MTracey podcast - A date with Destiny

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

While in the Miami area over the past week, I thought it would be amusing to pay a visit to Destiny, whom I once “streamed” with in the past, and was astonished to discover after the fact that he was simultaneously playing video games the entire time. This naturally piqued my curiosity about the streaming lifestyle — meaning, guys like Destiny who live-stream themselves many hours a day, virtually every single day. So I asked him some questions about that. We also got into Iran, Trump, Democrats, Epstein, my personal voting choices, and the usual slate of other topics. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mtracey.net/subscribe

Okay, would you, for people who don't know, this is prolific substack writer, Twitter poster. Yes. Michael Tracy. Impressive title, right? Just a poster. Just a poster. Well, posters are a big deal now. The internet has become real life, right?

If you can't post, then you ain't, can we curse? Yeah. You ain't shit. There you go. I shouldn't even ask if we can curse, of course. That's understood. Why would you say, of course? You just assume that?

Well, I don't know. I seem to recall you dropping epitets. No. You don't? Not like that. Okay. Those are all AI generated. Okay.

Okay. What are we talking about? I don't know. So, okay, I'm sort of curious. So, um, I, we did a remote stream. I think it was in 2022. Okay. Was this about like whether or not something counted as a tank?

No. That's a meme that people still remember that they use against me as though I didn't, because it was a whole nomenclatural thing. Okay. Semantic thing around. Gotcha, gotcha. The provision of heavy armored vehicles to Ukraine by Biden and did those kinds of tank. It's not even really worth going over.

But there's a segment of my trolls who are still fixated on that. But it was about something to do with Ukraine because that guy, that creature, Vouch did a whole, he invited me out for a whole debate and he ended up screaming at me and saying I love Hitler and saying that I'm evil and don't believe anything I say. Okay. And then I guess you were told about this Vouch encounter by your, followers and then you invited me on. But one thing I found amazing, because it was like, I thought it was a pretty

constructive conversation. I don't know if you recall it. But then afterwards, I realized that you were playing video games the whole time. And I was just amazed. I mean, it's cool, I guess. I just had no notion that that's what you were doing the whole time. So do you still do that? Not anymore.

Okay. But I have one of five ounce now, so I can focus better. But before I would just need something occupying my hands to do something. I got you. But I was just because we went with like three hours and then people were telling me afterwards Hey, he was just playing a game the whole time It was just sort of funny to not even realize what's going on in real time Do you play games at all or?

I play video games, but I kind of compartmentalize my video games so I'm not multitasking while I'm playing them Sure, I know I understand that I just play console console single player games on occasion I don't even want to incorporate any kind of social element to it Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. that makes sense. Hey, Doug Fesney, thank you for gifting sums. But generally, whatever game I'm playing is a game I've played a ton before. So even though I'm playing while chatting,

I'm really just having a conversation and I'm probably just like kind of automated. It's kind of like occupying your hands or it's just sort of like this auditory stimuli that you need to, that's not really mentally intensive. Basically something like that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you play? Somebody donated something. Oh, okay. I thought maybe they were on to us. Yeah. Do you play console games? Not as much anymore. I grew up playing console games, but then I think once you transitioned to doing PC heavy stuff,

and then as recently, like, a lot of console stuff releases for PC anyway, so. I never really transitioned to the console heavy thing. I didn't play, I didn't have a video game console for like 10 years. And then somebody... Do you mind me asking? How old are you? 37. Okay.

Oh, you? 37. December 88. I'm August 88. Okay, cool. Okay, so older than... I guess that makes us... I guess that bonds us in some way.

A little bit, yeah. Yeah, I'm three months older and wiser than you. Yeah, okay. I didn't have a console for like 10 years, right? Okay. Because when I was an adolescent, that's my number one activity was just playing video games, Xbox, whatever.

Wait, you didn't have a console, you didn't have a PC? I didn't have any consoles, and then I had a, you know, a computer always, but none that was really set up for game. Wait, how did you play games all the time if you didn't have a console? I didn't play any really for 10 years.

Oh, you didn't play for 10 years. Okay, so I got you. And then some of it was really. And then somebody who I won't name convinced me to get a switch ostensibly just so we could play some casual Mario cart. But then, of course, I couldn't control myself. And it branched out within like a matter of weeks to me getting like this entire switch back catalog that I missed and then a PS5. So I basically spent like a month playing like the best games from the prior 10 years that I had missed. Okay.

I mean, it was awesome. Like I hadn't played uncharted. I hadn't played Red Dead Redemption 2. I hadn't played Mario Odyssey. I hadn't played Breath of the Wilds. But I wasn't very productive during that month. Yeah, you've got to be careful. But recently, I can moderate.

So I haven't really played anything since January where I kind of did like the first third of Tears of the Kingdom. Is that a Zelda game? Yeah, it's like the sequel, basically, to Breath of the Wild. Okay, okay. Gotcha. But prior to that, I played, Donkey Kong Bonanza on Switch. Have you played that?

Do you have a Switch 2? No. My last console was like... Are you a gamer or not? PC gamer, PC gamer. Okay. I thought this is like fundamentally a gaming sort of stream. Well, no, now it's fundamentally...

Extended into political stuff. It did. It extended back in 2016, so now we're mainly political with a little bit of gaming. I used to be a professional strike of two player, but now we do mainly horrible politics. Okay, so yeah, that's a different stratosphere than I ever was. I did, I played competitive like worms, Armageddon for a bit. I like worms. Remember Worms.

Worms was good. But Donkey Kong Bananza was great. And then Astrobot on the PS5 was great. It's like basically the first time that Sony came up with a Mario equivalent. Okay. But other than that, like there's not a whole lot that really... I would argue with a thing like Raymond and Spider-O-The-Dragon were more. Arguably.

I mean, in recent years anyway. In recent years, yeah. And it's the first one that made use of the computing power of the PS-5. Okay. But Astrobot was phenomenal. Ducky Hong Bonanza is great But there's nothing really other than that That's come out recently that I'm even that interested in

So I'm sort of like forced to moderate my video game Usage anyway Okay Cool Does anybody care about that or like Does anybody care about my video game? It helps us make an emotional connection to you as a speaker It can

Yeah, I can So you ever played like Red Dead Redemption 2 and stuff Or I played games in that vein I didn't play that one exactly But like I played like the Witcher 3 And the Last of Us And what like these types of games

Yeah And The Last of Us 2. But Red Dead Red Redemption 2 is like a landmark and just pop culture. Yeah, a lot of people liked it. Big games. It's like the best-selling entertainment product of all time or something. Well, that's probably GT5 or Minecraft or Roblox. Well, maybe it was like the fastest selling.

It was a really big. There was some metric by which it was the most commercially successful something or other. With a horse in it, I think. With a horse in tuberculosis. But it was a slim category. No, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so what is...

So why am I in Miami? Yeah, what did you do before? Okay. Who were you talking to? So I told you on the elevator ride up that I don't often reach out, quote unquote, to anybody with any kind of media platform to appear on their platform, but I had recalled that you were in Miami somewhere. I was coming to Miami anyway, so I figured, what the heck, let me reach out to Destiny.

Okay. Because that could be funny. You can call me Stephen in real life. Stephen? And funny. Okay. You got you. Wait, so real IRL people don't call you destiny?

No. Damn. I thought you kept the illusion going like it was a WWF gimmick, like the Undertaker, he would go out in public. And he wouldn't be the undertaker per se, but he would kind of have like almost the aura of the undertaker about him because they didn't want to break the gimmick. Nope. But I'm an asshole when I'm Stephen too.

So I'm like the same person. I just with a different name. Okay. So I was my programming background was I was Neo Destiny or Destiny. So I just kept the name for all my branding everything. So that's why I go. Okay. That's cool.

I mean, Hey, it's a brand, right? Yeah. My brand is just my name. Like, that's not cool. Yeah. So I got invited to come on, to appear on a show. I didn't actually even know what I was agreeing to do.

I just know that I was invited to come down to Miami. And it was under the auspices of talking to the guy who was probably most responsible for popularizing Pizza Gate. Okay. In 2016. What was his name? Ben Swan. Do I know this guy? He was a, he was a, he was a,

He was a local TV reporter at the same time, TV anchor for like a, maybe a CBS affiliate in Atlanta. And he did a segment on Pizza Gay, I think it was in January of 2017. So maybe he wasn't most responsible, but he was the guy in the sort of traditional media who actually covered Pizza Gate, quote unquote, if you could call it that. Gotcha. Did this guy have the Trump Golden Shoes? I don't know if I debated this guy or not.

No, I don't think I have. Okay, go ahead. So anyway, more recently, after the most, after the latest production of Epstein files, he has been on like a victory tour saying, PizzaGate is vindicated, PizzaGate is true. Jeffrey Epstein is PizzaGate. I could never quite tell what his argument exactly was in terms of how the Epstein Files vindicated Pizza Gate or prove Pizza Gate is true because my understanding was that there were never any child sex slaves found at the comic pizza restaurant, comet ping pong pizza restaurant. I mean, there wasn't even a basement that the place had, and supposedly it was in the basement where the CP orders. Whether there was a basement or not, I think the more relevant factor is like whether there are actually any child sex slaves. Well, the basement is an important part.

How are you going to have sex slaves on the first floor, where everybody can just look into the windows, you know? People seem to focus a lot on whether or not there was a basement. I mean, in whatever floor of the dwelling we're talking about, had child sex slaves been discovered there, like, that would probably be the most relevant investigatory finding. Sure, I guess. And there weren't any. And yet, like, there's still, like, this demographic of the Internet that is very invested in declaring that PizzaGate was true. So I figured we'd probably be talking about that when he invited me.

I just accepted it because, you know, I hadn't traveled in maybe two, two or three months, so I figured why the hell not? And they spirited me out to this, like, cavernous studio somewhere around the outskirts of Miami. Okay. And we did it on Thursday and, you know, it was a pretty cordial discussion. It started out with a lot of Iran and Trump stuff and then like the second half was kind of Pizza Gates slash Epstein. And he kind of like agreed with me. Like he ended up basically agreeing with me or at least claimingly he agreed with me, which is sort of interesting because he's one of the last guys you would ever expect to concede anything in that

vain because his whole identity is wrapped up with having been the guy who was trying to blow the whistle on Pizza Gate. And all these years later, he's finally vindicated by the Epstein files. And yet, hey, I mean, nice enough guy. I mean, I don't really know what the business operation is going there. Like, I know he did register in 2022 under Farah with the Department of Justice

because he was producing content on behalf of some Russian outfit. Okay. Right. Props to him for disclosing. Yeah. He disclosed it. He disclosed it. Yeah. I mean, so. This is basically all podcasts today are when people go on these types of shows, the conversations have to be friendly and there's no adversarial stuff. Yeah. So like you can be a guy who thinks that the earth is round and they can be a flat earther and you can come on and say something like, well, we've done a lot of tests and it's proven that the earth is round. I think I've heard of those. Yeah.

So what do you think about like the firmament? You're like, well, I think the firmament is completely and totally fake. And the guy would be like, yeah, you know, that's okay, yeah, that's really interesting. You know, yeah, I kind of agree. Yeah, I think it's real, but I kind of agree with you. And it's just like that for four hours. That's the Joe Rogan sensibility, right? But that's everybody now.

Everybody does this, yeah. Well, everybody emulates Joe Rogan. He's the big Kahuna, right? Whether or not they're conscious of it. I mean, they're very conscious of it. Some may be, some may not be. If you're just kind of absorbing what the prevailing kind of ethos is of podcast culture, then what you're absorbing is fundamentally something that originates with Joe Rogan.

Sure, yeah. When I say those people are conscious of it, what I mean is that they explicitly go out of their way to avoid critical conversations, and they explicitly invite people that they know are going to play ball and be nice and have those types of conversations. But Joe Rogan, I mean, you sit him in front of virtually anybody for two and a half for three hours. he'll end up at least kind of in spirit agreeing with him. Yeah.

Which can be good in terms of just a casual conversation if you're not trying to do anything adversarial, like if you're just chatting with somebody. Like I know when I do journalistic type interviews and I'm just trying to like understand what people's beliefs are or what they think about a certain issue, it's just like an ordinary person.

I'm not necessarily going to be probing them in this interrogative way as if I'm interviewing a politician. Sure. But if you are interviewing a politician, politician, then maybe your mindset should shift a little bit, like when Joe Rogan had Trump for three hours, like a week before the election in 2024, and it ended just being this chummy gab fest. Like that was a threshold crossing event for me in terms of the ire with which, the ire that I

plan on now directing at the podcast class. Yeah. Because that did a disservice to the entire country. I mean, I would agree. but yeah, I just, I don't think that's by accident. I think it's by design. I think they know what's going on there because if they had other motivations, you would expect to see them acting differently.

Who's them? Like the people in the podcast class. Like they know that there are certain opinions that they can talk about, that there are certain people that they can bring on to echo those opinions that vibe well with their audience, and they know to bring those people on to do those types of podcasts and give those types of messages and then get those types of clicks and views and then make the money on that stuff.

And then that's like at the end of the day, that's where they're going to be, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think that probably is the case, meaning a by design philosophy for people who are lower on the food chain than Joe Rogan. But at this point,

Joe Rogan is like a Johnny Carson. Like he can have basically anybody that he wants on the podcast. But who does he invite on? Well. It's the same ideologically backed people over and over. How many, like Constantine just went on. They've been on like six times.

It was the seventh time. It's not like the short of guess. They just had, do you know who Andrew Wilson who raised? Rachel Wilson are. These people are crazy out there conservatives. Like Rachel Wilson has written a book on like satanic like ownership of children. Like they're crazy people, but he just had both of them on.

That's big right now on the podcast circuit. Satanic ownership of children. Yeah. But like it's just because they're kind of right wing and they'll reinforce those views. And like that said, it's just that over and over again. Did you follow the big debate between, is it Graham, Hitchcock and Flint Dibble? I did end up watching some of that. Like, Brogan sided with the guy who believes that we're.

this close to finding Atlantis. Like that's who Rogan side of it. I don't think that's an accident. And Clint Gibble was more of like an actually reputable archaeologist or something. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, 100%. It's not even close.

