So when I say systemic racism, you think, like, are there people being mean to black people? Of course, no, but it's deeper than that. It's, are there systems at play in the laws on the books that are hurting black people? There

aren't any laws, but there are remnants of laws. Same same with DEI like my DEI analogy doesn't have to be hey let's just hire more black people just to hire more black people it's like can there be a qualified diverse yeah that makes sense Adam it's been a fun combo man where can people find you youtube.com Adam Mockler Adam Mockler on YouTube you can go Adam Mockler on Instagram on Twitter on tick-tock it's Adam Mockler everywhere M-O-C-K-L-E-R. Thank you for having me on. Absolutely, check them out guys.

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