FULL SEND PODCAST - Ben Shapiro | Ep. 141

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

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All right. We got an amazing guest. Second time he's been on the full send podcast. Me and Stein here, both huge fans of you. Been fans for a while. So it's great to have you back. Thanks so much. How's the last few weeks been for you, busy? I'm so tired. Yeah, I've been out on the trail with a bunch of candidates. So went to Wisconsin with Eric Covdy, went to Nevada with Sam Brown, Ohio with Bernie Moreno, went to Pennsylvania with Dave McCormick, went to New York with Trump. So it's been a lot. How was it in New York with Trump? That was fun. I mean, it wasn't a fun day. Obviously, it was October 7th, and we were paying tribute to the people who had fallen, and I brought a hostage family to meet him. But he's always a kick. I mean, President Trump is a character, as everybody has seen. I mean, if nothing else, the guy is the master of memes. I mean, more memes have emerged from this election cycle than will ever emerge for the rest of time. Like, the cornucopia has been uncorked, and now you just have a wealth of memes for the rest of human histories. What do you think about the garbage truck to roll last day? It's great. I mean, it's hilarious. And what was great about it is that he went on stage and then explained it, right? And the explanation was hysterical. I mean, he gets up there and he's

talking about how, like, oh my God, look how high the step is. Am I going to be able to get up there? Oh, shit. He's a funny dude. I mean, that's the secret sauce for Trump is that he's always been a stand-up comedian. And that hasn't stopped anywhere along the line. But wouldn't just think about the images from this campaign? It's crazy. The mugshot to the assassination photo, to McDonald's, to him in a garbage truck. Like, what the? I imagine people looking back in like 50 years? What they're going to think of this election? You know, all that it underscores for me is something I said to a foreign leader actually at one point is right after the the Biden Trump debate before Biden dropped out. And the person was like in despair about, oh my God,

look at that debate. It was so terrible. I said, listen, let me explain how awesome America is, how much we kick ass. Here's how awesome we are. We can run two 80 year olds against each other, whichever one golfs better, we'll make the president. Then he'll do a speech at the RNC introduced by Hulk Colgan. He'll jab her for 93 minutes. No one else down the fuck is going on and you'll love it. You'll love it because we're America bitch. Like that's it. America's great. Like that's a great country. We're powerful. We're strong. Our institutions

are fine. Like, you know, for all of the kind of panic that's out there, the reality is that this country still is just amazing. It's an amazing country. All right, boys, before we get into the podcast, if you guys have not tried the Price Picks app, you've got to download it and try it out. Prize Pix has a sweet deal right now.

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Let's get into the pod. Yeah, I want to go back real quick to Madison Square Garden. the Tony Hinchcliff stuff's everywhere. Yeah. So I just want to get your opinion on that. I mean, he's a roast comedian, and he told the rose joke. So don't hit the rose comedian for telling a rose joke. Hit the guy who booked him.

Whoever's at the RNC and is like, you know who we need to open. The guy who is telling like super, super edgy jokes at the Tom Brady rose. Like, that's the one. I mean, come on. Someone's getting fired on the inside. I mean, somebody should be. I mean, that's like, politics 101 is don't insult ethnic groups in your closing event. Like that that's not Trump's fault.

I mean, if you think that Trump is micromanaging his campaign. Trump has, yeah, he is no clue. Well, do you think Tony was vetted at all? No. No. I mean, no one in the back room was like, this joke is too much, tell Tony to cut it. Like, he was, I assume that Tony wasn't going to submit his material to be cut like that. First of all, he's a comedian, he's a talent.

A lot of those folks are not really fond of people cutting their jokes. So my guess he probably said, listen, here's my routine. You know, loaded in the teleprompter, we're good. Yeah. And that was kind of it. So, yeah, again, I think he's hysterical. I think Tony Hinchcliff generally is really funny. The stuff that he's been doing with the Biden-Trump fake personality.

Oh, my God. It's the Shane Gillis stuff. It's so funny. But, you know, like that was, that's a weird move. It's a weird move. It's like strippers at a funeral. Like, I'm not sure exactly what's happening. Yeah, the joke just bombed.

It just was not the right setting. No. And you can tell the audience was awkward about it. It wasn't like the audience was roaring at these jokes. Like, the audience said, oh, my God, he made a Puerto Rico joke. Just what I've been waiting. The audience is like, I don't think I should be laughing at this, at this time. Do you think something like that has a big enough impact?

No. I don't think anybody's changing their vote based on that. And I also don't think, actually, that the Biden-Trump supporters are garbage thing has a big impact except on Republican turnout. So Trump is really, like no swing voter is going, man, I just don't know who to vote for. But now that Biden called Trump supporters garbage, I'm going to pull the leader for Trump. Like that, that's not how that works. What it really is is a bunch of low propensity dudes who are like, should I go to the polls today? Should I not go to the polls?

I kind of like Trump. But also, like, it's kind of a slap. Do I really want to get up and, like, go to the polls today? Like, that's kind of a bitch. You know what? He just called me. He called me garbage. Fine.

You know what? F it. I'm going. I'm going. Like, I think that drives out votes for Trump. Does that not surprise you, though, how, like, the Tony thing was a big deal. And he caught a lot of heat. And then everyone thinks, like, this is this monster deal.

And then Biden's dumb enough to come back and say something like that to bail him out. I have a theory of this election cycle, which is that God totally wants Trump to win. And Trump is like, hold on a minute, God. I think that there's a lot of that happening where it's like, you know, God is like, I will turn your head at the last minute right here, so you're just going, you don't get shot in the head. And Trump's like, well, what if I go to the Ironcy and talk for like 93 minutes? And then there's like another assassination time. God's like, I'm going to make sure that you don't get shot. I'm like, what if I have Tony Hinchcliffe open for me? And of course, you know, the Tony Hinchcliffe thing is in Trump's fault. But to pretend that either of these campaigns is being run like clockwork is ridiculous. I mean, that's obviously not true. All right guys, this is the final time. You're going to hear me say this because the election is tomorrow. What does that mean? You guys got to get up off your f*** tomorrow and go vote. Don't be lazy. I don't care how long the line is. Do not make excuses.

Get your whole group, get your friends, your family, anybody in your outer circle. And you guys got to take everybody to vote. Seriously, guys, this is our last chance. You guys have heard me say it before. I know a lot of you guys agree. But I think this is the most important election in U.S. history. There's so much. much weird shit going on right now men trying to play in women's sports there's war starting up all over the world now north korea just put troops in russia the whole world not just the u.s is turning into a complete shit show it's actually really scary and that's the reason why we're doing this with sendthevote dot com if you guys are not registered to vote or you need help voting any information about voting go to

sendthevote dot com it has all the info you need or you can text nelph to 33022 and that'll send you all that information as well. But guys, tomorrow's the election. Get the fuck up off your and go vote. Don't be a lazy piece of shit. If you've just been complaining about this, about your support for someone, it's not going to do anything. The only thing that actually matters is if you get up and vote, and that's why we'll send the vote. It's going to make sure your vote is counted. So go to send the vote.com. Like I said, if you guys need any help with voting and has everything you need, the election is tomorrow. This is our last chance. Is there, you think there's any beef actually between Biden and Harris? Oh yeah. He hates her.

He absolutely hates her. Now, I don't think that he's, like, attempting to undermine it purposely. I'm not sure that he has the level of intention necessary to do anything right now. But he clearly despises her. I mean, he picked her because she was foisted upon him during BLM in 2020. And then Jill despises her. Like, Jill hates her. Really?

This has been well reported. Yeah. I mean, she cannot stand her because. How do you know that? Yeah, yeah. I think that was... That's interesting. Which book was this?

This was, there's a book by Charlie Spearing, where he talked specifically about how Jill does not get along with Kamala, specifically because Jill was angry that, you remember that first Democratic primary debate, Kamala labeled Joe racist, right? She said, if it were people, for people like you, I'd never would have been able to go to an integrated school, right? And that was like the opener, right? And so Jill since then, I think rightly so, has thought, this woman's terrible. Like, I don't want her any. And then she became the vice president, and she still doesn't like her. And so for Joe, Joe's entire case was Kamala is super weak. What's your proof that she's going to run well ahead of me in this election cycle? And so, you know, the incentive structure is

weirdly set up for Joe to be kind of happy if she loses. Like if she loses, then Joe Biden goes down as the guy who is unfairly deposed in favor of a candidate who then lost to Donald Trump. If she wins, then he's just a transitional president who is there for a few years as a placeholder for Kamala Harris. So if you're Joe Biden and you want to be remembered as a transformational, tragic figure, you kind of want her to lose a little bit. Damn, that's interesting. This is a total, just, uh, we're going to switch real quick. But I have to, I have to talk to you about, bro. The Jubilee video, you didn't want to talk about the genitalia, right? Well, I mean, I was, I mean, why would I, I mean, no, no.

That was crazy. No circumstances. Whoa. That was the thing I did not want to even have. That's not an image I wanted. That's not, no, none of that, none of that actually. That was probably the most viral clip I've seen in a long time. Like all over TikTok.

And it was, it was, you know, a psychotic break. I mean, the, you know, this person got up and was not making an argument. There was no argument there. And so she started, you know, talking. and I started trying to interject to try and have a conversation, and she was growling and moving the chair around and just yelling. At a certain point, I was like, you know what, I got, I can't interject. There's nothing I can do to interrupt this stream of consciousness nonsense.

Well, it's kind of shocking to me is that obviously the format there is that people can raise the red flag and cut this thing short. It's a pretty good setup. Right, but because of the intersectional nature of the thing, this was the thing that kind of shocked me about the Jubilee video is people who were making truly awful arguments. If they had intersectional qualities, people would let them go for a long time. And people who are making, you know, half decent arguments, very often, like,

the flags would come out right away. And so I was kind of shocked by that, like the kind of informal intersectional structure of the entire event. Like, this person, well, because she's a trans man, that means we're just going to let her go for like six minutes, just ranting and raving nonsensically. I mean, so much so that that segment finished, I'll be honest, I haven't actually watched the whole thing through because I experienced it in real time. After that finished, that had run down the clock entirely on the abortion debate, right? We'd done 20 minutes on abortion. Other people were like, I still want to comment on, like, I still wanted to do the abortion debate. And so the producers said to me, like, can we put some more minutes on the clock?