I wasn't really invested in that debate. It was just sort of interesting that that was being hosted by Rogan and like people really were passionate about it. So it's just kind of like a bystander to it. Yeah. But I mean like it's not like a coincidence that, especially in today's political climate, I don't know if you've noticed this yet. But if you give me like one belief of a person, I can probably predict like 12 other beliefs

just by you telling you a thing. They have a cluster together. Yeah, super clustered. But I mean, I believe that he would have actually had Kamala Harris on the podcast if it came together, right? No shot. What you just said doesn't even make sense. If it came together, right, I think that if you really wanted to talk to the Democratic nominee, the person who at the time, if you're being good faith, like it was never a hopeless race for her, right?

Like, it could have been anywhere from slightly favorite to slightly disfavor. But no sane person was like, oh, she's never going to win, right? If you knew that you had an opportunity to interview this person, you would move heaven and earth to do so 100%. There's no world where like, ah, it didn't work out that I couldn't interview the vice president of the United States of the potential future president of the United States. Yeah. On the other hand, you could see it being like a bit of a power move, meaning you have to come to him, which is what Trump did. And that's what J.D. Vance did and Kamala?

I think they couldn't work that out, work it out logistically. But that wasn't true. It's like, okay, whatever. Didn't Joe, I thought, didn't they move or travel to do the Trump show? Did Trump go to Austin for it? I'm almost positive, and you can look it up. I'm almost positive that Trump went to the studio in Austin. I feel like they tried to make accommodation somehow.

I don't know if it was by the day or something else. Because I thought, I felt like for Kamala, I thought that they had the opportunity because Kamala was doing something in, I want to say Dallas or Houston, but Joe Rogan said that they had like, fuck, I was just remember, yeah. But Kamala's people wanted Joe Rogan to come to Houston. But I think they were, I feel like they were willing to go to Austin. But Joe said, like, he had a baseball game. So it was something really stupid to do something. Like, it could have happened if they wanted to do something. I would have to go back and look at the details.

But that's just one of those things where it's kind of like, like if you're texting somebody and they never respond and they're like, well, I'm busy. It's like, well, if you care it, I think you'd probably just respond. But Joe Rogan, he'll occasionally have on, like, Bernie Sanders. He had John Federman on. Okay, stop. What? Yes. But, like, there's a difference.

You hear people say this. You're making me to, hold on. You're talking to me. Wait, I just need to say this program. You've met these people. Actually, I don't even know where your political leanings are. But, like, there are these people who are like, oh, no, I talk to people on the right and left. Oh, who do you talk to on the right?

Everybody. Who do you talk to on the left? Oh, so many left-leaning people. They would say before, now it's a little bit. They say like, I talk to RFK Jr. I talk to Tulsi Gabbard. Now it's, yeah, now it's John Fetterman and Roe Kana and maybe Bernie Sanders. It's like, okay, so you're talking to like the most outer perimeter fringe kind of like left leading people.

But like you're never going to have like an establishment like AOC type or. So you think he wouldn't have Gavin Newsomah? Didn't. I think he would. I mean, I think I'm surprised that this would happen soon. To go on. Wasn't I making this up? Didn't Gavin tweet out saying that like I like let me on your podcast and Joe Rogen was saying no?

I think... Yeah, I think I remember something like that. You might be right. So, like, that's by design, right? I'll be shocked if that doesn't happen eventually, though. If it doesn't happen eventually? I don't think it will, because I think Joe needs to be in his... He needs to be in the hug box.

Yeah. Which is sad, I think. You start with Joe Rogan. He wants to be president so bad. The governor of the most popular state and the host of one of the most popular podcasts are feuding. This is Gavin Newsom. California Governor Gavin Newsom, who hosts his own podcast, has invited Joe Rogan onto his show. He doesn't be invited on a Rogan Show.

Joe, why won't you have me on the show? Yeah. It's one way. That's crazy, right? Look, like Sean Ryan's, he's another sort of right-wing podcaster guy. He had, he did. He did, yeah. For four hours.

Holy crap. Because I think Gavin will go anywhere, right? But Joe Rogan is a pussy-ass bitch. He won't. He will not talk to people that have substantial disagreements with him. Yeah, I mean, you might be right on some level. Again, I'm genuinely not even trying to. I'm very antagonistic toward Joe Rogan at this point.

Just because, like it or not, people have very, view him as an authoritative source of news. I know, unfortunately. And then this whole little deflection pivot where I'm just a comedian, bro, I'm a dummy. Nobody should take me seriously. Meanwhile, like for the whole month of February into March, he was just blasting out the most preposterous Epstein files revelations that Jamie was sending over him. Based on whatever had risen to the top of the algorithmic slop heap that day and presenting it as like credible, you know, proven information. to millions of people

and, you know, it's kind of, I don't want to say it get too melodramatic about it, but like it is dangerous in the sense that if he's telling this mass audience, right, the biggest audience on the internet, that as he did, like maybe it was February 15th or something like that, that these prophecies that have come from Whitney Webb,

I don't know if you know who that is. No. I don't know. I won't even try to... She said prophecy, so I'll assume she's a crazy person, yeah? She's crazy enough. But she's seen as this very reputable person in terms of like the conspiracy adjacent journalism world to the degree that that exists. Okay.

But Joe Roken was saying, man, this Whitney Webb check, she's been proven 100% right. How does she do it? Because they pulled up this tweet of hers from April 2020 that went newly viral after the Epstein files came out where Whitney Webb is like, how is it that Leslie Wexner got away with trafficking and financing the trafficking? financing the trafficking and raping of thousands of American children. And it's been covered up. So Joe Rogan is now resurfacing this tweet from six years ago or seven years ago. No, six years ago? My arithmetic is off.

As if to say that like this woman who was a prophet like shouting into the, into the darkness six years ago, has now been proven dramatically correct, if that's the message that you're telling to, you know, millions upon millions of people who are looking. who are impressionable and who are looking at you as a kind of authoritative news disseminator, then there's going to be a subset of those people who have probably some predisposition toward mental instability and think that maybe now it's incumbent upon them to take retributive action. And there was a guy, I'm not blaming Joe Rogan personally for this, or saying he's causally responsible.

He is, go ahead. But, you know, like not long thereafter, there was a 21-year-old guy who became newly obsessed with the Epstein files and tried to launch an armed incursion to Mar-a-Lago and got shot it. So, I mean, that's kind of what you're incubating out there. And Joe Rogan is at the top of the pyramid in terms of what our contemporary information environment is revolving around.

So that's my big problem with Joe Rogan. And just like a few days ago, somebody, because people try to rally me up and send me these clips and then I have no self-control, so I look at them. But he was saying, oh, yeah, Netanyahu. Joe Rogan was saying that he thinks that Netanyahu was dead. Oh, yeah. Because that was like a thing in the past couple days on social media.

Because there was like a thing where his hand looked like this or something. And people were like, where is his thumb? Or why does he have like five fingers or it's AI or something? Yeah. And Joe Rogan was saying to this other comedian guy he had on, look, we know that Deniahu's brother was just killed in an air strike. So, you know, it stands to reason that BB himself is also dead. And Joe Rogan was literally basing his statement.

a fact on a bogus viral tweet that had just proclaimed Netanyahu's brother had died in an airstrike based on a viral image that had gone around of a house fire in New Jersey. And that's what Joe Rogan just looks at and believes without like any second guessing whatsoever and then blast out to the biggest audience on the internet. I mean, do you remember the whole kitty litter fiasco? That was where Rogan, I don't even remember if he saw this on a Facebook posting or somebody emailed him or whatever, but somebody said, and it was totally made up. It came out that this was totally made up, but he started this whole national panic where

somebody was like, they're putting kitty litter boxes in classrooms now for kids that identify as furries. And it was just completely not true. And this was like captured the Republican like public thought for probably a month or so. And yeah, eventually it came out. It was all just bullshit. It was just a lie. But I mean, it was obviously a lie. But it's just like the fact that these people are so hungry for these things.

And it tells you something about the person. And it should tell them something about themselves that they fall for it so easily where they should think like, okay, well, if I thought for this and this and this and this and this and this and this, maybe I need to change the way that I'm approaching something or create some type of new mental guard to not fall into this. Never, no. He's incorrigible. Yes. You think at some point he would feel some public spirited obligation, right? Just given his reach, given the enormity of his influence to have like a thought that's percolating around in his. brain somewhere that before he just blast out this info that's like not just about something about

comedy or something inconsequential, you know, some casual little piece of, you know, banter or gossip, but like something that's directly pertaining to ongoing very significant news events, like a war or, you know, an election or like an alleged child rape atrocity, that like maybe he would do like a second or two of confirmatory. research, but he just doesn't do it. Yeah. And at a certain point, like, it's not that, it's not funny anymore. Yeah, we are way past that point.

Yeah. But, I mean, like, the way that I look at it is I just look at where all the incentives are, right? Like, when he does these things, you get a ton of positive feedback. You make a lot of money. You retain your viewer base. Like, everything is just going really well for you. Imagine if there was some story that came out about Kamala or Biden that was negative or

about Trump that was positive, and you had an inkling that it wasn't real. what besides personal integrity of which Joe Rogan has none of why would you stop that story there's no accountability nobody's suing anybody for defamation your audience obviously there's no disincentive yeah exactly so they just follow kind of

the tide on that and if anything it made him the most coveted political endorsement in the entire country in 24 why would you change what he's doing exactly yeah which is very very very annoying yeah can I ask so what is your how often do you stream every day I'm supposed to stream it hours a day I try to yeah

and do you ever take days off or anything I mean, I travel for events. So, like, I'm going out of town tomorrow to go to ASU, so that'll be like two or three days off streaming. But if you're just home, I'm always doing emails there where I'm generally always working. You wouldn't take a day off from the streaming. If I do, it's because I have to catch up on other stuff, yeah.

Okay. Interesting. And how do you think that, I'm distracted by that concept. Good. That's what it's here for for me to get a psychological edge. It's to throw off the weirdos who come to your apartment and want to sit in front of this very impressive setup that I have no technical ability to construct on my own, definitely. How do you think that the constant streaming and the constant almost public exposure,

maybe exposure is a little bit of an overstatement or a little bit of a kind of serious way of putting it, but like constantly being in public view for so long, day after day, do you think there are any downsides to that just in terms of your ability to think, like to almost have private thoughts that you can come up, with in the sanctity of your own mind and not necessarily have a, you know, an audience of people scrutinizing like every little gradation in your thought process. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, I think there can be. I think it just depends on the type. I think for most people there probably is. I think I'm pretty lucky in that I started streaming early. I built a fan base

doing StarCraft and then I transitioned to politics still like pretty early on the whole kind of streaming era. Like I was the first person on Twitch to really do politics at all. Oh, really? Yeah. Like when was that right? Like what year would have been around 2016. They used to ban my streams early on for a day because you weren't technically allowed to do non-gaming content initially. When did he start? He got his start on my stream on 2017. He asked my worst my worst my worst contribution to the world. I met him at the young Turks facility in Los Angeles. Yeah. And I didn't even know who he was. He was just introduced to me as like a relative of Jenk. I didn't know he was going to become this big behemoth. Yeah. I have like people who are like I had a cousin of mine tell me that basically all my cousin knew of what I had done, quote unquote, professionally is that I had been on like Hassan's stream at one point or I had been referenced by him.

So I mean, he seems to like be a big presence. Yeah, he's like a leftist, anti-American Turkish nebo baby that is committed to the destruction of the Western order. So, you know, what are you going to do? You said it not me. You said it not me. I'm just sort of fascinated by like the lifestyle, you know. The hyper-consumerous, hyper-capitalist, ultra-materialist one where he preaches, socialist values all the time.

I just meant the 24-7 ubiquitous streaming lifestyle. Do you ever think, do you ever think there are any downsides to it? Yeah, there can be for sure. It just depends on, like, like people are going to have inclinations towards certain things. And I'm probably lucky in that the time I was born in and then whatever biological genes are turned on or off, like I can sit in an area for a long time. I like to play games. I'm relatively oppositional in nature.

So I like fighting with people. Right, right. Same here. Same here. I won't deny that. All of these traits, well, even for what you do, right? Like, there are a lot of people that would kill themselves if they had to deal with your Twitter feed for a day or two. That is true. So, like, it's just like, yeah, picking these things and then you try to maximize for the good things. So, like, I enjoy streaming because I can do arguably whatever I want. Because sometimes I think to myself, gee, are there any almost like psychological tradeoffs that I'm not fully conscious of in my having now been a nerd to, you know, millions of people on the internet,

constantly screaming the most foul possible things at me, after day where it has no longer any kind of psychological impact on me, at least in a way that would dissuade me from doing what I'm doing, right? Especially pedophile recently because I have my perspective on the Epstein matter. But, you know, even before that, you know, it was something else, right? Now, I just sort of wonder, like, if you were a well-adjusted normal person, you probably would have an emotional reaction or some kind of negative psychological reaction to people just flinging these most repulsive slurs at you. you and now that that no longer really has any kind of tangible effect on me, is that good, bad?

I mean, there's nothing I can really do about it, but sometimes I do ponder what did I get myself into and what maybe am I not fully cognizant of in terms of how that's effective my psyche? I think the things you're not cognizant of are generally going to be negative. So like in psychology, you can have like a positive condition or you can have the absence of something like a negative condition. I think what you're usually not aware of as much are the negatives. So I moved a lot of my personal life used to be very public on stream, and then I kind of made an even heavier slant towards just political content at the end of

2023, early 2024. So I started moving a lot of my political life or my personal life off stream. And one of the things that I noticed that was just kind of funny to notice is that like if I'm talking to a person, because I'm making kind of like more real life friends at Miami Beach now, I notice that like if I'm talking to you, I actually don't have to worry that every single thing I say to you is at some point going to be just posted somewhere on the internet. Like it's kind of a nice feeling. It's just sort of funny that you did have to be.

Yeah, because before it's like, yeah, I have to think like, if there's leaks, what is the person going to say or whatever, because it's just like everybody's going to talk shit, everybody leaks, everybody does, whatever. There's that. And then the idea of like meeting people on your own terms and not meeting somebody who already knows like every single thing about you and already has other people or other people or already has other people. Like, associating with normal people who are also kind of involved or noticed like the online stuff can be weird sometimes because it's hard to explain to somebody. Like, why are there a million people that you say, think you're a murderer or fascist or Nazi or pedophile or whatever. Like that can be hardly or violently angry at you right now. now on the internet? Yeah. What do you mean that the, what do you mean when you say that in the past you had sort of lived your personal life online? Like what did that? Because I'm actually not even familiar. Like what did that consist of? And was that like a conscious choice on your behalf? Yeah, it was a conscious choice. I just, I did a huge variety of content. There was a lot of drama. There were a lot of like messy like friend stuff, dramatic stuff, like people coming on to debate and argue over pop culture issue, feminist stuff, red pill stuff, just crazy online people. I had like a revolving door on this discord of people that would come in and out. It was just like a

It was very, very, very crazy. So people want to debate, like, your personal relationships and things? Sometimes. It could be that. Or it could just be, like, cultural-related issues. Because I was friends with a lot of these people, so a lot of that blend into, like, the streaming stuff as well. Yeah, I've always made a point to never really discuss my personal life on the Internet.

Not that there's anything particularly salacious about it. Believe me. It's just that, like, I don't want to even open that up for public scrutiny in any way, because, like, stuff could just get derailed and... Of course, yeah. blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. So, yeah, that's always been something I've been instinctively averse to doing.

But I could see the appeal of it because, like, if people are following you day in and day out, it's almost like a mini soap opera, right? Yeah, and also it depends because there's like a huge upside for YouTubers and especially streamers because they're watching you so much. So the closer to the connection, they feel probably the more strengthens their attachment to your content. But if you're like a writer on Substack or you're doing strictly political stuff, well, that personal connection doesn't matter as much because nobody's going to be like,

oh my God, it's this guy. And I know, like, his wife is on Twitter. And I'm going to see what he wrote about this, you know, Iran invasion, right? Like the connection is not like the same thing. So what was the turning point for you where you said I have to kind of separate out my personal life? I got an official ADHD diagnosis or taking amphetamines. So I got a much. I could focus more on reading stuff.

And I didn't have the as much of kind of like the thrill seeking of like just the crazy online fights. So I was more just kind of like focused on just political stuff basically. Yeah. That was a big change. Maybe I'll have to go back and watch our stream from 2022. see if I can detect any differences in your presentation in the pre the pre-stimulant phase versus the post-stimulatory. It probably wouldn't be as much because when I was talking to you, it was still kind

of like political stuff, but the content around that time, there's just a lot of insanely crazy. It was just, I can't even explain it here. Like imagine like the worst type of reality TV, but like with a million different issues, cultural and political and just people involved. It's a lot. Wait, so Hassan got his start on your stream. Like, what did that, how did that come about? So Hassan had a debate in 2016, or it might have been early 2017 with Charlie Kirk.

And then he wanted to get in... RIP? Yeah. He wanted to get involved in the online streamer space because he was big on kind of Facebook, and he was kind of growing up under the Young Turks on their media network. And he reached out to me to get debate feedback and advice with Charlie Kirk. And we had a call, and we kind of got along pretty well. And then we were kind of, I would say, friends for the next year or two.

and then, yeah, we went our separate ways. People must have enjoyed following the every latest development in terms of that relationship, right? Well, I mean, I would say the vast majority of it was very not dramatic. Okay. There was a thing that I hadn't learned yet, a personal lesson that I needed to learn on the Internet, which is if you attack only one side

and you never actually put a stake in the ground against the other side, people have the perception of you as being way more on that side and you gather a lot more followers on that side than you realize. So in the... Have you ever heard of game? Yes. Okay. So in the 2016-2017 era, the whole like world of video games started to become way more

like... Yeah, no, I saw at the time. And there was the definitive Gawker article on... Yes, was Zoe Quinn and all this. Yes. So because I was in the... There's too many women in video games. Exactly, yeah.

So I was very like argumentative debate, like aggressive coded, but I was also like left-leaning. So I came up debating a lot of these like big right-wing gaming-adjacent internet figures. So I had to debate with the guy called John Tron and then like Sargon of Akkad and like all the of a cod and like all of these people and when that when I was doing that and then when Hassan kind of started joining my stream there was a decent chunk of my fan base that I didn't realize this because I thought they were kind of joking like oh yeah like destiny's like basically a socialist like ha ha ha and I was like yeah okay whatever you know not really and then at some point when me and Hassan started to run into more and more disagreements there came to

point where I realized like hold on I am absolutely not a fucking socialist I think all of this is the dumbest most retarded shit the universe and then when me and Asan had our big split it was actually me and a son and then kind of Vosch too. Vosch also came up in my community. I'm sorry. But when I split, I like chopped like probably 30 or 40 percent of my fan base off and then they went that way because they were socialist and then I kept my liberals and then we did our thing. Vosch is probably the most unpleasant person I've ever had to attempt to interact with for anything. Okay. That's good for you because there are way worse people out there. But Vosch can be mean sometimes, yeah. I mean, it's just like literally, I'm not even making a political point.

Sure. It's just that in terms of the... Have you talked to Tatar? Taylor Rends. I saw you, I saw your encounter with her recently. You know, I, I kind of like Taylor at this point. I know that you've had a big beef with her. I made fun of her when she was going through her whole schick maybe four or five years ago

where her entire beat at the New York Times seemed to be that she was getting trolled on the internet and then she was going to make these grand inferences based on that and then demand like certain political instructions. interventions or policy interventions, seemingly mostly to help her or other besieged journalists. I thought that was really kind of self-involved and myopic. But yes, I did, I had a big, I found that we had a meeting of the minds at the substack bureau that they set up at the Democratic Convention in August of 2024 in Chicago. So I think we put our beef society and I think we're on good terms at this point, but I know that you don't like her. wired coverage of the influence.

I hate her. I think she's a disgusting, horrible influence. Yeah, just to be clear. But that's again. That's what I think gave me the idea to reach out to you because I saw your your discussion with, I saw part of it with Taylor. What did that, did you come to any kind of conclusions from that or is it still just this year?

I think Taylor's a bad faith actor in media. That's how I view, yeah. Did you ever read that chorus article? What article? She wrote an article about chorus, which was the... I read it when it first came out. It was like maybe last summer, right? Yeah. I just, I think a lot of it was not true. And I think that, like in general, wait, where do you align yourself with politically? What do you say you are?

Hold that thought. I want to make sure I don't forget this. Okay. Don't forget. You're talking about these, you know, video game focus pundits or commentators who then end up branching out into more political commentary and then you're coming up in that loggerheads with them. I recognize that same archetype and always did because in my adolescence, I was, I participated in message boards that were video game heavy, but obviously just became general topic message boards.

And inevitably, there were lots of people who wanted to talk about politics. So that was kind of where I cut my teeth, so to say, and just kind of online debate with a political component. Yeah. But so I have like in my mind almost like an archetype of the type of guy that you would have come into conflict with whose sort of genesis for engaging on the internet

was about their strongly held convictions on like Xbox versus GameCube or something. Yeah. Initially. And then they kind of, you know, go through a maturation process and become more politically involved. And so it's just sort of funny because like this is not, I've never been involved in this, in the streaming specific world. But in terms of how the political commentary world interfaces with the video game world,

I do have a bit more of direct personal experience, just such that I kind of, in essence, sort of know what you're talking about. Yeah. vis-a-vis the Gamergate stuff, even if that wasn't really my bellywick at the time. It's also funny because depending on the world you come from, people's entire political outlook will be defined by the kind of the narrow subculture that they inhabit. So, like, I would describe these people as they weren't really conservatives, but their entire

political ideology could be summed up as anti-SJW, like social justice warriors. So it'd be really funny because you could ask. Like, sorry, another cod. Yes, yeah. So you could ask somebody like, oh, who do you think is more privileged in society, like men are women and it would be like if you're a woman you can get so much free stuff in world of warcraft so obviously like that would be like the entirety of the thought regardless of what you think the actual answer is yeah whatever wherever where else what you think the actual answer is very funny because

their entire like life is informed by the the subculture that they come from yeah okay so in terms of my own political views okay so people ask me this and I promise I'm not trying to evade okay but I do find that my partisan and or political convictions are becoming less and less strong as I age. So, originally, I would have considered myself quote, progressive. Teenage years, early 20s. The first media outlet that I ever had a job at

in any kind of way was the Nation magazine, which is like the left-wing journal. The main left-wing, you know, the most preeminence, if you want to put it that way, left-wing magazine in the United States. I did work at the Young Turks for a bit from 2017 to 207 to 20. 2018, not because at that time I was any kind of doctrina, progressive, but they liked how I had covered, you know, Hillary and stuff from a critical standpoint of 2016, I guess.

But now, but it is true that, depending on what the political circumstances are in any given day or any given, you know, month, I've been called everything from, you know, fascist, Nazi, pro-Trump, to somebody who suffers from TDS, somebody who, who, is like a left-wing zealot. And so not that I would never ever tailor my own personal beliefs to kind of address anybody in the online sort of peanut gallery.

I just find that I'm driven, if I'm driven by anything, if I could go to the deepest recesses of my own mind and try to locate what my political convictions are, they seem to mostly be aligned with a journalistic impulse at this point in that I'm mostly interested

in truth-seeking. It's pompous, sure, but like, that's what I'm most interested in doing for the most part. And that doesn't really lend itself to any kind of neat affiliation with any particular political tendency or definitely a partisan allegiance. And so that's really what I'm motivated most by. Not that I'm not that I would ever obfuscate, like, if I, you know, what my preference would be in a particular election. Like, every presidential election cycle I put out a, you know, a post just describing what my reasoning is for voting or not voting for any particular candidate. I think that kind of transparency is pretty good. This last presidential election.

I did not vote for either Trump or Trump. Unbelievable. Sorry. Do you think Kamala would have been a better president than Trump at this point? Oh, my goodness. That's a counterfactual. I mean, look, I mean, I think, uh, oh boy. It's hard to say.

I mean, it's hard to say. I don't think, I mean, here's what I will say. Uh-huh. I don't think any Democrat, like substitute Trump right now for your generic Democrat Kamala or not, you know, somebody, Obama, Biden-ish. Uh-huh. probably would not be now at war with Iran because just you know differences in the nature of the Democratic coalition versus the Republican coalition and the Republican coalition you have an

outside presence of the evangelical Christian pro-Israel segment you have less of a baked in longstanding animosity toward Iran whereas that's been like the default Republican posture toward Iran for many years, such that when Obama did the Iran nuclear deal, it was uniform among Republicans to oppose that. Sure. Netanyahu opposed it as well, which is why there were congressional Republicans invited Netanyahu to come give a speech at a joint session of Congress to invade against the Iran nuclear deal.

And so, you know, I think there's a perfect storm now where, you know, this is something that Trump was probably disposed to do. Netanyahu is pretty skillful at trying to make a case. to an American counterpart and he knew which buttons to press with Trump and Trump also has probably wouldn't be tariffing the entire world probably wouldn't have been the mass deployment of ICE probably wouldn't have spent anywhere near as much it feels like that's kind of like what are the areas why is this such a hard choice for people it's not that it's a hard choice it's just that I have a very peculiar calculation that I make in terms of whether I'm going to vote for a presidential

candidate sure and I acknowledge that this is not I feel like there would never be in all of I I guess I'm not the best historian, but I'm trying to think of any election that could ever come up that would be as easy a choice as this. Like when you're thinking, like, if you were to ask me, like, would McCain have been a better president for the United States than Barack Obama? I guess I would have to go back at the time of read and analyze that. Like, there are things where it's like, maybe I could kind of see this. Or would, would Nikki Haley have been better than Joe Biden? And it's like, maybe I can kind of see this. But like, I can't think of two diametrically opposed outcomes as dramatic as, as.

Trump v. Kamala. Possibly. And in any area where I would have hedged in 2024 where I would have been like, well, maybe he won't be on any area like that

that it would have been it's so much worse. Possibly. I'm just giving you what my personal and very peculiar and anomalous calculation is at this point.

Sure. I'm not going to vote for a presidential candidate unless I can make a proactive case for them. Like I'm not going to do the lesser of two evils routine. I'm not going to do

like some counterfactual be like what could what could ever be an election that you would support over this one? Like I feel like the choice between these two candidates was like I don't know if it would ever be

as dramatic, like dramatically obvious which one would be better for the United States in almost every conceivable way. Well, I mean, I just, I wasn't going to legitimize by way of my vote which I know is not that significant

in the grand scheme of things. It's just one of a 300, one of three hundred, 10 million votes, right? More than that, I have a public platform of doing journalism stuff, right? So I try to maintain a consistent set of principles. And I just didn't feel that it was in any way warranted for me to

consecrate on any level a continuation of the Biden-Harris foreign policy, which I thought had been disastrous. What were the things for Harris or for Biden-Harris that you thought were beyond the pale? Like, I just can't endorse this. I thought the Ukraine policy was terrible. We had a debate about it in 2022. I thought... And then just to be clear on that, what was it to?

I thought the Middle East policy was also terrible, not necessarily terrible in the exact same way that Trump's could conceivably be. It's still terrible in its own way, such that I wasn't going to proactively validate it by way of my vote to the degree that a vote validates a policy platform. Is there any historically, or at least in your lifetime, though, is there a single president where there wouldn't be one thing that you could say this is not okay. So like of the 20 huge issues we might imagine a president has a position on, if we could imagine taxation, health care, the border, gay marriage, culture.

Like, if we can imagine 20 things, I feel like is there ever going to be a president where there's not going to be at least like one to five of these boxes where you're like, no, I wouldn't support it because this is a deal breaker. Possibly. I'm not saying that my current mentality on my own personal. voting choice is stuck in time forever more. Like maybe new information comes in at some point down the line where I make a different calculation and I am more willing to accept like a lesser of two evils calculus or I am

more willing to... Even on that phrase, like... Proactively affirm that I support a particular candidate. But, yeah. I mean, I voted for Obama in 2008. I campaign for him, actually. Like, I, you know, volunteered and registered voters. Sure, but does that count?