I was like, I feel like that would be fair to put some more minutes on the clock for all these other people if they want to comment on it, because that had nothing to do with the topic. That was an emotional rant. And I really didn't have anything to respond to it. I mean, what am I supposed to respond to somebody who's clearly having an emotional meltdown in front of me? So it's you versus 25 people, right? Yeah, so you're sitting in the middle circle. It was like 20. It was actually closer to 30, I think. They may have called it 25, but I think there were actually 29 sitting in this in the circle um and uh and the way the format works is that they sort of race they they race to the chair sort of which is always amusing uh and whoever gets

their first gets to sit there and debate until a majority of the people in the circle raise a red flag and say it's time to switch that person out after a certain point there were people who obviously were slower to get to the chair who want to talk so i sort of started choreographing the thing where i'd be like okay you know what this person hasn't talked yet you've talked already I want to be fair to everybody in the circle You know just guys like I promise I'll get to you Like let this person run up and do it Do you think anyone kind of gave you a run for your money

I wouldn't say run for my money But some people made some interesting arguments That I thought were sort of out of left field There was the dude who tried to compare the Electoral College to DEI I thought that was a weird strained argument But I could kind of see That's your boy, no? Uh, Dean, I know him

Maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah I mean, he's fine, he's like best friends with that kid I mean, I don't know about best friends I mean, it's Mark I. I mean, obviously it has my cue points. I thought that that was a real stretch of an argument, but it was an interesting one I hadn't heard before. And I was get kind of interested when I hear an argument that I haven't heard that that's always kind of interesting to me. So I thought that that was the argument that I heard that I was most kind of taken by because, again, I do this professionally, which means that I just spend all day reading arguments on both sides of every issue. And, you know, I could kind of, through a glass darkly see kind of what he was getting at. But it was, at least it made me think. At least it made me like sit there and go, okay, is that true? Is that not like that that i thought that's impressive if someone could do that to you yeah i mean you hit me with something completely out of left field and you know that's okay at least at least makes me pause and consider the argument so you would you agree you were 25 and no i mean i i didn't see anybody defeat any of the arguments that i was making so you know the way that i view these things

is not about defeating me personally right when you go into these situations the hardest thing to do is just stay emotionally you know kind of on even keel throughout this sort of stuff i mean you're being berated by some giant person who's yelling at you in your face and and you have to just be like, okay, you know, that's life. Or when I was in Oxford and there are people who are literally arguing the genocide of Jews is okay. And you're like, okay, well, I guess I just have to, can I sit here and take it? Like, that's the hard part.

And when I talk to people about what I do for a living, everybody assumes the hard part of the job is the reading and the organization and can you get on camera and talk for 45 minutes straight. How do you do that every day? I mean, that's what I do for a living. That's not the hard part. I'd say 80% of the effort I expend in life is not saying things, is not responding to things.

It's not just kind of like, I really want to clock this person, but like, don't. Don't do it. Just like just withhold. Just don't do it. When that trans person is yelling at me, I mean, they're like, it was six minutes long. So for me, six minutes a long time, like a long time. I probably had 10 snarky responses that I could have given in that moment. And I made the active decision that that's not what I want to, you know, purvey on the air. That's not, that's not what I want. I don't want to be the person who's like snarking about somebody who's clearly having a meltdown. It's not sympathetic. It's not empathetic. It's just not a good thing to do. Yeah. Even though that would make the clips go crazier and stuff. I feel like a lot of other people

do that now, right? You could tell they're just kind of looking for clips. There have been situations like this in the past that never make the camera. So I'd say it must have been five, six years ago. I did a speech at University of British Columbia up in Vancouver. And there was a trans person who got up and started making the argument. And the person started talking about, it was a male to female, about his personal experiences. And I said, listen, I really don't want to talk about that because I'm inevitably going to have to critique your personal experiences. And I don't think that that's good. And he insisted on doing this. He just insisted on going back to it, saying, you know, my parents say that I'm female. And eventually, after a few minutes, I said, look,

I really didn't want to do this. You brought up. You wouldn't stop talking about it. The reason your parents are saying that is because they're sympathetic to you as a person. They don't actually believe you're a male, but they're trying to be nice to you. And this person broke down in tears and literally broke down in tears and went away crying. And, you know, obviously that's a clip that goes superviolet. You've never seen that clip. Why did you never see that clip? Because I went to the camera people at the event and the organizers of the event, I told them to cut it from the tape because it's bad for the mental health of the person. And then I called up the person, somebody who knew that person. We knew, one of the organizers knew who it was. And I said,

I want you to check in on that person tonight and then invite them to breakfast with me tomorrow morning so I can make sure they're okay. Did they come? Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. How the breakfast go? Yeah. I was fine. I said, like, I said, listen, I cut that from the tape. I want to make sure you're okay. Like, you know, I don't have to agree with your assessment of yourself. I don't have to agree with what you believe about yourself, but you're a human being. I want to make sure you're okay and what how was their reaction i think they appreciated it wow how long ago is that five six years ago maybe what is like in your opinion what's the whole answer to this like i think you think it's like i mean we all kind of think it's some sort of mental i mean i think

there's no there's no answer to so there's two questions one is for people who legitimately have gender dysphoria which is a minute percentage of the population unfortunately there's no amazing answer to it that's a real minute percentage of transgender people yes i i think that i think I think a huge percentage of transgender people are now part of a social contagion. I mean, that's why you've seen this radically increase in identification. You're saying a large percentage of transgender don't have gender dysphoria. Yes. I mean, I mean, I think most, I think a lot of people who are transgender will say they don't have

gender dysphoria. Right. Especially as the current modern definition of gender dysphoria goes, which says, including depression, which, again, is a very weird way to define a mental disorder. If I think I'm Napoleon, I walk around all day thinking I'm Napoleon, I'm actually pretty happy about being Napoleon. Apparently, according to the DSM-5, I don't have a mental disorder. That's a very weird way of describing a mental illness.

To me, I think that if you walk around saying you're Napoleon all day and believing that, whether you're enjoying being Napoleon or not, something's wrong. But you know, you cannot say that the, if there is a condition known as gendered is for you, and that condition has been present throughout time, which it has. I mean, there's been a vanishingly small percentage of human beings across all of human history who have had problems believing that they are, they feel more like a member of the opposite sex. but that number was really, really, really low. And now you have, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20% of given populations

who are saying that they're gender dysphoric, that's called the social contagion. And especially when you see a complete flip in the sex to which it applies. So it used to apply mostly to young men who believe they were women, like teenagers. And then there was a complete flip, and now it's a bunch of young girls who think they're boys. And so that's happened over the course of the last 5, 10 years. You're seeing like 100x increase in trans identification in areas of the wild.

that that doesn't wash that doesn't wash that doesn't wash you've never seen anything like that what condition other than sort of like an actual viral contagion what mental health condition have you seen that has increased so starkly without any sort of social contagion being a part of it it doesn't work that way is there any is there any uh uh data on why that's why it continues to grow at that speed i mean i think that there is so abigail schreyer wrote a great book called irreversible damage about this which was then banned from amazon um Abigail has has gone into a lot of research on this sort of stuff. And her basic premise is that when you propagandized to a bunch of 12, 13-year-old

girls who are going through puberty and who are feeling uncomfortable in their own bodies and who are feeling, you know, like they, and so girls are, I mean, I have three younger sisters, I have a wife, I have two daughters, like girls get uncomfortable, puberty is not a comfortable time for girls. And so when they start going through that and they feel awkward and chubby and they feel their hormones are starting to go a little bit crazy. and they feel uncomfortable. And then they're told, the reason you feel all that

is not because this is sort of the natural way that you grow into physical maturity. The reason that you're feeling that is probably because you might be a boy. And then what happens, you go to a gender clinic and without pretty much any sort of screening procedure, they shoot you up with testosterone. What testosterone does is, it makes you more aggressive

and makes you more confident. And so girls will do that, and they'll feel more aggressive and more confident temporarily. And they'll think, oh, it's true, I am a boy, right? Because I feel better now. I feel better having the shots of testosterone. That's a hormonal thing. You know, that's not because you actually were a boy. At no point were you a boy. And also,

I think that because parenting has become so crappy and parents are totally unwilling to simply civilize their children, then I think that you end up with parents who treat their kids as though it's up to the kids to make these decisions. It is not up to the kids to make very important life decisions. I have four children. They don't make any important life decisions, nor should they. Their kids, they're stupid. Kids are innocent and they are wonderful and they are not good and they're not smart, right? And then it's your job to make them good and smart, right? That's your job as a parent. And so, I've told this story before. I have four. It goes, girl, boy, girl, boy. So when my oldest girl was maybe three, and the second one, the boy, when he was maybe one.

So when you're one, his sister had some shiny, like, princess shoes. And he was going around, he, like, found the shiny princess shoes. And he put them on because they're shiny. And he was walking around. And I said, no, those are not for you. Those are girl shoes. And he, like, did it again. And I said, those are not for you. Those are girl shoes. And he was kind of whining about it. I said, just hold up. So I drove him over as like the country Western store and I bought him a pair of like cowboy boots. And he put on the cowboy boys. He wore him for three years. Okay, now, is that sexist that I did that? Or is that me teaching him that actually, yes, there are differences between boys and girls. And you weren't really

interested in the femininity of the shoes because you're a girl. You just like cool shoes. You like cool shiny things. And now these are other cool shoes that you can wear. Like there are ways to be a boy and there are ways to be a girl and they are distinct. And that's not a bad thing. That's a very good thing. And a society that pretends that you're supposed to be raising boys as though gender is not supposed to be reinforced by stereotypical assumptions. That's a society doomed for failure. Because you've got to teach boys to be men. And that does come along with some accoutrements.

Like, you know, wearing pants and not dresses. Like, I think it is good to teach boys that they ought to wear boy clothes. I don't think that that is a bad... The fact that this sort of stuff has become arguable, nay, bigoted in modern society, that, oh my God, I have a five-year-old boy, and you won't let him wear a dress. Yeah, no shit, I won't let him wear a dress, because he's a boy. And it's good for him to learn that boys and girls dress differently.

that is a good thing for him to know i know so what do you think it is is it like are they just crazy or is there some hidden agenda like you said with the gender clinics and all that like that's some weird shit is it there's it is it is it's like super woke or is it some secret agenda that they're trying to fuck up our youth well i mean i do think for some people there's that agenda to fuck up the youth but i also think that there's something else going on and there's a great book by a philosopher called carl truman out of i think he's a university of utah at this point And his basic premise is called the creation of the modern self, I believe. It's a great book.