We were like 20... Yeah, it was like 1920 at the time. I support a Ron Paul for that election. Oh, did you? It was a long time ago, yeah. I kind of secondarily supported Ron Paul, just because I like just the critique that he was giving life to on some level where, you know, he was on a debate stage with Rudy Giuliani and John McCain and, you know, Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee, who were all just repeating the basically the Bush line on Iraq and Afghanistan and maybe even going after Iran. And there you have Ron Paul is this like voice in the wilderness who's just doing almost like a. diametrically opposite take like to me there was something commendable about that so i had a favorable

view of ron paul in that cycle as well and also into 2012 um even though i you know i hadn't voted for him um but yeah but that's my genesis look i'm not i even when i wrote in 2024 my kind of explanation of why i was abstaining from voting for any i wrote in fred flitstone okay um i was like i guess i was subconsciously channeling my by my premonitions that either Trump or Kamala could conceivably bring about like a dystopian post-apocalyptic hellscape akin to like the prehistoric age that the Flintstones lived in except it wouldn't be as cheerful as like the ones that the Flintstones inhabited. I feel like we could probably politically weigh those though, right? We could.

Like if I choose between like shooting you in the heart or. cutting your forearm with like a knife, like theory, you could get like an infection that becomes septic and you could die from like a cut. That's possible, but you would always opt for that over the getting shot in the heart with a gun, right? Yeah. I mean, I'm not begrudging anybody who feels that they want to make a probabilistic assessment of that kind in terms of how they determine their vote. Fine. Go ahead. Everybody's, you know, there's a million different rationales that people can have in terms of how they choose to cast their own vote. This is just my very peculiar individual rationale that, yes, does play into my,

overriding journalistic mentality. So I'm not telling anybody to do what I do necessarily. I'm just saying that, you know. One of the things that's the most frustrating to me about that is that for anybody that is at actual center or even center left person, they'll give that, they'll give that answer. You know who never, ever, ever gives that answer is anybody who's even remotely in the Trump camp. So you'll never hear like a Dave Smith person or you'll never hear Matt Taibi or Shalmers.

You'll never hear any of these people like, well, I don't want to vote for the lesser of two evils. So, you know, I'm not going to go ahead and vote for Trump. All of them will just say, like, Trump is probably better. And they don't have that same. There's no limit like, if I go to a political, if I go to an academic conference and it's a presentation on sociology or something. And the speaker is like, the speaker starts off with like, we're going to present our findings on this thing and we're doing our best to be apolitical. I know that person is left-leaning because a right-leaning person would never, ever say that. So you get never- something to that. Yeah. So it's a frustrating imbalance sometimes in the world where all these

people who are ostensibly in the center or like even sometimes like center left or further left depending on their specialty where they're presenting are trying very hard to be apolitical meanwhile anybody who's thrown in even remotely to trump's lot is like shilling for him harder than he possibly yeah it's fresh i mean i think going pretty hard after dave smith yeah because even at the time like he invited me to come on this uh twitter x space thing with him around his logic for supporting Trump in 2024. And now he's kind of like revising history a bit saying, oh, yeah, sure, I did vote for Trump. He's minimizing the role that he played in 2024.

It wasn't that just that he voted as a private citizen for Trump? It's that he participated in this whole propaganda onslaught. And even worse, prospectively, he should have known better because historically he's talked about the negatives of Trump in the past. And also, this is a guy who is like a single issue fucking loser that shows up on shows to quote some X-CIA guy about how horrible Iraq and Afghanistan. That's his whole shtick is talking about the X-CIA guy said that in Iraq and Halliburton and blah, blah, blah, and it's like, okay, so you're not hawkish, you're against all the warmongering, but somehow you found yourself, like, openly deep-throding the guy who is now, like, launched 27 different attacks between the Middle East and Africa? Like, what the fuck, bro?

Like, how do you fuck that up and have any semblance of decency to show your face anywhere online and talk about politics? Like, at that point, bro, go back to the unfunny comedian shit, because why would you even try to talk about politics at that point? I'm still amazed that I've never heard him say utter a single funny joke, even though I guess that. That's his primary job, right? Or something. Supposedly, yeah. And then, of course, like, I mean, I would almost be willing to declare, I would be willing to lobby for legislation that declared a total and complete moratorium on any

failed comedians transitioning into becoming political pundits in any way. It's a lot of them. I feel like that's a scourge. It's a lot of them. And it is a scourge 100%. If you go look at that. Case Constantine was a comedian guy and he got bullied. Was he?

Yes. And a lot of them are, a lot of them are comedians that got bullied once. And then their entire political life became being on the far right like for Joe Rogan It was it was the I think it was on CNN where they call Ivermectin horse paste that was it Joe Rogan's brain melted at that point He's like that fucking video was too yellow and I think they docked and then he was gone at that point It was like but if you go listen to that debate that I had with him in I think it was November of 2024 I just keep saying hey what about Trump's like very well established position on Iran? Didn't Trump just come out and advocate for Israel to launch preemptive?

strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, like during the campaign, which he did, which would necessitate, if you know, the first thing about the U.S. Israeli relationship, an active U.S. role militarily in that operation. So Trump was outright calling for a joint U.S. Israeli military strike on Iran, and Trump was also going around claiming that Iran was trying to assassinate him. He was appointing people who had already kind of set out a public argument for why a U.S. attack on Iran would be presumptively justified, even before Trump came into office, such as his CIA director, Ratcliffe, who as a private citizen, was going on Fox saying, look, they're trying to,

they hack Trump's campaign emails or something. I don't know if you're call that. And they're trying to assassinate him. Therefore, it should be foremost on our agenda to come into a next Republican administration and attack Iran. How are you so surprised with it? He tore up the JCPOA. When he was running in 2016, he said he was going to kill families of terrorists. He said he wants to leave people stationed in Syria so we can steal their oil. Like, he bombed Syrian airfield. He's been involved in attacks in Yemen, in countries in Africa. Like, he's got the most history to where when a thing happens, it's like not surprising at

all. Like, guy who, you ever watch, like, sometimes, like, primaries where people are looking and they're making up all these theories about what's happening and we don't know of Biden or Bernie and blah, blah, blah. And then when, like, the primary votes finally happen and the guy who, you know, wins who is ahead. When you look back at it, you're like, people were telling so many different stories about this primary.

But the whole story was really just guy who's huge frontrunner, remain huge frontrunner. won the primary. And actually, yeah. Which happened with Biden, which happened with Hillary in place to do it. It's like, it's actually not an interesting story at all. The interesting thing was all the crazy mental gymnastics to try to make it seem competitive along the way. And for Trump, I feel like to get this exactly this is like the least surprising thing in

the world is everything he's doing in the Middle East. Yeah. Well, I mean, but the thing with the Dave Smith and that whole crowd was not just that they were making this begrudging lesser of two evils calculation, right? It's that they were putting forth this totally fictitious image of what could be expected from a second Trump term. And it was sort of algorithmically boosted by this, you know, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, like Avengers Squad, take on Trump.

Like if you're Ben Shapiro and you're supporting Trump on the grounds that you think Trump is going to enact a foreign policy that is akin to what you would have wanted in terms of your longtime foreign policy views, at least that's consistent. But in 2024, you had this. phenomenon where like everybody was, you know, just like outrageously audience captured and presenting Trump as though he was going to lead this anti-deep state revolution and he was going to restore free speech and he was going to end the wars. R.FK Jr. went to that Madison Square Garden rally like a week before the election and said, vote for Trump, vote Republican this time, y'all. If you want

to disband the warfare state, meaning the Trump was going to somehow heroically, stride into office and like abolish the military industrial complex. I mean, this was just like just bo-beserk propaganda. Yeah. But it was so algorithmically incentivized maybe because Elon was like tinkering with the algorithm on X in particular. But he saw it on YouTube. He saw it almost everywhere.

And even a lot of people who I had previously had an affinity with and maybe who would have joined with in contesting some of the more histrionic, overwrought anti-Trump oppositional narratives of the first term, like some Russian Gate stuff or like some of the fascism, the hysterics. I felt like I couldn't communicate with a lot of them anymore in 2024. And they were kind of like they were overcorrecting for some of these, I think, still largely groundless or at least wildly exaggerated liberal anti-Trump narratives and becoming functionally pro-Trump in a way that I always said that I was never interested in doing. I was accused of wanting to do that.

But in 2024, it was like, you know, spitting into the wind. And I don't think there's really been a reckoning with it, although there should. be because like if you were giving voters or your followers an impression that something so radically different was going to be ushered in with Trump 2.0 than actually has come to pass. Like shouldn't you I mean we're not talking about like decades and decades ago. We're talking about like less than a year and a half ago. Like shouldn't there be some obligation now to go back and reevaluate and maybe like understand how it is that this false image of Trump like this mirage of him was propagandistically disseminated to such a large audience of like these anti like you

know, these sort of apolitical, maybe a little bit disproportionately male podcast listening people who, like, think that they're anti-establishment in some vague way and thought that Trump was just the obvious choice. Like, that's what, that's, that's what Dave Smith, among others, were promulgating at in 2024. And that's what I think there should be some kind of reckoning. Yeah, but there isn't. I mean, there's no reckoning because there's no, thing as quickly as possible, and then barrel right along. Yeah, there's no accountability for any of it. I feel like the trajectory I took was I felt like in 2016, like I would have been described as a very, very anti-Trump. Oh, should I tweet that I'm on this right now?

No, it's fine. It'll go up on my YouTube later, so you're fine. Well, I'm going to tweet maybe. I'm just going to let people know that, like, if they know how to find your live stream. Sure, if you want to. See, I'm a little tweeting live on stream now. Is that exciting? I feel like in 2016, I was like a very anti-Trump person.

And then from 2016, 2017 to 2021, I think that I, like, I made my, the liberal journey that so many people, made to where you're like, okay, well, we're being super hard on Trump, 2017, 2018, that you go get the whole Russia gate stuff and the Mueller investigation. Thank you so much. And everything else. And then I feel like I made this journey of like, okay, maybe I'm like a little bit too deranged on Trump. I need to peel it back a little bit.

And then after J6 and then in the ensuing year, I think as I start to learn more about government and actually engage more with civics and then I look back, I really like 2016 to 2020 was like about as bad or worse than any liberal deranged, Trump derangement syndrome. So like when you say the Russia gate stuff, like there is a public phone call with Giuliani where we can just go listen to it for 42 minutes like begging Zelensky or it's his A that picks up to like start a false investigation into Joe Biden's son. But that's that was that was the Ukraine iteration of like the Russia gate theme. That was a little bit that's a little bit different from what I'm referring to which was like

the crossfire hurricane investigation. Sure. I understand that. But like can we can you think in the equivalent like you remember that like the real Russia gate conspiracy stuff in my mind was what people said about Hillary Clinton. You remember the claims that Hillary sold unilaterally all of our uranium or 80% of America's uranium to Russia. Like that was a claim that was like a... That was in the New York Times. That was Ken Global in the New York Times, covering the Clinton Foundation like... Sure, but this was hardcore carried by right-wing people

to say that like Hillary sold our uranium research. Right. This like APA research book. But like imagine if Hillary or any of these people had somebody of the caliber of fucking Manafort heading their campaigns, a guy who is not only convicted, but Trump eventually pardoned, or people like Stone who were directly coordinating with Russian hackers on released hack materials from the DNC servers, from the DCCC, all the pedestrian emails and everything, or were publicly making statements like, we'll reward whoever, you know, or the, for the leaked emails or whatever, or that Trump Tower meeting that they completely fucking lied about where that Russian lawyer lady came in and like, oh, we weren't talking. Oh, yeah, we were talking about shit. We wanted to get, like, I'm not saying,

I'm not saying, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm not saying that, like, this proves it, but I'm saying that if you collect all of those facts, it's already so exceptionally crazy that like I think most people, your priors on all of this would be so low that when so much stuff like that has happened, I think it's fair to wonder like, what the fuck is going on here?

This is so outside the norm. And I think there's way more evidence for any of that than, for instance, like how long did we have to hear about Hunter Biden and Burisma and Sharman? No, I agree with that, man. I think the Hunter Biden stuff

with just like this tiki-tack stuff for the most part that, amazingly enough, although Republicans in Congress devoted Like years and years For the two years that they had a majority

under Biden they basically spent it investigating Hunter Biden but not even for anything that was going on contemporaneously They were investigating stuff

that went on when Joe Biden was vice president like nine years before Yeah they were saying that they were so concerned with

like corruption involving Joe and Hunter's dealings with Ukraine right but we had like an active ongoing war at that point that the U.S. was supplying an enormous amount of weaponry for. And the best

they could come up with was going back to 2014 and resuscitating stuff from the Obama administration. Yeah. And it was about a hunter who was not running for office and didn't have any presence in the White House anywhere near the way that, say, Jared Kushner did or Whitcocked it, right? I mean, the Jared Kushner contrast is just outrageous. Yeah. But I guess the thing that I'm saying, the real quick, the thing I'm saying is that like, you've never in your life said this word, Huntergate, right? Nobody's referred to like, you. I have not know. Yeah, nobody thinks about that. But, like, there is way more shit on related to Trump-Russia stuff, which at this point,

I don't think there, well, I don't think there was like Trump and Putin were having a meeting of the minds. But I think that their campaign was looking for anything they could get, even if it came from an illegitimate source. Yeah, but you're good. But, okay, but the impetus for the FBI investigation that was launched against Trump in the first term, vis-a-vis the Russian interference or Russian collusion was the following proposition that Donald Trump had, quote, colluded or conspired with the Russian state. to get himself installed as president and subvert the 2016 election and then subvert the American government, essentially,

so that it could be controlled Manchurian's candidate style by Vladimir Putin. Which I think that's true. Okay, well, I disagree with that. Okay. You honestly think that? Like, I think Russia half the election machines in 2016? No, no, no, no, no. That was never the claim.

That's what Republicans said the claim was, and there were a few crazy people. No, no, no. I'll pull up a million clips. You can pull up a million clips. Adam Schiff's saying they hacked the elections. The machines? As of as late as 2018, I swear to God, I'll pull up the polling right now.

A supermajority of Democrats believed not just this lighter version of some kind of, you know, mild interference that maybe Trump benefited from, but that Russia explicitly hacked the voting machines in 2016 and fraudulently handed the election to Trump. You can find supermajorities of Democrats affirming that proposition. Okay. So in that case, that claim was not only dumb, I'd never seen in my life anything substantiating that. ever. So for anybody that was incorrect, for sure. But that was democratic, conventional wisdom. I would have to see that. I do what I see it right now. I'll show you right now. Okay, yeah, go for it. Search for it. But when it comes to like,

like, I, I'm 51% on this. I don't know if you've, I don't know where you stand on this. Can I search for it on here? Yeah, or give me a key term to search for it. I think like the laptop story, I think that was a Russian plant story. The Hunter Biden laptop thing. I don't think that Hunter Biden stumbled into a blind laptop repairman's fucking store who happened to... So this is November 4th to 6th, 2018. You go of poll.

Question is Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected president. Do you find the following statement's true or not true? And it seems like 67%. That's not good. Okay. Super majority. Okay. That's a super majority. That's enough to that's enough to convict a president in the Senate.

Yeah. Well, unless they think that... Unless they think they can convict him. Yeah. Yeah. So that's... Okay, so wait. So that's... That part right there is bad. Okay. So you shouldn't think that. But like all the other stuff, I think was largely true. There was bad coordination between people who were directly in Trump's committee.

So Roger Stone and the Christopher Hacker guy. I think that's a bad, that's a big bad connection. Roger Stone was never proven. And believe me, if they could have, if Republicans people could have proved, I'll tell you. Yeah. Was never proven to have any privileged for knowledge of anything to do with any of these email, hacked email releases or WikiLeaks or anything like that. It was just

Roger Stone being a bullshitter. Well, no, no. One, he had DMs with... Trumpet his insider knowledge. One, he had DMs with the Gusefer Hacker on Twitter. They were exchanging DMs. So what? I had DMs with that guy too because like I wanted to see if there was any information on it. And if you would have been part of Trump's election campaign, I would be mad at you

but you're not. You're a journalist. It's a different thing. Number one. But number two, part of the, or I think four out of five or five to six of the Roger Stone convictions were him not cooperating. We're him saying, I'm not going to testify or fuck you or whatever else. Yeah. And one of the things he said publicly was, I'm not going to fucking rat out Trump. And that was it.

So I was like, well, I don't know what else would have been there. And then Trump pardoned him on all of that. Right. But it was a procedural crime. Like it didn't get to the actual crux of the theory. But the procedural crime was to avoid getting to the crux. Like if somebody says like, did you see this guy lie about this thing? And I perjure myself and I say, I'm not going to cooperate.

And they say, well, we're going to hold you in contempt and procedure for that. It's like, well, they didn't answer that question. But why would he be lying about this thing? because he don't want to answer anything. And he even intimidated another witness. There was a second guy he intimidated because it was one of his other convictions for a witness intimidation of another guy

to not get him to say anything about Trump. Or on the other hand, if you are the target of a very aggressive special counsel investigation, and you have a defense lawyer who is worth their salt, what they will invariably tell you is that you should say as little as you possibly can and not cooperate with these investigators

because if they're on a warrant. war path to try to prosecute you and convict you You cannot cooperate, but that's different than perjuring yourself or witness intimidation, right? For instance, none of the Mike Flynn ended up getting and ended up pleading guilty to a purgey. But it was over. It was not in because it was over

a direct contact of the Russian that he before the election that he should have been forthcoming about. He lied about it. But it was over. It was basically like the the the gravamen of that lie, so called, was basically mixing up a date within the state of a week or two. It was about his communications with the Russian ambassador. Yes.

which is the thing that he lied to the FBI about that he was so compromised that the I think it was the state department forced the DOJ to take action on it because they didn't even want him as part of the administration because they felt like that was a compromising lie because now if somebody knows that he's lied about that thing to the DOJ and FBI now he could potentially be compromised

and this guy he was like the what the national security advisor or whatever like that's a pretty big position to fuck that up on and it's about Russian people which is already there's so much crazy shit about this and if you look like if we look at Michael Flynn's Twitter today this guy is deeply yeah exactly So it's like, what the fuck? Yeah.

No, but that communication, it was with Sergei Kisliak, right? He was the Russian ambassador. It was during the transition. So after Trump wins the election, hasn't come into office yet. It was Flynn speaking on the phone with the Russian ambassador saying, before you retaliate against these sanctions that Obama has imposed for so-called interference, remember Obama closed down like in the waning days of his administration, this Russian sort of diplomatic outpost in Maryland, and he imposed some sanctions.

Flynn said, before you retaliate, you. kind wait till we get back in, wait till our administration comes in and then we'll revisit it. Like it was pretty run-of-the-mill diplomatic communication that got depicted in the most inflammatory possible way because there was already this political narrative going on that any potential communication whatsoever between anybody affiliated with Trump and anybody affiliated with Russia was hugely damning and therefore served as evidence for this overarching collusion narrative. I understand that. but you have unprecedented levels of obstruction into this investigation with Trump later on.

And you've got so many people, like there is no world where the Democrats would have survived having a Manafort-like person anywhere in your orbit, let alone your chief campaign manager guy. Democrats have got plenty of shady consultants in campaign managers. Name one person close to Manafort's prestige in Trump's, because he was the head of the, I don't know, he was a campaign chairman for a bit. Yeah, he ran like the delegate operation at the convention. He was the, I think he was the manager of the entire. campaign. Manifort was the top position. Yeah, he was for a time.

And he was illegally helping, was it Yanukovych or was it beforehand? And undeclared, getting like tons of money to do these things, which was again for a Russian-backed candidate in Ukraine, undeclared, convicted, like so much money that came from this conviction that like Mueller literally paid for him. From 10 years prior. So, so wait, Hunter Biden was, who's not in office, who's not affiliated with any politician, Hunter Biden was 10 years prior. And there wasn't even anything bad about him that turned up. The only thing we even knew with the hundred Biden was because of the Russian email hacks that got leaked from the big guy. I'm not arguing the, I'm not arguing the Republican position on Hunter Biden.

Sure. I'm just saying that nobody like Manafort. Like if I ask you, who's one Democrat that's even remotely close to that weird being in a reasonable position? I'm sure we could find like a think tank donor or like Soros like whatever kind of person. But in terms of like what Manafort was, look. Okay. So like the, so the, the Trump Tower or the Trump Tower meeting. You were going to say something like that.

That was a bad meeting. The Trump Tower meeting. They lied about it. Because they didn't have anything to turn over. But they lied about it. I interviewed the guy. Yeah. Okay.

Who organized that Trump Tower meeting. Okay. It was a British music promoter. Uh-huh. It was a nothing. I mean, it really, there was no actual noteworthy information that was ever exchanged. But the goal was. It was just this like freelancing Russian lawyer who thought that maybe he could get Don Jr.

And Jared Kushner's attention. And they basically just ended the meeting within 10 minutes. And then nothing really ever came of it. But they, nothing did. But they took the meeting looking for something from a foreign national that they lied about. I mean, yeah, fine. And then what is Trump doing when he gets into office? The only reason we have Mueller is because he immediately fires.

Who died today? RIP. RIP. He fires Comey because he doesn't like the fact that Comey's on the investigation. He's bullying Jeff Sessions every day on Twitter because Sessions recuse himself. I'm just saying it's the guilty of shit. And then we get the call to fucking Ukraine and everything going on here. I'm just saying it's a lot of shit where it's like there's so much more there.

that to dismiss all of it is Russian Gate, because a lot of people didn't like the fact that they thought that the voting machines were rigged or whatever, which is not a good claim, but that's nowhere near the level of delusion that conservatives have been on for the past 10 years. Here's my larger point about Russia Gate, okay?

I'm going to connect it to today's most salient issues. Okay. It's that my issue is that there was always an overabundance of material from my perspective to actually formulate a rational critique of Trump based on. So, for instance, he ran in 2016 talking about how he could uniquely self-funds

self-fund his campaign, right? He couldn't be bought by any of the donors or whomever, unlike the little puppet Marco he would call him, or unlike, you know, Jeb Bush or whomever. And then immediately after he basically gets the nomination, he starts courting the same Republican donor class that he said he was going to be uniquely equipped to resist the temptations of, right,

or not be subordinated to. And then he governed basically as a Republican donor class president. It's like his main legislative accomplishment in the first term was just the tax reform bill that Jed Bush or Mark a Rubio or, you know, name your other standard Republican, would have essentially done. Correct. And then, you know, on and that he also implemented a foreign policy that escalated virtually every conflict that he inherited. For some, somehow the the highest number of Afghan casualties in the entire war was in 2019 when he escalated the air war. You could barely heard any coverage of that. And, you know, he tried to do regime change in Venezuela.

It was a little bit more of a ramshackle attempt in the first term, but then they got it together in the second term. Was it Venezuela or was that Bolivia? Where they brought in the Guido guy, they brought him in as like a Ngoido was Venezuela. Yeah, okay, because they tried to do it there because they brought him into the U.S. to legitimize him and they wanted to send a bunch of aid trucks for him or whatever. The Trump State Department, no, I think that was the Bolivia thing with the contested election with Morales. Yeah, okay. In Biden's term. Yeah.

And, you know, regime change in Venezuela, you know, claiming he's going to withdraw troops from Syria, but then leaving them to keep the oil, he says. And on and on and on, like, basically, I always thought that, you know, the Democrats were so hysterically and, like, single-mindedly focused on what I would have argued were primarily, maybe not 100% exclusively in every possible respect, but primarily this kind of confected narrative that they wanted to use to go after. Trump that also had a lot of negative political ramifications in that, it created sort of an incentive structure where in order for Trump to prove that he wasn't in Hock to Russia, what

could he do? Take Belikos action against Russia, and he did. He bombed Russia's chief client state, several of Russia's client states, meaning Assad. He tried to overthrow their chief client state in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela. He threw out armed control scheme. bilaterally between the United States and Russia, so the Open Skies Treaty, the INF Treaty, so the Intermediate Range Missile Treaty. And now, and he's continuing that even further, actually, people, I guess, still maybe implicitly think that he's sort of in hock to Russia,

but as of February, the New START Treaty is no longer operative, so there's no longer any mutual arms control regiment governing the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia for the first time since the early 1970s when it was the Soviet Union. So it's stuff like that. I thought the Democrats would kind of almost like made a special point to strategically never really focus on. Maybe in part because it would implicate them to some degree, implicate the bipartisan consensus to some degree,

instead they would screech over and over again about Russia, racism, January 6, democracy on the line, et cetera. And not like a lot of the... Okay, wait. Okay, just real quick. I understand. I understand your point. That's now transferring over to the fixation on Epstein,

which has a lot of similarities with the Russiagate story. So I disagree. I think the Epstein fixation is a 100% conservative-driven phenomenon, and I would defend that to my death because they are obsessed. Oh, really? Oh, I disagree with that. They were obsessed. Can I get some more water, by the way?

No. No, I've got to me some in a second. I'll leave you with this thought. Because the thing is, of all the things you just mentioned, Russia Gate, January 6th, democracy, and whatever the other thing was, all of those things in my mind, you can argue that maybe there was some strategic error,

committed, there was some unforced error committed by focusing on these issues. Every single one of these is more important in my mind, however unappoint you might think they are, than every single issue that Republicans hyper-fixated on. Like, whether or not Leah Thomas, you know, should have been racing as an NCAA. I don't disagree with that. Or whether or not, um, whether or not in COVID, the states were trying to do mandatory vaccines and masks and rule us forever with infinite government shutdowns because they hated religious people or like, whatever weird thing they fixated on, or the infinite obsession with Hunter Biden and his cock and having pictures of it. So my question is, here's what I don't understand, okay, is why is it that we can be critical

of the Democrats, say, well, maybe they kind of flub this thing, an issue, which, by the way, if that would have existed on the equal side on the Democratic side, we would still be talking about it today, okay? But we can say that maybe the Democrats made an error there. Why is it the Republicans made 50 million obsessively weird errors and none of it sticks to them, none of it matters? Good question. You can think about that.

Good question. And you can talk about it. Okay. I'm listening. So, okay, so remember. That remember when Kamala Harris gave her like kind of grand finale speech in 2024 at the at the ellipse in Washington and it was about democracy, right? It was about how Trump is this existential threat to democracy. He is, yeah.

Okay. You can think that. But, but we've got the same back that we're looking at right now. So, so we're now in, we're now like, you know, what is it? 14 months into the second Trump administration. Democracy is still like roughly intact, meaning elections. Oh, no about that. Okay.

But another thing that tangibly is going on and observably is going on right now is that there's a giant war in the Middle East. I don't remember Kamala Harris ever making it a point to inform voters as best she could and as best she could kind of politically frame things that if you vote for Trump, you're potentially voting for a giant conflagration in the Middle East. Hold on. Wait, wait. Am I crazy? Didn't, am I missing, making this up? Did Kamala not explicitly say that Trump is going to send your children to die in Iran? making this up? Didn't she? Didn't she didn't she have... I might be, I might not be remembering. Pull it up. She didn't give a speech at the ellipse about it. She didn't like make it a major emphasis.

She didn't make it a major emphasis. Because I mean, I followed the campaign pretty closely. I'm trying to remember what she said. No, I'm good. I hate nicotine. You're all the stimulants now, but you don't like nicotine. I shouldn't get you hooked, actually. I just like amphetamine. It's not all stimulants, I guess. I guarantee you'll enjoy this.

Well, then I don't want to do it because I'll get addicted to it. Fuck, I'm trying to remember I almost positive that Kamala had made some statements on... I don't think she did. I mean, she came out on her I think it was a 60 minute interview and she was asked like, what is the greatest threat the United States? And she said Iran.