He basically argues that the traditional way that human beings define themselves was in interaction with the rest of the world. The way that you defined yourself as a human being is how you interact with the institutions around you. So you're a member of your family. You define yourself as a dad. You define yourself as a member of your church community. You define yourself as a member of your bro-pot. Whatever it is. You define yourself in relation to all these other people.

and to duties, right? There are things you are supposed to do in the world. These are roles you're supposed to fulfill. And then during the romantic era, there became this idea that basically what you are is not the things that you do. It's not the conscious decisions that you make. It's the feelings that you have on the inside. That's what defines you. And anything that's an imposition on the feelings that you have on the inside is a denial of your authenticity. And so that sort of idea has permeated Western society. That second idea now sounds more natural, I think, to most people than the first idea. The idea that like, if I ask people who, if I ask people who who they are like, well, I'm a person who feels, and here's how I feel about things,

and here's what I feel about myself. Whereas if you ask a person who's religious, they'll say, usually if you ask a Christian, they'll say, well, I'm a Christian. It's the first thing I say, I'm a Christian, go to church, I'm a dad, got kids. And religious Jews, same sort of thing. It's not how I feel on the inside. But if you ask young people today what they are, it's how they feel. And so if you believe that all you are is a floating set of feelings, this sort of gnaustic idea that you're not a physical body, that is integrated with a soul, but you are actually just like a freely wandering soul that has like a meat suit on and like a cartesian duality and that you are and that any imposition on you is a denial of yourself

that's how you get to this right that's why one of the question like you'll hear it from every trans person that I talk to they'll always say why are you denying my existence and every time I'm not denying your existence as a person I'm denying that you maintain about yourself is true but you see for that person what they're saying to their mind is true because what they are is how they define themselves, right? How they feel about themselves. If I deny that, I'm denying what they are as a human. What I'm saying is what you feel is not who you are. Who you are has many characteristics. How you feel is one of those things, but it's certainly not the majority of the things that make you. I feel tons of things all the time. That's not what makes me me. What makes

me me is the things that I do in the world, the person that I am to my family. Right. And that's been a radical shift in the nature of how we perceive ourselves in Western society. I think this is sort of the final outgrowth of that. Has anyone ever topped the OG you getting pressed? The trans. Was it Zoe her name was? Oh, Zoe Turr? Has anyone ever taught that yet or no? Is that still the biggest...

What did she do? The biggest trans press of all time. So he was a guy who had been a helicopter pilot and transitioned into a trans woman. He was the name to Zoe Turr. And this is a pretty famous clip from CNN Headline News, I believe, 2014. Dr. Drew was hosting. And so this is a funny story, actually. So we were in the green room and they said, do you want to come to debate a bunch of issues,

including the trans issue? Okay. And so in the green room, I'm there. It's like me versus the entire room. It's like me and four other people, I think, are on the panel. How long ago is that, sorry to interrupt. This is now eight years, well, 10 years ago, maybe. That's crazy.

Yeah, I remember that clip. I think it's 2014. And so the producer comes over, and I should have known things. We're going to go, hey, wire. Because the guy's like, listen, I used to produce for Jerry Springer. At this point, I should have been like, oh, God. But he's like, I want you to, I'm going to sit you right next to Zoe, and you're going to talk, say whatever you want. He's like, whatever you want to say, just say it.

Don't hold back. He's a good producer. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, well, you know, that's my job. That's what I'm here for. Okay. And so this is when I believe the subject was Caitlin Jenner. And so everybody in the world is like,

Caitlin Jenner is the bravest, most wonderful, most important, courageous person on it. And so the- Now she's kind of brave, though. She's sticking up in the trans community for Trump and stuff. Yeah, it's a lot of course. Where did she win? So I think ESPN gave Caitlin Jenner. the courage award. Yeah. Like, not because Caitlin Jenner had, you know, like, won a medal

serving the country or something, but because Caitlin Jenner decided that Bruce was a chick. And so the entire conversation was like, on a scale of one to Normandy, how brave is Caitlin Jenner? People are like way better than Normandy. Like, oh my God, like no one has ever been braver. Like, when you think of personal sacrifice, it's like Jesus and then Caitlin Jenner, like right up here. And that was like the entire conversation. They finally came to me. I said, I don't see what's courageous about that. There's a person saying what they feel internally and then we're all supposed to sort of bow to that but that that you know somebody declaring that they're gendered dysphoric doesn't seem particularly courageous to me right is

storming the beaches in normandy did you watch bruce when uh he was competing uh he was competing uh he was back in the day yeah i mean when he was a great athlete yeah yeah yeah of course were you were you upset when he decided to make the time so i was only born 84 he was really competing in late 70s early 80s yeah so i seen tape of him um i was i like katelyn jennar though we play golf with her. Oh, that's really funny. She's good. She's a beauty, Caitlin. Well, because Bruce Jenner is a great athlete. So changing the name to Caitlin doesn't make him not a great athlete. She did try to play from the Reds, though. That really? Yeah, we called her out. We said get back to the Reds. Yeah, correct. Exactly. Yeah. Yes. And she's a nasty. Olympic athlete golfer.

That is not shocking at all. You know, it turns out that Caitlin and Bruce exactly the same person, just a different name. I know crazy. Crazy to say that. I know Bruce disappeared and we never know where Bruce went, but it turns out that Bruce and Caitlin, I know, same human. Whoa, whoa, same physical capacity with just a little vestrogen. Whoa. I mean, she still has her balls, though, if she's coming out to, like, support Trump, even though, like, the whole Kardashian clan is probably super left. I mean, I wasn't going to comment on, like, what, what appendages. Like, I'm just saying, like, I respect her for, like, coming out and still being. I mean, listen, I think a lot of what Caitlin is saying is fine. And you'll notice that I characterize Caitlin as a

he because people get to change their names. They don't get to. to they don't get to choose their genders but in any case the you know so anyway this is the whole conversation and then at some point i'm talking about gender dysphoria i make this comment and i'm saying gender dysphoria is a condition that doesn't make you heroic anymore than having depression makes you heroic like these these are you know mental conditions and okay so this is a thing that's not heroism and so he turns to me and says little boy you don't know what you're talking about little boy you know and and so and i said well i mean i i do know that every single cell in Caitlin Jenner's body, with the ironic exception of some of his sperm cells, has a Y

chromosome in it. Like, I know that for a fact. That's a reality. And Zoe Turner's like, well, you don't know anything about genetics, little boy. And I was like, well, what are your chromosomes, sir? And at this point, Zoe Turner, like, reaches across and grabs me by the back of the neck on live TV and goes, you stop talking like that, or I'm going to, or I'm going to send you, I'm going to send you home to an ambulance. I'm going to send you home in an ambulance. I remember the specific wording just because I remember the first thing

that popped in my mind is that makes no sense. You don't go home in an ambulance. But in any case. And Zoe, just to clarify, Zoe was a guy, right? Yes. Do you think you could have taken her?

Like in a fight? Yeah. No, she's fucking big. Zoe's like, I think he's had some ex-military background or ex-police. I can't remember. It was a helicopter pilot. And Zoe's like, I'm going to hulking.

And it's like, I'm not going to the parking lot to fight you? No. I mean, also, I go to jail. Like, if I, that's what I'm saying. What's the ruling there? I lose, I lose. Like, let's say Zoe Turr kicks my ass.

That's terrible just in and of itself. And let's say that I kick Zoe Turr's ass. I go to jail because I just beat up a trans person. So, like, that's not, that's not going to work out well. Yeah. Also, I'm not the one, like, I don't feel like the adjudication of masculinity is whether you can win a physical fight. Like, I think that's a stupid way of adjudicating masculinity. I think the best way to adjudicate masculinity is how many good children you raise in a solid, stable home

and make the world a better place while defending your family and creating things. Like, I think that the adjudication of masculinity by how many people you can punch is a really dumb way to do masculinity. It turns out we have guns now. So if people really want to get in that kind of fight, I can hire security and I win. You lose. Like, I don't have to physically pummel somebody in order to prove that I'm a dude. I have a wife. I have four beautiful kids.

I make a wonderful living. I do things that I think are productive in the world. I try to help people in my community. I give a lot of charity. That's a better adjudication of masculinity than taking off your shirt, strutting around with a cigar and pretending that you're doing something for the world because you can rent a lot of a guy. Is that an Andrew Tate shot? That was. Yeah.

You don't like that? I wasn't subtle. I think you're schmuck. You don't like them at all? I think that Tate is, what I've always said about Tate, is that because feminism is a target-rich environment, he hits that target a lot, and I agree with a lot of the critiques. And I think he's like a terrible doctor. He's really good at diagnosis and he's horrible at prescription. Everything that he recommends for guys is pretty much the opposite of what they should be doing.

At least, I wouldn't say everything, half. He says some good shit, and then he says some crazy shit. This is his game. His game is he'll say one thing that is perfectly obvious. obvious, and then he'll say one thing that is bat-shut lunacy. And then when you attack the bat-shut lunacy, he'll say, are you saying that that's not the purposefully obvious? Like, no, I'm saying that, like, what you just said is bat-shut-luny. So he'll say things like, you know, that means that men should, like, work out and strive hard. Like, agree. Totally agree.

And then he'll say things like, and you should be judged by how many women you impregnate. It's like, no, no, no, that's stupid. That's bad. That's bad for society. That's stupid and and unnecessary. And I'm getting kind of tired of the game where everyone is a political candidate. By this, I mean, when you're voting for a political candidate, it's a package deal. You vote for the person and vote against the person. It's a package deal. When it comes to the people that you choose to consume, it's not a package deal. It turns out that to get the good stuff from Andrew Tate, I don't have to ingest all the trash that Andrew Tate puts out, including his scam university. I don't have to do any of that. I don't have to listen to a guy who

made his money in cam girls and then proclaims his virtue at the same exact time. Have you ever debated him? No, I mean, I did a 20-minute video on on, you know, breaking down his, his Tate University and all of that kind of stuff. So, I mean, listen. That'd be a good, that'd be an entertainment. It'd be some great internet. Would you ever do that? I mean, listen, I'd be happy to do that.

What if we help set it up? I mean, that's fine. I mean, but I know what it'll turn into. It wouldn't be a debate. It would be me critiquing his specific ideas and then him just saying that I'm not man enough to take off my shirt and how many women have I impregnated and can I fight people and he can kick my ass. I'm sure I can't kick my ass.