Which, well, I mean, that can be true but that doesn't necessitate like a boots on the ground like bombing response as well, right? So like, for instance, like Biden was supportive of Israel, but not in the same way that Trump is supportive of Israel. No, differently. Right. Biden actually was a long time

ideological Zionist. I mean, he would actually come out and say this pretty frequently. Sure. Every old person in the U.S. has to be. Trump can really even define what Zionism is. It's more just that in terms of his whole transactional approach to conducting politics, the pro-Israel, the hardline pro-Israel element was something he could easily kind of subsume into his support base and then like adopt a lot of their views.

And there was probably some pre-existing views around his, just like being in New York kind of Palm Beach circles where it's like presumptively very pro Israel. But he's different than Biden in that, like so... Wait, wait, wait, the first the first big Iranian... But I mean, find Kamala warning about Trump invading or sending troops to... I feel like somebody should find it. I don't have the link right now. I think it was in one

of the debates. It might have been a more general statement about being bullied by world leaders and being pulled into conflict, but I would have to check... I don't think she ever made a point to actually warn specifically about Trump running the risk of getting us mired in another protracted conflict in the Middle East. With boots

on the ground and economic turmoil, which is what's going on right now. Like nothing, nothing. But I mean, like Trump literally. I mean, would you agree with this? Nothing in the Democrat's messaging by and large. I mean, maybe there's some quote that I don't fully remember off the top of my head. But like, by and large, generally speaking, nothing that the Democrats were saying about Trump

in 2024 or even the preceding three years would have given a preview of one of these kinds of eventualities with Trump. Well, but I don't think that would have been a good messaging point because people just didn't, because people don't care much about that. The war is hugely unpopular. The thing of highest salience at that point was inflation. It was the thing that the affordability stuff. Like I think when we, because a lot of lefties will argue this when it comes to the Palestinian position, I think we looked up, this might have just been Israel-Palestine. But like this issue is like 6% of voters.

Thought this is one of the most important things. I think at the time people were obsessed with the affordability thing, especially because of all the inflation. And then the Republican huge talk about had to do with the border, which is controlling the amount of legal people that were coming in. I don't know. I think if you had told people, look, like if you had a window into the future. And you could tell people that, look, everybody, if you vote for Trump, here's what you're going to get. By February 28, 2006, he's going to, in the middle of the night, just start a gigantic cataclysm in the Middle East. Yeah, but couldn't they have just said no, we're not?

No, we're not saying. And he said, like, why did the Abraham Accord? So what are you saying here? I'm the president of no new war. So what are you saying? I'm just saying this was not something the Democrats ever felt like it was with, it was prudent to ever emphasize. And that just gets to this larger. Like, look how many people didn't believe the project.

What about the Project 225 stuff? Like, even I was saying, like, I don't think you should message on this project 2025 stuff because Americans just don't care about policy. But, like, they deny that the whole time. And nobody seemed to care that that's like the playbook that they're following now that they're in office. And Trump has even said it like, oh, actually, I like this now. I like, I've never heard of this. I have no idea. So, I mean, like, I just don't think Americans-

My point is that the thrust of the Democrat's messaging never would have prepared the public to anticipate something like what's going on now vis-a-vis Iran. I think that speaks to the larger skewing of democratic priorities in the Trump era in terms of what they emphasize and what they don't. Where on the one hand, they're pretty content, it seems, to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks in terms of Trump. But given, despite this huge cacophony of anti-Trump messaging that they would like, you know, constantly experiment with, nobody ever thought that maybe it might be sensible to warn about a giant war in the Middle East? I was warning about it. I was warning about Trump's Iran position in particular. Nobody would really listen.

But I don't know how you could bring that. I don't even know how you would be able to argue that point with the guy who was just going to point to the fact that he did the Abraham Accords. You could point to his record in the first term, which is geared toward regime changing Iran. You could point that he himself says that in June of 2019, he was minutes away from bombing Iran. Sure, but he didn't, right?

So you just didn't do it, right? No, but you could talk, but you could project outward to the future for the American, for the average American mind? You can barely project out to two weeks from now, let alone, like, related to foreign policy. I mean, if you're willing to deal enough in abstraction that you could say that voting for Trump is the end of democracy, whatever that means exactly.

Well, like on January 6th, you're trying to coup the government. I think that's pretty visceral. We have video of it. But you're not willing to project out in the future around a potential cataclysmic military conflict. That just shows what you're prioritizing in terms of your messaging. Not an aversion to something being too abstract

for voters to understand. I think that January 6 is way more cataclytic than whatever's happening in Iran right now. Really? Absolutely. 100%. Huh. You had a president for the first time that I'm aware of in U.S. history tried to circumvent the peaceful, or he did circumvent the peaceful transfer of power. It was a violent transfer of power.

And then you have Iran. What's the death count in Iran versus January 6th at this point? I don't know. What was the death count in the revolutionary war compared to the death count of fucking COVID? What does that have to do with anything? I'm not saying it's a deal. What does the death count have to do with anything? Well, you're saying in terms of.

what's more cataclysmic or destructive or lamentable, I do think that the death count is one metric we can use. It doesn't have to be the be all and all. The death count, when I'm thinking of harm, I would never use the death count as the harm to American democracy. I think I would look at what was the president doing? Just harm in general. I'm not talking about harm in general. I'm talking about a specific harm to democracy. I think the U.S. president trying to circumvent the peaceful transfer power with a whole ass scheme that's completely public, I think is crazy to be.

Well, I mean, I do think that a protracted war being launched does tend to go in hand with. for example, the abridgment of civil liberties, with more government surveillance, with more, you know, less tolerance for freedom of speech. I agree. But Bush didn't try to prevent the peaceful, Bush didn't try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Like, nobody tried to coo the government after the Iraq and Afghanistan war, except Trump. I acknowledge that Bush did not do what Trump did on January 6th.

No argument there. I'm just saying, like, there are reasons to be worried if you're worried about democracy, you know, broadly construed just in terms of, like, you know, kind of liberal democratic norms and, you know, I can agree with you there, but that's way more abstract than the president is trying to coo the government. It's trying to prevent the peaceful transfer power. Like, in an abstract way, more Middle East- Do you even have a problem with the Iran thing going on right now? Are you, like, basically in favor of it or opposed to it? Or what's your view?

There's like a world where I could be okay with it, but not under this administration and not with the people leading it who are leading it right now. Like, I'm not a fan of the- Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom or Pete Buttigieg doing it right now, you'd be more inclined to. I would have to know, like, what the purpose or what their vision is or what exactly is going on, I guess. Like right now, in my mind, this is exclusively like an Israeli project that Trump is along for the ride on because he's an idiot, is how I view it. Okay. I don't think Trump is conferred with... So like, what are some hypothetical circumstances where you can imagine yourself supporting something along these lines?

Hypothetical circumstances would be a world where Israel is still more constrained by a Democratic president rather than a Republican one, and then a world where say that same, when the Ayatollah is killing protesters and the thousands or tens of thousands, depending on what numbers you believe. If that event is happening and there's like some other group of people in Iran that seem like they could take over the government and there could be something. I don't know. Obviously, these types of regime changes could be messy. We have the whole Iraq thing. I don't know if I would. But at that point, I would at least have to think about it. As opposed to right now, I don't know.

I don't know if you know. I don't know if anybody knows why the United States is involved with Iran. Like, it feels like we've gotten three different reasons stated. And I don't know what we're actually doing there, what the mission success is. Yeah. I'm much more instinctively averse to it just on principle, I guess. regardless of who would be president, like meaning forcible imposition of regime change in Iran by the United States. That would be more like starting point in terms of analyzing this, like whether or not is Donald Trump.

Obviously, with Trump at the helm, you have a much sort of crazier situation where... Sure, I agree with you. That would be nice. But I'm saying there are things that could make me considerate, right? Like if Iran killed 10 million people under Kamala Harris, you'd be like, okay, well, fuck, maybe we should do something, right? Like, I'm saying that I would at least think about it. But under Trump, I don't think Trump is a mind or a vision for the Middle East. And whatever is happening right now is probably exclusively serving the interests of Israel, which I don't know necessarily benefits everybody in the region or even long-term U.S. interests in the region. You know you like a pro-Israel guy? Like you're so – what would be your problem if it were serving the interests of Israel? Because the United States should work with Israel because oftentimes our interests are aligned.

And as long as our interests are aligned, I think they're a valuable partner to work with. I think that because of the style of government, because of the background of their people, I think that we generally align more on things. But when those things fall out of alignment, well, fuck Israel. then we need to bring them back into alignment. So there are things that Israel has done, I think, recently, like their whole handling of the Palestinian problem has always been a huge fuck to everybody in this fucking region. But the stuff related to Iran, like,

is that that's a regime that Israel really, really, really wants to see gone. Now, to be fair, a lot of our friendly Arab leaders, you know, like Saudi Arabian stuff, they also kind of want to see them gone too. But I think that Israel would be happy to have Iran gone and then sever ties with the United States and then kind of like run this region as a regional power independent actor because who the fuck is going to fight with,

Israel in that entire region with Iran gone. And then the U.S. just has to engage with them like a neutral third party as opposed to right now where we're kind of still sort of running shit. I don't think, yeah. I mean, I think the decisive role of Israel in this war has been overstated for a variety of different reasons. I'm not saying that they're irrelevant. Obviously, they're waging the war in concert with the United States at the moment.

I just think that the attempt to ascribe singular responsibility to Israel is being done for a variety of kind of questionable political reasons or even self-absolving. reasons on the part of people like a Dave Smith or a Tucker who now want to shift blame entirely onto Israel because they can't grapple with how they peddled this radical misconception of Trump in 2024. Well, no, no, I understand. Let me be clear when I say this, okay, if I would tell you, okay, that my... I think it's part, I think this is part of what...

Wait, real quick. If I'm at home, okay, and I would to tell you that my, while I was at home, if I would tell you my 30-year-old son stabbed and killed his... Is he in the next room? 30-year-old girlfriend. Yes. Say there in the next year. My 30-year-old son

stabs and gets my 30-year-old girlfriend, right? I'm imagining that you would say that was his fault, right? He stabbed his girlfriend and killed her. You're not going to blame me for that, right? Sure. But let's say that I tell you,

but let's say that I tell you my five-year-old son stabbed and killed his friend while he was out my house. You'd probably blame me for that. But I mean, like, he did it, right? I'm viewing Israel as like the child. I think that Israel has its own goals and desire.

So when I say Israel is pushing and it's because of them, what I'm saying is that the U.S. government for Trump, they don't have the responsibility, the vision, the wherewithal to actually issue any sort of guidance or to compel Israel to act on their way. That Israel always want to do this. Under Biden, they would have gladly done a regime change operation in Iran. But the U.S. would have said, we're not doing that right now. You guys are fucking crazy. But under Trump, they will. So when I'm saying I'm blaming Israel, in a way, I'm still blaming the Trump admin.

I'm not shifting the response to Israel because they should be on the U.S. is like, well, hold on. Let's think about like what's going on here. But the current administration doesn't. Yeah, I guess, you know, I've just been trying to make the argument that Trump is more the primary agent of responsibility here, then I think a lot of people, especially on the internet, have been willing to accept. Because what did Trump come barreling into office for his second term proclaiming? Basically that he was on this globe-spanning mission of conquest. No. Yes? He came in as the president of no new wars. After he got elected, right? After he got elected, then he started to change, he starts to rally about wanting to seize Greenland. And building more ships and everything. That's true.

He gives his inaugural address, which I don't think anybody picked up on at the time of other than me, but I happened to notice and thought it was a little bit curious that his speech writers decided to write him lines heralding William McKinley as his model for the second term, and then he issued an executive order basically at the day he came into office, touting William McKinley basically as the president who he wanted to emulate. And if you go and read about William McKinley, that was the first president who inaugurated these overseas conquest missions on which he sent U.S. troops on overseas expeditions to conquer foreign lands that most Americans have never heard of, like the Philippines or Guam or Cuba,

more people would have heard of Cuba. But the Philippines, like, nobody had any. Guam, like, was at the top of the mind for everybody in 1900 and the United States? Probably not. But for whatever reason, oddly enough, that's what Trump and his speechwriters thought was the theme that they should most emphasize in his inaugural address, which is like, you know, what gets recorded for history in terms of laying out the agenda for a president when they come in for their term.

And, you know, then he starts rambling about wanting to take it over the Panama Canal. He starts talking about wanting to take over Canada. People dismiss it as a joke at a certain point. It doesn't get, it's not particularly funny. Obviously, that's less practically. Sure. I understand. Here's a question.

This is what I want you to do with. If Israel was saying, if Israel was saying, we're not doing regime change in Iran, we need to chill about this United States of America. The U.S. would not be bombing Iran. I'm just not sure what that. would look like because it's so integral into Israeli state policy and political culture at this point to take some kind of decisive action against Iran to overthrow that government that I'm not even really understanding how we can entertain the hypothetical and still be talking about Israel,

right? Because we're talking about almost something else. Let's assume that Netanyahu was losing domestic popularity because the war was raging on too long in the Gaza Strip and the people didn't have the appetite for it or so we can think of a million ways that it could have gotten there. But if Israel would have said, okay, maybe a full-on attack against Iran, maybe not good. I don't think without them pushing, I don't know if Trump is on board with this. Trump seems to believe that Iran was trying to assassinate him. And therefore, he's entitled to take vengeance on Iran. When they killed the Supreme Leader, he told Jonathan Carroll of ABC, I got to him before he got to me.