I mean, like, so the fuck what? like okay a lot of people can kick my ass as it turns out not that big all right but your ideas are still shit that'd be some good internet like you said that it would be amazing internet that's great yeah on that transgender subject i've seen the clip but i don't know if you've seen it did she actually really say that we should give transgender surgeries to prison inmates uh yes there was no other context before that no no that's part so she what she did it was on it was on a i believe is a questionnaire. So the questionnaire was, should inmates of prisons in California be given transgender health care, which means taxpayer-funded surgeries? And she checked yes on it. It was like an

ACLU questionnaire. That's just so crazy that a presidential candidate is like running on that. Honestly, this is part of the thing that the Democrats are benefiting from. There have been studies done on this. Like that people like, you'll mention what the Democrats actually say. And people be like, no, but really, yeah. And like, no, that's bullshit. No way. No. Like, that's a thing so if you say like they're for abortion all the way till point of birth people like that's not true it is like no but but it is like no that's too crazy that's not true unfortunately it is what is your overall opinion just says of kamala man she's a completely empty suit she's a completely empty suit there is nothing there and you can see at any time anybody asks her a follow-up question

there is nothing there she's got one layer of of slogan and then you scratch beneath the surface and it's just vacuum she's absolutely vacuous i don't think she's smart I don't think she's talented. I think that she is good at reading off a teleprompter in short spurts. I think the more you see her, the less you like her, which is what the American public have been experiencing every time they're reintroduced to her. So you get like Kamala Harris 1.0, and it's like, fresh-faced senator out of California, hard-charging progressive.

And within five minutes, her person. I'm like, oh, my God, she's insufferable. I can't. And then it's like, here she is, running for president in 2019. And she's fresh, and she's awesome, and she's joyful, and she's intersectional. And she's doing great in the polls. And then she blows up, and she doesn't even make it to California. And she's out.

And then they pick her up off the scrap, even they make her VP. And like, third look at Kamala. She's probably amazing this time. She's going to be so exciting and intersectional and she knows things and she's whipsmart. And then she's the least popular vice president. She was a fucking ghost for the last four years. Yeah, because what happened is that she was so unpopular over the first two years. They just hit her.

They were like, we can't let her out in public anymore. She's like the crazy first wife in Jane Eyre. They like put her in the attic there and just left her there. And then finally he died. and they're like, we need somebody, who's here? Let's grab Kamala, let's do that. And so they grabbed Kamala, like, fourth look at Kamala Harris. I was like, oh, my God, the brat and the joy and the dancing,

and Tim Walz in his crazy weird-ass hands and all that kind of stuff. And I mean, they somewhat, not that we like her, but they somewhat succeeded in it a little bit. Which is crazy. I don't know how they did it. Well, I mean, the answer was they never let her answer a question. I literally on my show held a counter every single day that she didn't answer an adversarial question. I think our count got up to 48 days that she didn't answer a single adversarial question. That's a long time to carry your campaign with a campaign.

answering a single adversarial question and then she started having to do interviews and it turns out that she didn't have much and then she started like you can also tell that she's uncomfortable on the trail she went from like they told her whatever you don't laugh like clearly very early on in the campaign because they knew that that was her kind of tick her nervous tick is the crazy laughter and so they're like don't laugh she does that every fucking rally and now yeah right as as she's letting it out you're getting the crazy laugh yeah and everyone's like I cannot have that haunting my dreams for for four years like that that i can't i can't like fuck i hope not what's what's your prediction you're probably looking a lot into the early voting uh i'm actually not so the only voting is a bad

indicator really well the problem is that there's no good comp so just data wise so i'm a i'm a big data guy obviously so my gut is the trump wins and my gut's not worthwhile so like i've been wrong on my gut before uh so i don't trust it so my gut is that trump's winning i've been in pretty much all the swing states with the exception of michigan um you know my my feeling is that Trump has the inherent advantage in that his base is very passionate, and hers is passionate about him, but not about her. No one can make a case for her. I did a debate with Sam Harris about this recently on Barry Weiss's podcast, and he was making

the anti-Trump case, and I was making the pro-Trump case, but no one was making the pro-comala case because it's not makeable. You can't make a pro-comala case. You can make a case for not Trump, and you can also make a case for Trump, but you can't make a case about Kamala. So that means that the real question is, are there enough people who are passionate about it being not Trump to overcome the number of people who are passionate about it being Trump. And I don't, I don't think so, but, you know, who knows? Isn't there crazy early voting

statistics, though? Like, I saw more Republicans have voted than Democrats in New Jersey. Yeah, so that's why you can't take it seriously. He's not going to win New Jersey, right? So, like, the same thing is. So the only one where early voting really matters because there are tons of mailings is Nevada. So John Ralston, who's a ballot analyst over there. He does a really good job, and he says that the Republicans are running very strong in Nevada, which makes sense. I mean, Nevada, he's been running strong in whole race in Nevada. But, you know, as far as these other states, the problem is there's no comp. So there are a few things you don't know about the mail-in voting. Number one, you don't know if that's cannibalizing day of. Right. So if I was

going to vote day of, like normally I vote day of. Right. I have to be out of town to cover the election in Nashville this year. And so that means I'm voting early. I can't vote twice. So if I, if I vote, you know, early, that doesn't mean that Trump got an additional vote. It just means I voted early. So you don't know how much of the day of voting is being cannibalized by the early. You also don't know how many of the people who are voting early are the low propensity voters. Those are the people Trump needs. So what's weird about Trump's electoral base is that basically between 2012 and 2016, Trump traded away all of the kind of suburban Republican votes in favor of rural Republican votes. Suburban Republican votes tend to be very high

propensity voters, meaning they vote in every single election. Trump traded that away. like he lost a lot of that because of his personality, he's uniquely polarizing, and instead what he got was like a lot of loyalty from people who really don't vote for anyone, probably except for Trump. And so that makes it really difficult to model the electorate, like super hard to model the electorate, which is why the polls were really off in 2022 in favor of Republicans, right? The polls were saying, okay, well, in 2020, a lot of these people showed up, and then they didn't show up in 2022 because Trump wasn't on the ballot. So it's very difficult to model the electorate on that basis. So when it comes to mail-ins, are the early ballots

that are coming in mail-in votes from low-propensity voters, or is that coming in like the high propensity voters like me, and you now have to wait to see if the, you know, the low propensity guys are going to show up day up. So it's very difficult to kind of model out what exactly is happening. You know, each campaign is trying to hit its numbers. The other thing is that when you count the mail-in ballots, all you can count is how many ballots have mailed in by party registration. If you have people who are crossing over, it doesn't measure that, right? If I'm a Republican, I voted for Kamala or I'm a Democrat and I voted for Trump. Just shows Democrat. It shows your Democrat voter or Republican.

Republican voter turning in your ballot. Yeah. All right, guys, I'm going to interrupt the pop really, really quick. I want to let you guys know about my favorite healthy snack, bored jerky. All right, you guys know, you've seen me. I'm trying to be a little more healthy these days. I was getting too many comments. You guys telling me I look pregnant and shit.

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this is my favorite healthy snack it's on me all the time amazon dot com board jerky get back on the pod what would your prediction be though like what do you think is going to be the numbers if you had to predict

if i had to predict i think that trump takes north carolina georgia arizona i think that he is going to win pennsylvania i think he is going to win wisconsin i think he's going to lose michigan if i had and again that's based on nothing

all these states are within margin of error I could be wrong on all of those. I could be right on all of those. This is one of the things, by the way, that drives me crazy about election prediction. So there's a game that goes on in the Commentariat, which is who can make the most outlandish prediction that comes true? Because then you get to be hailed as a profit, right? So if you're the guy who's like, Trump's going to blow it out of the water in 2016,

despite all the data. And then you hit jackpot, right? Then you spend the next four years being like the election guru because you called it right once. And so what I tend to do when I'm analyzing these elections is I will say openly and honestly, the only thing the data said, which is this a very close election, I don't know. Again, my gut says Trump. I'm seeing a lot of enthusiasm on the ground for Trump, but of course, I'm a Republican.

So much enthusiasm, right? I don't see how Kamala would win. Yeah, that's what I want to ask you is, what factors you think are stopping Trump from winning this? Like, the most important things. I think just says past and just past comments. I mean, the fact that he's Trump. The fact that he's Trump. I mean, like, people really, so I was at an event for a Republican candidate like two days ago in Pennsylvania.

And the, and there was a lady there who was clearly Trump oriented. Like, she's a Trump voter for sure. but she said listen I know I can't vote for Kamala I can't she's awful I hate her I want her to lose but I can't bring myself on a personal level to vote for Donald Trump

because of all the things that he said because of January 6th and because of his tweets and because of his mean thing and because of his mannerism and his personality and his character and all this kind of stuff there are a lot of people who are like that

a lot like dudes don't have as much of a problem with this because we all understand like I think males inherently understand that males are like schmucks like we're all like down deep males are all like male, right? And so like, oh, you mean that dude just has no control of his id? Okay, that just makes him kind of a dude, right? But I think that for a lot of suburban women particularly, they look at him and they're like, I'm having a tough time, even if I,

even if I don't like Kamala. And so the question for him is, will those people show up and vote for him? Because he does need some of those people to show up and vote for him. That's a systemic obstacle. Yeah, I think there's still open questions about how good the on the ground game is. I've heard opinions on like all sides of this. Elon is obviously putting a lot of resources. is in. I've heard the deal on these people are really good. I know Charlie Kirk's TPA USA is putting in, you know, a bunch of resources. I don't know how that's doing. I assume that it's doing well. It's very difficult to tell the on-the-ground game from each of these campaigns. Like, who's door knocking? Who's actually getting out the – we know Democrats are pros of this.

They're really, really good at this. And so their systemic mechanized organization is better than the Republicans in almost every circumstance. And so that's an obstacle that Trump is going to have to overcome as well. But there are no undecided voters. the percentage of undecided voters in this election is incredibly, incredibly low. One of the weird things about this election cycle is that, again, I think that one of the misperceptions about Trump is that he's like a uniquely strong candidate, when the truth is he's just a uniquely unique candidate. I mean, like, there's no way to gauge him.

He's one of one. In the same way that kind of Obama, in his way, was one of one, Trump is one of one. So is he uniquely strong? People will say, okay, well, if you'd swapped out, say, Trump for, let's say, Nikki Haley had won the primaries. How would Nikki be running? It's all speculative. I can speculate that Nikki would have done a lot better with suburban women.

And I can also speculate that you wouldn't have done nearly as well with rural men. Right. So, like, you know, who do you win, who do you lose? How many do you pick up? How many, like, he's got unique draw. He also tends to really, really push the buttons on the other side. One thing that I think, you know, Nikki would have done is probably suppressed Democrat votes, meaning that people weren't going to show up just to vote against Nikki Haley if you're a Democrat.

People are going to walk over broken glass in California just to vote against Trump. So these are all factors that go in. But, you know, there's a weird thing that's happened over the course of the last three election cycles that never used to happen. So before that, I'm old enough to remember, in 2000, when Bush won, the reason Bush was deemed to have won is because Al Gore had failed. Al Gore is not a good candidate. In 2004, when Kerry lost, it was like, well, because he wasn't good enough. He couldn't win because he wasn't good enough when it was McCain versus Obama. It was like McCain just wasn't good enough to beat Obama.

Obama was a better candidate. In 2012, Romney wasn't good enough. That's why he lost. In 2016, for the first time, the side that lost decided that it wasn't that their candidate wasn't good enough. It had to be some sort of extraneous factor that had led to her losing. It wasn't that Hillary Clinton lost to Trump because she was just a bad candidate, which is the actual real reason. The reason that she lost is because Russian interference and because of the Internet and because of Trump being corrupt and all these different excuses that they used, which ended up plaguing his presidency for the next three and a half years with the Mueller report and all that garbage that was originally concocted by Hillary. Now, when that happened, we now went into a different kind of matrix that's actually quite bad for the country, I think, generally, which was in 2020, when Trump lost, the Republican response was he didn't lose because he wasn't a good enough candidate.

He lost because of all of these external – by the way, I agree with the analysis that there were many external factors that led him to lose. Also, he did not run a good race in 2020. He ran a very, very poor race in 2020. I mean, he was all over the place on COVID. He was all over the place on BLM. It was like 2020 was a very rough year for President Trump. In 2024, if Kamala loses, Democrats are not going to attribute that to her being a poor candidate, even though everyone knows it. They're going to attribute that instead to, well, she had a short campaign window. Maybe it's Biden. They're going to attribute it to, well, the Internet. Well, Elon. Well, you know, Trump was probably colluding with Russia again. That's what they're going to go back to. And if Trump loses, it won't be on the right that Trump, you know, wasn't a good enough candidate. He alienated a lot of people. The excuse will be, well, you know, probably they rigged the voting procedures or the media is really by it, which, of course, they are. Again, the extraneous factors are real, but those are real in every election. The problem is that when you have a matrix that's set up where the easy answer for all Americans isn't the same, right?

For Democrats and Republicans in 2005, said Kerry was a bad candidate. in 1996, Democrats and Republicans, after Dole got clocked, they're like, wasn't a good candidate. The good news about that particular take on elections is that it means, okay, well, if I run a better candidate next time, then maybe I'll win. When you don't do that, then you start to think there's no way I can win, and that's when you see desperation setting in, people getting more and more radical. It's like, no matter what I do, no matter what kind of great candidate I run, I'm just going to lose the system stacked against me, maybe I disassociated from politics entirely, or maybe

the country can't last because if I can never win an election again, again. I mean, one of the sort of preconditions to a successful democracy is the possibility that your side may win. If you believe that you are going to lose from now until the end of time, why would you buy into that system? You start to opt out of the system. So it's kind of a dangerous metrics that we've been in for the last 10 years. Yeah, my biggest thing why I want him to win is just the wars. I mean, I desperately want to win campaigning. And the old, the old Republicans, too, they were always like George Bush. They were like warmongers, too. So now it's not a take I particularly like. So the warmonger take. I think that this is a straw man. As somebody who was, you know,

politically active during this period, every single president would have gone into Afghanistan. Everyone. Al Gore would have done it. Everyone would have done it. Okay. The only one who was talking about like letters of mark and reprisal was Ron Paul. Okay. And first of all, the idea that a letter of mark and reprisal would have single-handedly gotten rid of bin Laden, I think is a fantasy. It took, you know, a decade to find him anyway. After 9-11, we were going to destroy al-Qaeda. and we should have destroyed al-Qaeda. And by the way, we should not have pulled out Afghanistan. So Iraq was a bit of a different story.

There was more controversy over that, but... Afghanistan, of course. But Afghanistan, of course, that doesn't make him a warmonger. Iraq was a response to a broader geopolitical theory, which is really kind of about look at the map. So if you look at the map in the Middle East, really, so there are a few levels of Iraq. And again, in retrospect, if you know that Saddam doesn't have weapons and mass destruction,

like the beautiful thing about history is you can look back in retrospect and say, we shouldn't have done this, right? But in the time, here are the factors that led to the war in Iraq. The things that led to the war in Iraq were the fact that pretty much every international institution was saying that Saddam was, in fact, developing weapons and mass destruction, and he had attempted to do so in the past. And he was lying about it, right? It turns out that he was lying. And the reason he was lying is because if it had come out that he wasn't developing weapons and mass destruction, it would have put his regime on really shaky footing. In the same way, the Iranian regime right now, because they're perceived as non-powerful,

is on kind of shaky footing. So he was afraid of his own people. And so he was putting out information, suggesting that he was, in fact, developing weapons of mass destruction. So the Bush administration looked at that, and they had a theory, which was, okay, when you get clocked like 9-11, your next move is, who might clock me next, and how do I clock them first? That's what preemptive war is. People are down on preemptive war, but you know what? Actually, sometimes preemptive war, the thing about preemptive war, very easy to catch, to sort of hindsight 2020, those things, because the counterfactual never happened. Right. So let's say that we had gone to preemptive war with Al-Qaeda in 2000, and there's no 9-11.

And then things go wrong in 2004. You never see 9-11s. You never know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, right? It's all these sort of what ifs in history. So we go into Iraq on the perception that he's developing weapons of mass destruction. There's also a sort of geopolitical theory that if we could transform the government of Afghanistan. Again, this is where I think that the theory was mistaken. I think the way that they approached Afghanistan and Iraq was wrong because they approached it with the mindset of we're going to implant a constitutional democracy in Afghanistan or Iraq.

I think that's way too starry-eyed. Like, you can't just, but people, again, this is where knowledge of history is useful. After the Korean War, when we had liberated South Korea from North Korea, right? The North Koreans were wanting to take over the entire Korean Peninsula. We liberated South Korea. It took full on 20 years for there to be an election in South Korea. That was a dictatorship for solidly 20 years. In Taiwan, the first real elections were held in Taiwan, like the early 90s.

So it takes a long time to transition from sort of authoritarian control of an area to democracy. We tried to do it overnight in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and, of course, that failed. that is not fertile soil for that sort of institution building. So that was a mistake. But geopolitically, I think the theory was, look at a map, Afghanistan is here, Iran is here, Iraq is here. If you can build two American allies in Afghanistan and Iraq, you've now contained Iran. So the idea was that you were going to solidify and stabilize the Middle East by actually building friendly governments in these places. Now, it turns out that the strategy to actually pursue that was deeply flawed.

The warmaking strategy in Iraq was actually not particularly flawed at the beginning. I mean, we defeated the fourth largest army on earth in three weeks. It was what came after. That was a disaster area. And the same thing was true in Afghanistan. We defeated the Taliban within the first month of the war. I mean, the American military is unparalleled. It's the most powerful military force in the history of the world.

I mean, we'd kick the shit out of them. The problem was that afterward, the plan for rebuilding, Americans, we always have this idea that the process of transforming a country is much easier than it is, and we forget, again, our history. We still have military bases in Japan. We still have military bases in Germany. John McCain was ripped up and down in 2008 when he said, listen, if you want Iraq to be a stable place, you're going to need to leave American troops there for 100 years.

As a descriptive matter, that is correct. If you are going to transform a place, you do, in fact, have to leave American military presence there for a very, very... So you should take that into consideration before you go in and determine whether that's a thing that you want to do or not, as opposed to trying to do it on the cheap and sort of wishing and hoping that it will transform itself. Okay, the sort of description, though,

of, like, everyone who voted for the Iraq wars, like, they're warmongers. So the question I always ask is, so what was the ulterior motive? Everyone has these sort of bizarre ulterior. We went into Iraq for oil. We clearly did not. We got no oil out of Iraq. We did it because of the military industrial complex. The military industrial complex does not control the United States military or military policy.

The political wings of the government. They don't have any influence at all? I mean, they're not lobbying. They're not lobbying for war, per se. They're lobbying for war buildup, which doesn't necessitate war very often. Again, I think the sort of idea that there are these shadowing, he powers outside, that Lockheed Martin is calling up George W. Bush, me like, dude, we need war. Like, pick a country. Let's do this shit. Like, that's not how politics works. That's not how

politics works. I mean, the reality is that Lockheed Martin is a supplier to the American military. Republicans tend to fund the military better than Democrats do because they have a theory about peace through strength. Now, of course, you know, war companies are going to make more money off war. But the notion that because a war company makes more money off of war, it was the war company that drove the war is generally understanding. true. I think that one of the great disservice is Dwight Eisenhower ever did was use of the phrase military industrial complex, which was actually hijacked from some left-wing thinkers at the time. This sort of idea that, I mean, there is such a thing as regulatory capture. You see it in the

agencies, right? You see it, RFK talks about this all the time. Yeah, I was going to say it. Yeah, and he's right about that. I mean, in the regulatory agencies, that's where you see institutional capture. It's like the FDA, and you'll see a company that works outside the FDA lobbying people inside the FDA to do X, Y, and Z. You'll see military contractors who are lobbying the DOD to contract with them for particular types of weapon systems. But that's not quite the same thing as I'm going to call it my local congressperson. I'm going to tell them, I want them to vote for a war in Iraq so I can make $100 million

off a weapon system. Like that is way too rudimentary for health policies, actually. Yeah, it's definitely evil. But that's not actually what's happening is what I'm saying. That's not how war gets done. Because again, these people are answerable to their constituents. It's not that easy to talk Americans in a war, where we tend to be a pretty isolationist people. We don't like war. We don't like being in wars, which is why every single president of

my lifetime has run as an isolationist and then ended up being kind of interventionist. It turns out that the world is filled with terrible, horrible people who want to fill that vacuum. And President Trump knew this too. The thing is that President Trump took the position that the best way to avoid a war was to basically threaten to kick everybody's ass. Everybody's acting as though Donald Trump is an isolationist. Donald Trump is an isolationist. I did a fundraiser for President Trump. And he was talking to me about the war in Ukraine. And he's like, you know, Ben, Ben, the reason that Vladimir Putin never invaded Ukraine

is because I called him up, said, Vlad, Vlad, Vlad, Vlad, Vlad, don't go into Ukraine. Because if you do, I'm going to bomb the shit out of you. And Vlad said to me, Mr. President, no, you won't. And I said, well, I might. And then he said to me, because Ben, that's how you do it. If you think there's a 5% chance,

the most powerful military on Earth is going to blow the shit out of you, you don't do it. Okay, that's how you actually do foreign policy. Now, is that an isolationist, foreign policy, or is that actually a building up of military strength and use of credible threat of force, which is what Trump could do, because everyone thinks he's crazy, which is a great way to be, right? Because everyone thinks, like, I don't know, he's going to shake my hand or just shoot me in the head. I really have no clue, right? One day, he's threatening to press his little

button on Kim Jong-un. The next day, he's written love letters to him. I don't know. That's actually not a terrible place to be, the sort of wild man theory of politics. It's not bad. That is not isolationist. The way to dissuade people from doing things is the credible threat of the use of force. Joe Biden makes threats of force all the time. He's just not credible. Okay, so, yeah, again, the question with the Iraq war, again, in a period that was right after 9-11, there was a lot of focus on how do we stop the next 9-11 from happening. You know, you guys are really young. So I don't know how old you were during 9-11.