Meaning it's almost like this schoolyard bully thing almost in his mind where... Yeah, but I think Trump's just retarded shit. I don't know that's indicative into his state of mind for starting to war. indicative of like one of the Because it could have just assassinated him and just been done with it, no? They killed a Soleimani. Trump seems like the kind of crazy dude

who would assassinate a fucking Iranian. They killed a solo... Yeah, they killed Soleimani and then that resulted in blowback where there might have been attempts. We don't know how serious they were, but like... Well, it was really serious

because Iran, I think, blew up one of their own... Airlineers on accident after they tried to retaliate. I'm just saying, I think that... Look, I'm not denying that the role of Israel was important in kind of maybe accelerating things

or crystallizing it and Netanyahu in particular, knows how to cater a case to an American president because he, you know, he, you know, basically grew up in Philadelphia. Like, he just is very well school in knowing how to make an argument that is in furtherance of Israel's interest to an American president. Maybe Trump is a little bit more impressionable and persuadable than a Biden would have been. I think it's super impressionable, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I'm just saying that nonetheless, this Iran excursion, as Trump calls it, is, fits very neatly into this larger governing paradigm that Trump came into office advocating and enacting and implementing, which is that he's on like this global conquest mission. He now says he's going to be taking Cuba. He has declared himself the ruler of Venezuela,

and not just that he abducted the president and bombed Venezuela, but he's the ultimate governing authority in Venezuela, such that he has veto power over Venezuela's governance. Same with Gaza. I mean, Trump declares himself

the ultimate governing authority. He made that peace board, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know who wouldn't have done this? Kamala Harris? I think you're probably right. It would have been, yeah, it would have been more... Probably right.

You think Kamala would have put himself on the head of the peace board for it. Probably not. Probably not. It would have been much more conventional. It would have been much... It would have a continuation of Biden pretty much. So I just think that, you know, I think at the very least, that interpretation of why Trump has started this war with Iran

is worth giving a little bit more credence than I see as being commonplace at all. in the popular discussion of this, rather than focusing so monomaniacly on Israel as though, like, it's the prime mover and its influence is insurmountable. And you can never defy Israel. Like, they're always going to be calling the shots. No, this is cringe. I don't believe the AIPAC obsessive stuff. I understand.

And all of that is stupid as fuck. Or the weird, antisemitic stuff. Or, yeah, or the Zog stuff, you know, Zionistone government. I agree that all those talkers are stupid as fuck. But I do think right now, I think Israel can do basically whatever it wants because I think Trump is just a weak man with no vision for the region. and if he sees something might serve his interests and Israel can sell it to him, I think I'll just go along with it instantly.

What do you think of like Russiagate levels of Democrats thinking right now that Trump launched the war for something to do with Epstein, whether it was just to deflect politically from the attention on the Epstein files or because maybe he's compromised by Israel and they've got blackmail on him. When I look at the, in my mind... Variations of this theme, but like if you look at this poll that was done a week or two ago, it's, you know, you got supermajority similar to the poll I just showed you of Democrats affirming one way or another,

that Epstein is like a causal factor in why the war was launched. Epstein is, in my mind, it's just kind of like right now, it's the epitome of populist brain rot. It's just like the people have been really obsessed for a long time with the idea of like a global elite pedophile ring that involves all the head leaders of the world who are controlling everything behind the scenes. That's just an idea that a lot of populist-leaning people,

which is a lot of people now, are really attracted to. And the reason why I put the onus on the Trump admin for this is because I don't think anybody's done more to undermine the institution of government and the institution of the media and the institution of everything in our information landscape than the conservatives like you've got Bongino on fucking what was it Tim Pool or Joe Rogan who's like

I got a friend of the CIA and he's seen all the Epstein shit and he knows it's fucking I think that was on his own doby Brumble was it on his own I thought he's talking another part one you've got like Pam Bondi who's here's the fucking part one the fucking Epstein files like I think the conservatives hammed this up hardcore but they ham up every conspiracy theory between like how can you look at fuck wait I love you vegan gains

we don't want to do that right now trust me What was that? Just another guy who wanted to argue stuff, but it's not worth it right now. Vegan games. Yeah. The Epstein stuff. I have to take some workout tips from him. The Epstein stuff, like in my mind, is, like, looking at, like, like, how do you not

draw a line directly from Q&on and Pizza Gate to, like, the Epstein stuff? Like, yeah, that's why I said I feel like it's a Republican. But you said it's, like, 100% of right-wing. I'm sorry, I meant, like, instigated. Like, absent them, I don't think that the Democratic base would have, like, I don't think a populist type, like Bernie Sanders or even A-O-O. are pushing on the Epstein stuff anywhere near as the populist types on the right.

But I do think that populace on the left find it attractive. However intense any particular Democrats pushing it right now, it's become such a dominant narrative that you do have like the vast, vast, vast majority of Democratic voters. I agree. Saying that Trump went to war with Iran over Epstein. So that's notable, right?

Not good. And then there have been periods, maybe not quite so much in the past few weeks after the war started. But like, if you tune in to MSNBC or MSN now or like any kind of more democratic-leaning, media outlet. It's like Epstein 24-7

or had been, you know. Yeah. But who brought this up to the salience level that it's at now? Republicans, when they came and obsessed over this. Pam Bonnie and the Biden, they obsessed over it.

I found new documents in the Southern District of New York that I'm going to bring all of them. They obsessed over this. So yeah, of course now, and then now that they obsessed over it like, oh fuck, don't look at it. And this is Populous Brain Route 101.

All of your elite leaders that you thought were conspiring against you actually were part of a huge child rape pedophile ring. It's like everybody, all the populist people want this story. always been an undercurrent of people who did believe that. I mean, like, we're all fundamentally ruled by this. Yeah. But the Republicans are the ones that elevated this. But now it's become

so incredibly mainstream. I agree. Yeah. But the Republicans are the ones that brought this up here so much, right? Well, if I run around the house and I sprinkle oil and everything, I sit on fire, we both burn. But like the guy who is setting the house on fire probably has a little more responsibility. But I agree, it's a huge problem on the Democratic side too. I don't like talking about it. I hate it when people bring it up all the time. Oh, really? Okay. But when I say I don't like talking about it. What I mean is it like it's a brain rot topic. Most people's thoughts under it are fucking retarded. And most people's people that think that the Epstein thing is important hate both sides equally anyway, so it doesn't even

serve my political narrative, which I want to support the Democrats more than the Republicans, and I don't think there are as much of an element of truths of most of the claims people make about it. I think it's a fascinating narrative. I can't get enough of it just from the standpoint of like chronicling the mass hysteria or the moral panic as I would see, as I would regard it, and how it's become so pervasive in terms of the beliefs that engenders and how it's internationalized. Like it's not just the United States. I mean, this has like been the number one political scandal or controversy in, and how it's, in France, Norway, Slovakia, United Arab Emirates for a time, Britain, obviously. So I just think of it's like endlessly fascinating from that perspective and just how people

have so many fictional beliefs or myths that they've just absorbed unwittingly and assumed must be true about it that I can't get enough from just in terms of like documenting it and almost theorizing what went on here. But like in terms of the right wing valence of it, yes, what makes the issue so resonant and why people I guess maybe are kind of badgering you to talk about it is because of the ideological synergy of it, meaning it's not limited to one or the other. It doesn't neatly kind of...

It doesn't neatly track with right versus left. 75 IQ or lower is what it neatly tracks with. But go back to... In 2018, right? So there was a series of articles in the Miami Herald this Julie K. Brown journalist. I don't know if you're familiar with her. You've seen her.

but she's still considered one of the preeminent Epstein expert journals in the country. Okay. She puts out this series of articles in November of 2018 that breathes new life into the Epstein saga, right? And it causes a huge controversy politically because she frames it as Trump's labor secretary, Alex Acosta, gave a sweetheart deal to sex offender, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Julie Brown has said that, you know, she was pursuing the story because she was looking for an angle that she could could, for an article, for like a avenue of inquiry that she could pursue that was anti-Trump, that she could ped to Trump. And she found the perfect newspaper. Trump's laborer secretary,

Alex Costa, was in fact the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida when Epstein was prosecuted and had to plead guilty to pursue into a federal non-prosecution agreement in 2008. And so she kind of revived this, right? And she also tied in with Me Too. She credits Me Too. is catalyzing this renewed interest in the Epstein story, circa 2018. Then the federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, they see this article in like the huge political uproar that engenders and think, okay, maybe we need to think

about maybe federally re-prosecuting this guy. They're already collaborating with one of the victim's lawyers, Bradley Edwards. But in some of these new emails, you see them passing around links to the Miami Herald series. and the Southern District of New York was kind of a hotbed for the more sort of adventurous anti-Trump prosecutors that were allowed to stick around in the DOJ

in the first administration. So it became a more, it was like a largely, not exclusively, but largely like liberal coded issue at that time in terms of how its mainstream purchase that it was getting. And then, you know, EPSC ends up being, you know, re-indicted, he's put in the federal jail facility, he dies in custody. Then, you know, there's a whole kind of blossoming of these

more left-oriented, conspiracists narratives like Truinon and those people where because like they think oh we can connect this to Bill Barr being the attorney general and Bill Barr's father might have hired Jeffrey Epstein to teach at the Dalton school in New York City in the 70s there's a lot of dot connecting they can do right and you know and the the Trump administration was in power when the death occurs so if people want to make the most nefarious possible inferences from that that connects it to Trump in some way they can And so, yeah, there is a big left liberal interest in it in terms of just the kind of more commercial pop cultural coverage

like Netflix and stuff. That's not right wing, really. But they do this like filthy, rich documentary that is very like survivor focused. Like we've got to lift up their voices. And you see a lot of that style of coverage that kind of gets people maybe have a little bit more of like a democratic line or like loosely political,

maybe apolitical, but culturally liberal in some fashion kind of thinking that the Epstein stories are really important thing to have to be preoccupied with. But then, yeah, when the Biden administration comes in, then you do see a more a more

fulsome kind of right-coded variation on why people are so preoccupied with this, because they end up kind of spinning it as they're covering up the client list. Elon Musk started touting this in 2022. One thing I'll say before we move on to the Biden, because

in my mind, mind, and maybe it's just the political circles we were in, I can think of like three or four things off the top of my head that were immediately more gripping to the American public than the Epstein stuff even in 2019. Like that story might have had purchase for a little bit, but I feel like peak Me Too stuff was like 20, like 2013 to 2015-ish. And then it just- Yeah, me too is 2017. That's when the Harvey Weinstein thing comes out. Everybody says, or maybe I'm thinking that the, that's when they start the Me Too hashtag. Sorry, okay, I'm thinking of like when all the, I think peak wokenness or whatever was like started in like 2013. Me Too.

Sure. So me, okay, so Me Too might have been a few years later. But I feel like the Epstein stuff was never as big of a story in the American mind, especially for 2019 as like every part of COVID was larger than that. Like COVID in general, like lab leak stuff, the MRA vaccines and all of that stuff. I think the Hunter Biden like laptop story was that was 2020. I'm not making about my elections, right? That was 20 for Biden coming in. Right. The Hunter Biden laptop story, I think had way more salience in the American mind.

And I think that the general, like, yeah, I just, I feel like all of these topics were way more. I'm sure I heard the name Epstein, but it was nowhere near in 2019, like the level of, like, every American is thinking about this. But it's still like percolating in different quadrants of the ideological spectrum. All the whole BLM riots and everything, of course, the J6 stuff. You're not wrong, but like the foundation had been set for potentially to explode because you did have these right-wing surrogates like Hash Patel or, you know, Trump supporting surrogates like Hash Patel and Bonino. and these other podcast guys saying that, you know, vote for Trump in 2024 because we're going to crush the deep state. And by extension of that, we're going to get the Epstein files released,

even though Trump himself was sort of more noncommittal, but his surrogates were very much gung-home about it. And then it was the perfect recipe for it to just explode to even more monumental proportions when Trump's back in office, right? Trump did have a personal relationship with Epstein years ago. And they put out this memo last July saying, look, all these kind of common tenets of the Epstein mythology were dispelling, meaning there's no client list, there's no blackmail operation, there's no like no predicate to charge any additional

people with any sex crimes. And so it just kind of, it just so, it just explodes in a way that is orders above what maybe it had been percolating in the background as for the preceding couple years. I'm just saying that like there was a, there was a diverse ideological confluence of people that were interested in the Epstein story that, you know, and then you like the fuse, and then you add Trump, who's like the dominant narrative anyway, and lo and behold, now it's the number one anti-Trump oppositional narrative of the second term, akin to how much Democrats would have been focused on Russia or Mueller or that narrative in the first term. I mean, look at any congressional hearing now.

Epstein is virtually all that Democrats can talk about. I mean, again, I'm not complaining because I find it really fascinating, but from a different perspective. But I just think, you know, if we want to sort of look at why this is so salient now and is just transmogrified into this international mega narrative, it's more cross-ideological than maybe I think you might be giving it credit for. No, just to be clear, hold on, just to be clear so that I can say this for the many time, I agree that right now it's captured everybody, which drives me crazy. That's why he's saying populace. But the thing that exploded it into the average person's mind, I think, was the

conservative movement. That absent the conservatives being so obsessed with it, and then absent than acting the guiltiest possible way that you could of turning it into such a huge obsessive point and now trying to retreat from it as much as possible, such that they refused to release the files. Was it the longest time it had ever been for the house to sit a new representative? Because Mike Johnson didn't want to say it the new lady. Yeah, it was them that drew. So like, if I would have talked to you in 2015 and I said, ah, I got this friend and they

don't believe in vaccines or whatever, like, I don't know what to do. Like in my mind in 2015, I'm thinking like, okay, your friend is like a crazy hippie person. Whereas today, if I hear about an anti-vaxxer, their right wing, 99% of the time, right? So, but if I would say like the anti-vaxxer movement today, you know, I would say it's like definitely like a left-wing phenomenon. Not really. Like it kind of sort of was more of a left. I feel like I don't know if I'm far left. I feel like there's still some crunchy left-ish people who are. Yeah, but by and large today, you can track like death rates and everything from COVID just from Republican counties and stuff. So yeah. But I agree that it's a it's a both sides. Everybody's obsessed with it today. Don't get me wrong. I mean, Pam Bondi and Cash Patel and Bonino and that whole clown car of people, they definitely egg this on Astronomomical. in part because, I mean, and here's the basic reason why they fumbled it so disastrously, it's because they can't be honest about it, neither can really anybody, which is that the stuff that people assume to be true, meaning of some kind of pedophilic sex trafficking operation that ensnared all these prominent VIPs, and there was blackmail, and we got to get to

the bottom of it. Like, none of that was ever substantiated by anything remotely approaching credible evidence, and that's only been verified by the release of millions of more records. But nobody wants to say that because you don't want to be in a position like I have been as this like lone wolf where you're accused of like making excuses for quipadophiles or like you're called all the most foul names you can possibly be called if you take any kind of more contrary perspective on this stuff. Well, while that's true for maybe somebody in your position, it's even worse if you're in Trump's position because all those guys hardcore over indexed on them. I don't know what the political strategy was if they legitimately thought they were going to find something because it's one thing for a person who is. reporting on things or talking about things to be like oh i don't think it's that big of a deal it's a much it's a much different thing how humiliating was it do you remember when i think it was bonjino and

petel were sitting side by side with each other unlike the on joe rogan i think it was was it was joe rogan where they were like it was on fox it was on fox yeah and they were like we've seen everything there's nothing there like how far like if it would have been two democrats or whatever who were saying this after whatever okay fine but for these guys who were part of like the whole group of people who are overhyping the fuck out of the ship for so long like it makes it makes it a million has worth. Of course, none of them can ever back off it. I said at the time, I don't understand how Cash Patel's position as FBI director is sustainable. Anybody can pull up the clip of him in December 2020 as a private citizen saying now infamously,

and this quote's going to be seared in my memory for the rest of time, he's saying to the previous FBI director, Christopher Ray, put on your big boy pants and tell us who the pedophiles are, as if he somehow knew and had exclusive insider info that this list of pedophiles was being concealed by the Biden and FBI and Christopher could just open a drawer in his desk or something and tell the public who all these demonic pedophiles were

and they were all going to implicate all these democratic donors, you know, Bill Gates and Clinton and Larry Summers and Reed Hoppin and whomever. And now he has to come out with Stoneface and say, look, I mean, it turns out kind of did kill himself, there's no real trafficking.