We're young. Probably 7. Yeah. Right. So if you're too young to really remember and remember what 9-11 was, 9-11 was the worst thing to have ever happened in this country since Pearl Harbor and worse than Pearl Harbor because it was an attack on a civilian site. It was terrifying. It scared the shit out of everyone. of it killed 3,000 people. It should have killed probably 80,000 people. If they decided to

fly those planes in those buildings at 11 a.m. that morning instead of at 8.56 a.m. that morning, then probably 80,000 people die. That's how many people were working in the buildings. Tens of thousands of people were working in those buildings. It took out, you know, lower Manhattan. I mean, it was horrifying. It was absolutely hot. And so the first thing that every American was thinking is, I don't care who we have to clock. I don't give a shit. I don't care if we have to clock a rock. I don't care if we have to clock. I don't care if we have to clock. Clock whoever you have to do, so we don't see giant towers in the United States collapsing in on American citizens and pulverizing them into dust and American citizens jumping off the 88th floor and landing on their

head. That was like the number one priority. And so, you know, does that mean that every decision that was made was good? No, if I could have retrospect, of course you undo the Iraq war, of course you do, because there's no purpose and it ends up badly. But the sort of retrospective of, well, because it went badly, that means that the original intent of the war was war mongering and military industrial complex. That's such noam-chomsky bullshit. I don't like it when it comes from Republicans. I don't like it when it comes from Democrats. Before Trump, I feel like, weren't we in, like, Libya? We were in Syria.

So Libya was a bad intervention. And Libya, we shouldn't. It just seems like Trump's really good at preventing the wars is what I meant. Yes, I totally agree. So this is what Trump has the best foreign policy in my lifetime. The only point that I'm making is it's not because the people who were his predecessors were, quote unquote, warmongers. It's because some of, I mean, I think, frankly, the maybe the biggest warmonger in terms of just getting us involved in random wars we had no place in being was Obama. Obama was getting involved in Libya and then he was sort of halfway getting involved in Syria and not really getting involved in Syria.

like that's a disaster area because when you put your finger in all the pies but none of them well that's the worst for trump it was like don't put your finger in the pie unless you're really willing to go and i think that's a great way to approach foreign policy but it's not that trump will never put his finger in the pie he absolutely will i mean trump authorized the kill on a cassam solomani yeah right who's the iranian general who's in charge of their terror program it was it was president trump who was you know brokering deals in the middle east that were explicitly based on containing iran don't don't trump threatened to use force more than any president in my lifetime and used it less than any president in my lifetime, which is actually

a really good strategy. 100%. How big of a threat is Iran right now? I mean, to whom? So to Israel, a very serious threat in the sense that if they develop a nuclear weapon, Israel's a tiny state. If they were to use a nuclear weapon on Israel, Israel would nuke them back, then you have a major conflagration, obviously, in the Middle East. So it's a threat to sort of global security. Iran is a threat to shipping lanes, obviously. You've seen that in the Red Sea. They shut down all shipping through the Red Sea, which means that all your products are more expensive because now they're getting shipped around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. So that's a real

problem. Iran is a threat to, you know, American allies abroad and in the United States. I mean, they have a pretty extensive terror apparatus in South America. Chisbalah agents are over there. You saw that Iran was actually attempting to foster assassination attempts against Trump himself. So they're dangerous in that sense. Are they dangerous in the sense that they're like an existential threat to the United States. They're clearly not an existential threat to the United States, which is why my preferred policy would be to let the Israelis do whatever they have to do to take out the Iranian nuclear program and then tell the Iranians, and by the way, if you hit too hard back, then we'll give the Israeli more material and they'll do it. Never put an American troop on the ground, never get an

American troop involved in harm's way. The Israelis are perfectly capable of handling it if you give them the weaponry with which to do it. What's weird about the Biden administration approach is they're doing precisely the opposite. They're giving tons and tons of weaponry to the Ukrainians with no actual end goal and then they're slow walking the aid to the Israelis who clearly are capable of militarily achieving the thing if they have the weaponry like Israel is the greatest military attack power in the region what do they need to achieve like in Israel I mean the thing that they need to achieve is they need to there's going to be a long-term military presence in the Gaza Strip to to solidify security in the Gaza Strip that's not going to end there's going to be a buffer zone that goes

around the edge of the Gaza Strip there's going to be control of the Philadelphia Corridor corridor which is the barrier between there it's the border between the border between the Gaza strip in Egypt because that was being used as a go-between by Hamas to use those tunnels to get people and material in and out through Egypt. So Israel is now in control of that. They're going to maintain control of that and they're not going to give it up, nor should they. They're going to build that buffer zones. That means that people can't walk up to the border again and cross it and then murder 1,200 people. They're going to have a significant security presence inside. Israel would love to hand it off to somebody, but nobody will take it. They've literally offered

it to everybody. They offered it to the Egyptians. The Egyptians are like, no way. They offered it to the Qataris. The Qataris are like, no way. They offered it to the Saudis. No one wants a piece of this. No one. And so everybody's like, well, why, why? I can't Israel just like get out? Well, because then Hamas takes over again. That's why. So they're not going to do that. That would be idiotic. So they're not going to do that. They're going to maintain a military presence over there, a policing presence and intelligence presence. The biggest problem they had before October 7th is that because of the pullout from Gaza in 2005, they had no intelligence apparatus inside the Gaza Strip. They do have intelligence apparatus in parts of the

West Bank, like Janine, Nablus, like the big Palestinian cities over there. They have a unit called Duv-Duvon. You see them on Fowda. Right. And they do have intelligence presence over there. So that's what will be in the Gaza Strip. In southern Lebanon, there will probably be either a military occupation of southern Lebanon, or you would hope maybe the French get involved. I mean, the French do have sort of a historic stake in Lebanon. That was a French territory until it gained its independence, and they still have a very strong relationship with France. You would hope that the Lebanese government would tell Chisbalah they need to stay the hell out of the area in the south of Lebanon, south of the Latani River. That would be, by the way,

in accordance with UN Resolution 1701, which says there's not supposed to be a Chisbalah presence in that area. It's supposed to be clear of military apparatus. So then Israel can move its citizens back into the north of Israel. And then with regard to Iran, Israel's chief goal with Iran is to cripple its nuclear program. Because if Iran were to gain nuclear program, it's not just that they might fire a missile tipped with the nuclear weapon at Israel. It's also that they could then activate all of their terror proxies and say to Israel, if you go too hard, then we will fire a nuclear weapon at Israel. In my opinion, what Israel just recently did, which was largely knocking out their ballistic missile capacity, was the first step. I would be surprised if Israel does not try to

take out their nuclear facility sometime in the next few months. They destroyed all their defense? Yes. They destroyed any, they destroyed the, uh, the S300 system from, from Russia, which was sort of the anti-aircraft stuff. They destroyed all of those. And the Israeli military has performed, but the amazing performance. They're like truly, just on a military level, amazing performance by the Israeli military.

Like the only other military in earth who does it as well is the U.S. military. Um, and Israel is, you know, they have to be even more meticulous because of all the world pressure. The United States, the beautiful thing is we don't give a shit. So it doesn't matter. but you know for for israel when when they knocked out so they knocked out the the anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense stuff over there and they also knocked out a lot of their long-range ballistic missile technology so there's a factory that makes a lot of the parts of that they knocked that out

as well so they're knocking out preliminarily all of the retaliatory stuff that iran could fire at them if israel were to take out say the nathan nuclear facility that's shit's scary is that is that is that like the biggest escalation there's been in like a long time i mean that was 181 you know That has never, like, really happened. No, and it was insane. And then the Biden administration was like, well, Israel has to be proportionate. It was like, by proportionate, you mean that Israel now gets to fire 181 ballistic missiles at Iran? Like, what do you mean by proportionate?

Like, proportionate is such a stupid word. When people use proportionate in foreign policy, traditionally what they mean is your, the means you use to achieve a goal must be proportionate to the goal you are seeking to achieve. So, for example, you want to kill Osama bin Laden? You can go into his compound. You can kill everybody who's in the compound to get bin Laden, but you can't just drop a nuke on his compound and kill 50,000 people. people because that's disproportionate to the goal you're seeking to achieve. So use the minimum

possible necessary force in order to achieve the goal. But the way that morons use it is they fired 181 missiles. That means you get to fire 181 missiles. Or maybe it means you get to, like, what proportion are we talking here? It's very stupid. It was a massive escalation. I will say that the Israelis are quite used to it by this point. I called up a very close friend of mine during the missile, which I was covering live and I called them up while it's on the air. Like, how are you doing Nadav? And I was like, it's so irritating. It's so irritating. I was like, irritating. I was in the shower. And I had to think to myself, do I get out of the shower? Do I not get out of the shower? Like, they're so used to that at this point. It's, it's crazy. It is, it is crazy. And like, it's a, it's a different

thing. I mean, the people over there, because they're constantly in a state of war, because every person who's 18 or older, with the exception of some of the ultra-Orthodox, who should be drafted, is drafted. Because of all of that, like, an 18-year-old in Israel is not the same as an 18-year-old in the United States. They're just not. I mean, like, and that's true in a lot of places in the world where, you know, reality exists. And the nice thing about America's reality doesn't exist here. I mean, we are the richest, freest people in the history of the world, and that means that many of us are the most irresponsible people, because it turns out that when you're rich and you're free and you have no duty, very often people don't tend to do their duty.

I feel like there's never going to be like a happy solution where both sides are happy in that area, right? Because we went to Israel. They brought us out there. We had a great time. And then I never even, because I'm not too educated on that specific, like, you know, area. And then, yeah, obviously, when we went there we were getting a ton of hate i was like shocked i was looking at my dms just like fuck you fuck you blah blah blah so then after i got home i actually watched your video on uh just the history of thousands of years on that region and how many times it's traded and how much times it's been under dispute and i just feel like it's been going on for thousands of years so there will be so there will be peace in the region when people acknowledge israel's

existence i mean this is actually the math here is actually fairly simple if israel put down all of its guns tomorrow, then everyone in the region in Israel will be slaughtered. I mean, that's just the reality. If the IDF were to disband tomorrow, every Jew is dead. If the Palestinians would have put down all of their guns 20 years ago, there were in a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip already. But that's not the goal. I mean, the key thing to remember is that the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, which became the Palestinian Authority, which was the peace partner supposedly with Israel and the Oslo Accords, the PLO was founded in 1964. Why does that matter? Because the liberation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by the Israeli

Defense Force was in 1967. So what exactly was the Palestine Liberation Organization trying to liberate if they were already in control. Jordan was already in control of the West Bank, and Egypt was in control of the Gaza Strip. So if you're already in control of those things, and you say, I'm liberating Palestine, what are you talking about liberating? You're not talking about liberating the West Bank. You're not talking about liberating Jerusalem, which is under control of the Jordanians, the old city. What are you talking about liberating? You're talking about liberating Tel Aviv. You're talking about liberating Haifa. You're talking about wiping out the state of Israel.

And unfortunately, that has been indoctrinated into generations of Palestinians, that basically the thing that you are looking for is not living side by side in a state of peace and security. We all want the same thing. We want economic prosperity. If it were that simple, it already been done. It really is about an identity that says that Israel should not be in that area. It should be extirpated and it should be destroyed. And unfortunately, no matter how many times Israel tries to keep giving things away to make it happen, it ain't happening.

I mean, this is why October 7th, I think, was such a shock to the Israeli psyche. The Israelis wish that were true. You think the Israelis want to send all their 18-year-old kids to the army? They don't want to send all their 18-year-old kids to the army. They hate it. It's the worst thing in the world. You're literally sending your kid into the line of bullets. I mean, the number of soldiers who have been wounded or killed in this war is in the, it's like

5 to 6,000 in Israel right now. There have been, I think, 750, 800 young soldiers who been killed, and there are thousands who have been wounded. And I've seen them. I mean, like, last time I was in Israel, which was in June, I was at afternoon prayers is on a Jewish holiday, and I look over next to me, and there's a 20-year-old kid, and the 20-year-old kid's in a wheelchair. He's missing both legs above the knee. He's missing one arm at the elbow, and the other hand, he's had two of his fingers blown off. His parents are American. He had

moved there, and he joined the IDF, and, you know, like, you think his parents want that, no one wants that, at least not on the Israeli side. So if that were of it, that's why they pulled out of Gaza in the first place. So the great shock of October 7th is that it happened from an area that Israel completely abandoned in 2005. What, what territory were they attempting to liberate when they crossed that border. They already were in control of the Gaza Strip. Or were they attempting to liberate. Not the Gaza Strip. They're attempting to liberate everything else. So when you have one side that is eliminationist and one side that is not, there's no deal to be made there. And what the Abraham Accords acknowledged is that's insoluble, right? The Bahrainese and the UAE and the

Moroccans and all the other countries that were members of the Abraham Accords, what they recognized is this issue isn't going anywhere. So let's have all the other issues. Rather, let's economically cooperate. Let's have some defense cooperation against Iran, right? Let's foster technological cooperation. And we'll ignore the fact that like there's one group here that wants to kill the other side and the other side refuses to be killed. And that's how you get the Abraham Accords. And the Saudis aren't on it too. I mean like the the grave mistake that the Biden administration made was elevating the insoluble issue back to the top of the pile as opposed to saying that's insoluble. Let's solve all the other issues. So crazy. I was going to ask about

what do you think about North Korea bringing troops to Russia to? Again, I think that Russia, is a staggeringly weak country, technologically speaking. That's kind of never, that hasn't happened in a while, too, where North Korea is actually putting ground troops now in the war. I mean, the worry during the Korean war is that Soviet troops were going to go into North Korea and be used against Americans. The idea that they have to, like, draw on North Korea for troops demonstrates how weak Russia is militarily.

And I think that what the last few years of war have shown is that it's really good to be a first world country or at least associated with first world countries. it's not that a first world country can't you know can't get surprised or hit or anything it's that first world countries or allies of first world countries can kick the shit out of everybody else i mean like israel gets hit with october seventh and then israel proceeds to launch some the most sophisticated military operations in human history and ukraine gets hit with a full-scale russian invasion and with drone technology and you know some parts provided by the west they've been able to push off one of the world's largest armies that like the thing that

that people forget is that capitalism, free enterprise, private property, these things generate awesome military power, awesome military power. That's why if you want America to remain strong, like in terms of foreign policy, you have to have a thriving economy. It's really important. You be able to pay for this sort of stuff. You need innovation. You need geniuses who are working on this sort of stuff all the time. People like Palmer Lucky, who's, you know, he's a founder of a defense company that's sort of in competition with Lockheed Martin. Like, he's constantly innovating you need that that doesn't happen in russia in russia they're using like world war two era armament and one of the i mean look iran same kind of thing iran is like flying it's

they're flying their president around like a 1980 american helicopter with no replacement parts which is why it goes down in the forest it turns out that that technology is indeed a web but it takes two things technological superiority and willingness to use it which is how the huthies you don't have either of those things are really harassing shipping if the united states wanted to end that tomorrow we totally could end that tomorrow but that would require an actual commitment to being brutal and harsh because war is brutal and harsh. And the thing that Westerners and we in the first world have to get through our head is that war doesn't become unbrutal and unharsh when you delay it. It becomes worse and it takes longer. You're better off

just punching somebody so hard in the fucking head that they go down. And then that's the end of the fight if you're talking militarily. Do you think there's going to be unrest with this election no matter what happens? Hard to see how it's not. I mean, unless it blow out from one side or the other. What do you think would be worse? I feel like if Trump loses. This time, I don't typically, I don't typically, the left is known for rioting more, but I think this time it's going to be like, this is kind of the last chance. Let's give you a scenario. Yeah.

Kamala wins. Okay. How do you react to that? I'm pissed. I mean, it depends under what circumstances. So let's say that Kamala wins, it's really, really, really tight. And, you know, she is, she's declared the victor. as long as I don't see the proof of widespread electoral fraud, then she's the winner.

And there are going to be a lot of good reasons why she was the winner, including the weakness of the ground game. We'll analyze it and we'll figure out exactly why what happened happened. Let me get, if you own worst case scenario, here's a really great worst case scenario. And since we live in a timeline in which God clearly hates us, we may as well assume this will be the reality. So here's the worst case scenario. In 2020, there was a census. That census was done wrong. okay that census radically overcounted states like new york delaware i believe michigan and it radically

undercounted states like florida and texas like this has been openly acknowledged by the what do you mean by that so they so whenever they do the census they can't survey everybody right they take a sample okay uh and so like they try to get everybody and they get about 67 percent of people but the estimate is very often wrong okay okay so in 2020 they acknowledged like afterward they're widespread i mean the government acknowledged that they'd gotten the census wrong the problem is how do you apportion congressional seats and electoral votes? You do it based on the census. Right?

So, theoretically, Florida should have two more electoral votes. New York should have one fewer and Delaware should have one fewer. So here's your worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is Donald Trump wins North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada. Okay, if he wins those and he loses, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, the final electoral college tally is Kamala Harris 270, Donald Trump 268. Now, you have the state of Florida to say, guys, you fucked up the census.

The census is that we should have two more electoral college votes and you failed to and you acknowledge this, you know this. So you need to rejigger. We've now been damaged. We now have standing. This election really should be Donald Trump 270, Kamala Harris 268,

based on the population shifts in the country. That goes to the Supreme Court. Now I have a Supreme Court in which six of the justices were appointed by Republicans, including three by Donald Trump, deciding whether the electoral college count should be reversed based on the census failure. Okay, you want to like, that's a very, that's a possible thing that could happen. For sure.

Right. I mean, by the way, the polling right now shows Trump ahead in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Arizona, and Nevada. And those other three are like, dead even. So like, so not only is that, and because God hates us, I think that, that's, you know, it's not, it's not a crazy possibility. So, you know, there's, my, my tendency in these circumstances is to try and figure out first, people get on my case because I try to suss out the reason why things

happened before I go crazy as opposed to going crazy first and then sussing out the reason things happened. So during the last election cycle, Trump declared himself the winner on election night. And I said, that's not true. But I got on election night. I said, that's not true yet. They haven't counted all the mail ends. So maybe he won. Maybe I don't know. But it's not true that he won right now. And people are really, really mad at me because he had said he won. And so then I waited. And then when he started launching lawsuits, I was like, okay, well, I mean, that's his legal right. Maybe he'll show evidence. And then I didn't see him show any, you know, real credible evidence that, you know, 12,000 votes were switched in Georgia and 20,000 were switched

in Wisconsin. And I was like, okay, well, I mean, if you can't show the evidence, then it ain't there. And people got really, really mad at that. And so I think the tendency for a lot on the right, because the incentive structure is such, is that if Trump were to lose, I think there'd be a lot on the right who would immediately jump to the election stolen. And it may be, but I'm going to wait to make that adjudication until I see actual evidence of how and why it was, it was like who did the thing, right? If you show me the thing it was done, I'm perfectly willing to say the election was stolen. But you actually have to show me the thing happen and how it happened. And it can't just be assumptions and it can't just be speculation. I can give you a whole range of sort of informal reasons

why the election was stolen. Okay, one of them would be how the hell do you switch out your nominee in the middle of a race. One would be the media actively attempting to suppress bad stories about Kamala Harris, about Doug Emhoff, about Tim Walls, like just covering none of it while magnifying everything that Donald Trump. Like, all that's true. But those are all informal reasons that don't impact the actual count of the electoral college, right? So, you know, that that'll be my reaction. action if Trump loses is to try and analyze all the reasons why and then come to some sort of conclusion. If Trump wins, I think the left is going to lose their ever-loving mind. I think that they're, you know, it'll be a section of the left. I actually think, I think that, you know,

you're right in the sense that if Trump wins, I think there will be some brief rage that comes out of them and then they'll just be like, well, at least in, you know, at least for the next four years, like we can rebuild and then Trump will be gone and then we'll move on with our lives. So, like, I, I think there'll be, it all depends on how you're right. Like, if it's, if it's a landslide for Kamala, it's a bit different, but if it comes two 70s, if he wins by five million popular votes. And he wins by, like, two votes in each state, they're going to lose it. Yeah. Absolutely lose it.

So, again, like, the best case scenario for America is that Trump wins big. That's like the best case scenario for America is Trump sweeps all the swing states and wins the popular, right? That's like, that's what I'm praying for. I'm not just praying for him to win. I want him to win big. Yeah. Right? Like, that would be best for my party.

it's best for it's best for the country like i that that's the thing i'm hoping for the the second best case scenario is that trump wins small the the third best case scenario is that comma wins big because if she wins big then you don't at least get the the insane in the insane breakdown of the country and the worst worst worst worst worst case scenario she wins really narrow like that one right like that's that's yeah if i'm just gaming out like where i think that there could be a lot of conflagration inside the united states that that that's kind of how i game it out what do you do on election night so we're we're broadcasting all election night right i mean so we're going to get in at like 4 p.m so basically my schedule for the next week is i'm flying to texas to join the trail with

with senator cruz is running a pretty competitive race with con all right over there and then i'm flying to nashville to our headquarters and i'm going to be doing it we'll prep for election night on monday we'll be on the air i'll do the show monday morning tuesday morning then we will that afternoon get in the chair and we will just stay there for the rest of our lives we're going to we're going to be covering that until all hours of the morning. Maybe grab a couple hours of sleep, do the podcast again Wednesday morning, get back in the chair, sit there for hours on end, hope to God that these jackasses can count the votes in anything like a timely fashion. You think it'll be that night? Again, it really depends on how close this stuff is. You're going to be able to tell pretty early.

There are a few, at least whether it's going to be a long night or not. If there is bad turnout in urban area, she stows. If the vote count starts to come back from Philadelphia, for example, and it turns out low, she's dosed, it's over. If, you know, there are a few, they're like two counties in Pennsylvania, I think one's Erie county, I think, that are, they've been kind of bellwether counties. They've gone for the presidential winter since 2008. It was like Obama, Obama, Trump, Biden, whomever. So, well, I'm sure we'll be watching those.

But Michigan is saying they're not even going to have preliminary results until early morning Wednesday. Wisconsin's saying the same thing. So it could be long. I mean, I was reading an interview with the guy who calls the elections for Fox because obviously Fox got ripped up and down for calling Arizona early last time for Biden. And he said, like, I'm not sure we call this election before Saturday. This shit is terrible for the country.

It really is. And it's really stupid. Like, it's totally unnecessary. I mean, we're here in the great state of Florida, the best-run state in the country. And in this state, we're going to know within five minutes of the polls closing who won. Legitimately within like half an hour, you know who won. Because all the electronic, all the battling is electronic in person. and all the early voting is counted up before election day.

So they already counted all that shit, and then they just add in the day up, and they're done. And it's done day up. Like, it's bewildering to me that states across the country don't just imitate what Florida does. And then we could have, like, a clean election result literally within like two hours of the polls closing on the East Coast. Where can people watch your election coverage? Is it on YouTube? It'll be on YouTube.

We'll put up on X for sure. Live on YouTube. Yeah, live on YouTube, live on X. I'm going to have that on everywhere, daily wire, you know, plus everywhere that we normally put our stuff. We'll be live streaming. What's new with the business of the Daily Wire? It's obviously just become a fucking absolute machine. Yeah.

Thank God. It's, you know, so we have well over a million subscribers at this point, paid subscribers. That is crazy. Yeah. Thank God it's become a really, really great business. We have a lot of support. Last year we did $220 million in business. We, you know, what's in, and we're always launching new stuff.

And I think they're certainly undercapitalized areas of our company that we're going to really focus on, on, you know, moving those up the chain. So if you're to look at our business, a huge, a huge swath of our business, probably 60% of our revenue is from those subscriptions. And then probably 25% of our revenue to 30% of our revenue is from the advertising dollars. It's like on my show. And, you know, Matt's show, Matt Walsh's show, Jordan Peterson show, a tiny bit from Michael Mills. And, and, and then we make some money off merch. We have Jeremy's razors, right, which we hilariously launched and now has like 125,000 people who subscribe to our razor company. Wow. And so that's like a $25 million

business a year. And we have undercapitalized that. We need to raise more money for that. We need to break that off its own separate sort of entity and really poor money into it because that's a real brand. And the razor actually really nice. It makes good product. So we think that could be a really solid line of business. You know, we are still making documentaries like Matt's, right? Yeah, we had him on last week talking about the movie and stuff. And the movie's great. Matt is, Matt's a true talent. He's a really, really talented guy. And that movie, like, you think it's hard for me to be in a room, like, you know, with 25 people surrounding me. The stuff that Matt does, I couldn't do that. That's a skill set.

Yeah, it's very funny. It's incredible. It's incredible. So, am I racist? Obviously, did great at the box office. I think the $12, $13 million to the box office on an original $3 million budget. You know, that doesn't mean that we made $9 million of profits. That's not how the business works, right? You have marketing fees and distribution fees and all this kind of stuff. But it is also responsible for our single best movie launch day in the history of the Daily Wire. So in terms of when we brought on streaming on Monday, tons of subscribers signed up just for the extras or because they missed it when it was in theaters. So, you know, that's going to continue to be a line of business. We have our whole children's network METK, which we've been giving way to our subscribers for free.

I would assume at some point it becomes not free because we can't just give away, you know, tens of millions of dollars of material for free. So that will become not free probably. And then we're expanded. You know, we're looking for other shows that we want, other hosts. that we want. So that's kind of the future for us, obviously. How much are you involved in like bringing on Matt Walsh or like Jordan Peterson? So I certainly have a voice in like who I like and who I don't. I'm not a member of manager. I'm a manager of the company, but I'm not an executive of the company. So the co-CEoes, Jeremy and Caleb, are the ones who actually make the hard

and fast decisions. They might seek my input at like a 30,000 foot level. And if I'm making like a big company decision, since I'm an owner of the company, then I have a voice in that sort of stuff, for sure. But, you know, when it comes to, so, you know, I mean, on a personal level, I sort of recruited Matt, right? Matt was working for the Blaze at the time. I'd read his stuff. And I said to Jeremy, this is like very early on in the company. I said, you know, he's a real talent. I think we should grab him. And Jeremy looked at him too and was like, yeah, I totally concur. We should totally try and make an offer to him. And so we grabbed Matt. If you watch his original podcast, he was doing it from his car. It's really, it's really funny. And, you know, all of our stuff

was really bootstrapped. The story of the company is kind of amazing. I mean, we originally had a $4.8 million investment from an angel investor, and we did not take any outside money for the first eight years of the existence of the company. We spun it up from $4.8 million of initial investment to a $200 million a year company just on cash flow. We were profitable 18 months in, and we just kept reinvesting in the company and reinvesting in the company. That's fucking impressive. That's crazy. Yeah, it's a credit to Jeremy and Caleb. They're the ones doing the day-to-day. You know, I get to do the talent stuff. Every so often I have like a good business idea but you know they're they're the ones who are really running the ship where do you

see it like what's the ultimate goal with it in like five years i mean i want to double triple quadruple they they want to do the same thing i mean so that so that means extending you know our reach in politics but it also means extending our reach outside of politics it's one of the reasons why we're enthusiastic about brand opportunities like a jeremy's razor because we think that that can actually expand outside of the political realm or just like normal dues who don't care about politics really like the razor yeah so you know put it and put it in amazon but you know put it in grocery stores for example. We would love to expand. We've tried a couple of times, expanding sort of the entertainment offering, but that's more delicate. Our audience is trained to want politics. So if we just

make a straight movie, is that something our audience is going to dig? Probably not. Probably not. So you have to gradually expand what the audience wants. We have the capacity to launch new brands at a particular level, but it's not going to be at like Netflix level. So we're constantly kind of probing to see where the opportunities are in each of these areas and then wherever you see the opportunity you push but they require independent marketing efforts so like when you launch the children's network and then we made the the faulty assumption for example that that you could kind of politically market to parents and say listen you don't want what crap on Disney you should check us out and it turns out the parents are kind of lazy about this sort of stuff and they just

want to you know buy what their kid wants them to buy without having to screen stops crying and yeah exactly and so that that requires an independent market also it's It's marketing to a different market than we typically do, right? Well, we tend to skew mail in terms of our consumers. But if you're doing kids' product, that tends to skew grandparents and moms. So that's a different marketing contingent. You have to market in a different way and in different places. So all these things require, like, actual business plans and constantly breaking and remaking the machine.

Business is like, you know, breaking bones and resetting them and breaking bones and resetting them. That's all it is over and over and over. That's super impressive, though. That's crazy. new coming up or what about the aquanah is that new oh yeah the super new there's like a year old yeah i'm like got the watch game going on yeah exactly there you go um how many watches you have 10 damn um not all at this level what what do you drive to work and because i have 24-7 security unfortunately uh an escalate but i'm not driving it um you know the cars that i have at home i have like a honda

odyssey so my joke is that you know like under tait walks into his compound he's got like a bugatti and he's got like a labrugini and this is like my my version of masculinity is i walk into my compound. There's like eight Honda Odysseys, of different colors. But we've got that, and then we have a Tesla Model X, which my son is just in love with. We should set up this roundtable with Andrew Tate, too. Let's do it. Go for it. Yeah. Would you do it one day if we zoom them in or something? I don't know you want to fly to Romania. Yeah, flying to Romania seems like a long schlep. That would be some good internet. It would be great. And it would be an interesting debate, like, just to like watch. Again, I think that my only, my only proviso is that like, you know,

I would like to have a good intellectual conversation with Ander Tate without maybe some of the, you know, bluster. If that's achievable, that sounds great. If it's just going to be me, you know, talking about the vision of masculinity that, you know, and him talking about how he can kick me in the head, I fully accept. As a proviso, just right up front, Ander Tate can for sure kick my ass. Yeah, I don't think you mean that doesn't mean like, also his ideas are bad. So that's it, that's all. Sweet.

All right. Ben, thank you so much. Thank you, bro. Thanks so much, guys. Awesome.