Like nobody's going to take that seriously. Yeah. He's not going to be a messenger that anybody's going to credit as legitimate given like the comical contrast that you can find it in two seconds of Google searching with how he approached this issue in the past

when he was just kind of this like flame-throwing, red meat-tossing, right-wing pundit. So, yeah, I mean, that, so the Trump administration kind of laid its own trap for itself in a lot of ways, and they've never figured out how to extricate themselves from it. So it just keeps going on and on. I think it's very easy for them to extricate themselves from it. I think the issue is one of the big drivers, in my opinion, of things like the Epstein story, it's similar to like anti-immigration stuff. I think it's like just general discontent.

So in an area where like I hate so much about the Trump administration now, and this is one of the ways where I hate America, I shouldn't say hate America, but it frustrates me endlessly about American citizens is as long as life is going well, people will generally chill the fuck out about a lot of stuff. Like if gas prices were low, the economy was going much better,

affordability was improving for people. Like if all these indicators are going up, I think people might not be as fixated on the Epstein stuff. I still think it would be a pretty sensational story, but I think the fact that, like, everything is so fucked, and it seems like there's, like, another fuck thing and another fuck thing, the Epstein story is that one thing that has maintained. It's, like, crystal clear point of this administration is fighting toothed and never release it.

So as long as it's, like, a new fuck-up and a new fuck-up and a new fuck-up, you can keep pointing back at that and go, like, oh, what's going on with this? Have you noticed that all the most clever and ambitious democratic politicians right now, some of whom we're planning to run for president, like, Roecona, they're now almost, like, they're now almost toying with a embryoing, stump speech that they're going to use within, you know, in the next year or two. Rokane in particular, but you see guys like John Ossoff, who's being, you know, touted as somebody who could potentially run as a Democratic presidential candidate, that guy

Calarico who won the primary in Texas. They're all saying stuff like there's an Epstein class that we all have to band together in this lodge. It's almost like they're trying to occupy Wall Street, us first, the 1%. It's the populist messaging. Yeah, of course, yeah. But like the thing, but the Epstein class kind of theme is, you know, it's a lot of the theme is that by invoking Epstein over and over again, you're not just making some kind of like

neutral reference to the money deletes who are, you know, skewing societal resources or something like that. You're referencing pedophiles. Like, I mean, that's what most people think. Like, that's the word association that the 99% of people will make if you tell them, if you utter Epstein at them today. Yeah. And, but yet they're happy to leverage that into this political talking point now that's going to animate, I guess, their... The populace. Sympathists of American politics going forward such that Roe Kana, I mean, he can't go,

he can't make immediate appearance or give a speech nowadays without invading against the Epstein class and praising himself for having brought some kind of like vague accountability and also demanding that like unspecified people be charged with crimes. And also, by the way, he and his little co-compatriot, Thomas Massey, they just slandered four random people with no public profile. I don't know if you saw this, as having been complicit in child sex crimes, Rokana went on the floor of the house and said, the Trump DOJ, they're redacting the names of all these powerful men to insulate them from

criminal accountability. And they turned out to be guys who had just like literally nothing at all to do with Epstein whatsoever. It was just something that they, that he and Thomas Massey conflated. Thomas Massey said they were incriminated in child sex trafficking crimes. It turned out to be like an auto mechanic. and an IT manager in New York. And so, I mean, you might not be interested in it,

and I get it from your perspective, but I do think in terms of civil liberties and in terms of a lot of downstream negative repercussions of this, it is worth paying close attention to. And, you know, the Democrats are pretty fixated on it at this point. So, like, it's almost like, you know, whether or not you like the issue,

it's kind of politically salient enough at this point that you have to deal with it to some extent. Oh, I see we don't. I can just play video games a little day and fucking ignore it. I talk about what the fuck I want to talk about. That is true. But there's other stuff like I don't like talking about the Middle East anymore. I hate it.

I think it's annoying. I think most people talk about it. Yeah, because it's like a bunch of anti-semitism. But then it's also a bunch of like Islamophobia. And then it's a much of like stupid like young people. It's just like the conversations about our horrible. That's not to say that it's not an important issue and it's not having real impacts domestically here. Or actually across the entire world right now because the oil squeeze and everything.

But I just hate talking about it. So when people have been like when people in your chat or whomever your correspondence have been, imploring you to talk about Epstein, like, what is their argument as to why you should talk about it? Well, they all think it's the most important thing ever because we're one email release away from uncovering like the actual global blackmail

list of the blackbook clients that had a factory of six-year-olds that were being serially raped by every wealthy person and blah, blah, blah on the world. I'm stromating them a little bit. And then my point is that I haven't made any harsh judgment on it one way or another. I feel like if there was prosecutable stuff in there, I feel like they would have already gone after it, but I'm

all okay with other people. If they want to through the files and explore stuff, they can do that. I just don't, I'm like a very anti, I don't want to say conspiracy in like a super loaded negative way, but I generally don't enjoy deep diving on that stuff very much because usually the evidence is just not there for it. And it's a lot of like reaches and a lot of like associative stuff that's just not as interesting to me. I like more concrete stuff. But then a lot of my own interest interprets that is me either being part of the black book pedophile sex ring or is that I'm covering for them or I don't know. So the this most recent round of Epstein files was released on January 30.

And it just so happened by total coincidence, I promised, that I happened to be offline for a couple days. Like every, a couple times a year, I'll take a detox, right? And I'll just like maybe play Zelda or something. Sure. And it happened to coincide with the most inopportune possible timing, the release of Epstein files. So I was like offline for around like four days or something. And everybody thought, oh, my God, Tracy must be, he must have been exposed as having been on the Epstein list. And the Epstein file.

So people were actually searching my name in the DOJ search bar on the website. And sure enough, there were two. results that come back with Michael tracing. It happens to be just like the FBI communications department's daily news roundup where they just summarize articles. So I had two articles from like 2018 and 2021 or something on totally different topics, but people thought that they had nailed me for that. So that was pretty funny.

You want to know something crazy? Yeah. You know who wasn't in the FCFiles at all? Who? Kamala Harris. She's not. There's no reference whatsoever? Probably not.

I bet you there is. You know why I'm saying probably not actually? Because I bet if there was, I bet I would know about it because people would be talking about it. There's a reference to anything. There's millions and millions of files. I know, but she's still not in there. They avoided it.

Random news articles and stuff. You know who's definitely not in there? Hunter Biden, because I'm not going to heard about that too. So look at that. Did you have commenters demanding that you comment on like the emails that contain references to pizza and stuff? Yeah, of course.

People want me to talk about it. But a lot of it's just very boring to me. What do you make of this? Because like you're in the streaming world because like this is like this is like a bonanza for people in online media on YouTube, millions upon millions of views. I just take, yeah, I take huge hits for all. I also like I hate covering like breaking news. I hate breaking news so much.

But obviously these are your huge events. But it's like whatever happens. Like I'll know tomorrow for sure what happened. And there's no reason to speculate right now whether it was like who shot the missile and who blew up the school of, you know, 176 little school girls, whatever. Like I don't know what the answer is. But I know that whatever I guess today is literally completely, totally inconsequential to everything else. So why cover it? But that's just me.

I just don't like it personally. But yeah, I know there's a lot of views to covering this stuff. I mean, it will never not be amazing to me that the first week after the Epstein file biggest trunch was released, you have. as like this immediate consensus across all sectors of online media, including places like breaking points where, you know, I've been an occasional guest and places that are at least purport to be a little bit more journalistically reputable. Whatever that means now. They thought, yeah, they thought, okay.

Breaking Points was hosting this fucking Zhang guy who. I know, I know. I put it out. Jesus, fucking Christ. Tucker just had him on too. Everybody's having him on now. Was he on Joe Rogan yet? There was a couple other big people.

Yeah, of course. It's always in the Joe Rogan's spirit. Yeah. conviction that the best way that we can tell our followers and viewers and subscribers about what's going on with this latest release of Epstein files is to literally type in pizza, find some decontextualized snippets of emails, and they probably didn't even search it themselves. They probably just saw whatever had floated to the top of the algorithm on X or whatever. And that's the best research methodology for us to report back to the general public about

what is most pertinent to know about the Epstein files. I have my own, like, maybe a little bit more minoritarian research methodology where I wanted to, like, find particular prosecution memos, or there's actually a lot of interesting revelatory stuff in the Epstein FOSS if you want to know, like, how the FBI would. Not pedophile sex ring stuff, but just like in terms of the indication and who's talking to who, like, like, Ben, like, I thought Banda's association with Epstein. That was very interesting to my battle. That was amazing.

But like, people just want the pedophile. About that for the first time. People just want the pedophile sex ring stuff, otherwise they don't know. No, but like in terms of like the machinations of how the FBI and the DOJ puts together a prosecution, this which is a very high profile. I mean a lot of the interesting stuff that I was looking for actually was dispelling the common mythology around what people just assumed to be what a pointless endeavor. Yeah exactly. But like across the media streamers, YouTubers, everybody, they also, you know, every social media personality like, okay, what should we

hone in on here? Pizza. That to me was like kind of a turning point. Not that I already wasn't extremely disenchanted and in fact very aggressively like advertiser. towards a lot of this new media ecosystem. But that was a turning point to me. I'm going to put it in a time capsule and just say, okay, this is what people thought that they would be best,

most informative to transmit out to the public in terms of what they should take away as the key findings from the Epstein files. Just reference, seemingly odd references to pizza from emails in 2013. Meanwhile, like if you actually do search for pizza, which I did because I talked to the Pizagate guy

this past week, like you could actually find, like, receipts for pizza orders attached to some of these emails that people seem to find so incendiary. And it was just, it's just so, like, I hate to use this term because I know people were offended by it, but like Trump coming into office told us that we were, or his support has said that we're not allowed to use it. It really is like conspiratordation to a degree that is just almost like unprecedented, at least in terms of my adult life experience in terms of like what everybody just agreed was the most prudent course, journalistically, in order to report on this story.

So I don't know. It's just I will never cease to be amazed by it. Yeah. I mean, if one side is covering it, again, a lot of views, like there's going to be a lot of pressure from everybody else to cover it. I mean, you saw, I don't know if you ever followed like the, with Trump's whole big lie for the 2020 mail-in voter fraud and all that, did you ever see the, what got published, it was like 90 slides from the Dominion v. Fox News lawsuit or whatever. Like there was a ton of pressure inside Fox News.

Like every time they talked about bringing on any of these fucking lunatics, Sydney Powell or Giuliani or any of. me of these crazy people. It was always in reference to, who's the big owner guy for Fox? Murdoch? No. Murdoch, yes, Murdoch.

Is that, yes. And he's like saying, News Corp. Yeah. I think there's a guy, I mean, I think he might be referring to the guy who was in charge of Fox,

which is like a subsidiary of News Corp. Yeah. I think I'm not thinking of Murdoch. No, Ripper Murdoch. It is, I didn't think of murder. It might be Lacklin. La CERD.

No, no, it's Murdoch is in emails and they're like talking to each other. Like, Newsmax is killing us. Like, these people are gaining, like, so many viewers, like they are eating, cannibalizing our audience. And this is like a huge concern for them as they're doing the news coverage. By the way, post-2020 election, that was another period where I was denounced as being afflicted with TDS, just hating Trump. And that's my only goal in life is just to vindicate my hatred of Donald Trump because like the 2020 election fraud theories just did not hold up

scrutiny. Like I did a cover story for the New York Daily News one week where I went through some of just, I just did methodically went through some of the claims around. how supposedly the turnout in Philadelphia, in Detroit, in Atlanta, and Milwaukee, were inherently suspicious. But then if you compare them to other metro areas, they were actually pretty consistent across the board. There's just a million people were-

A lot of these claims were literally debunked within like 12 hours. Like there was a big one about Pennsylvania, about how more people voted than had been registered to vote. And this claim came from a guy who was looking at a database two years earlier that had to do with people that were registered for a primary instead of like the actual voter turnout. And like a guy had found this in hours and it tweeted back on him.

But that Pennsylvania lie carried through all the way to the ellipse speech on January 6th. Or the thing about the, it was Fulton County with the state farm arena, right? I was there on election day. Yeah. And they lied about all of that. Like those were just lies that were debunked by, within 12 hours by the, Raffensburg. Yeah, the secretary of the state. Yeah, yeah.

And that he did a video, like within 12 hours. And that lie carried through. It actually still carries through today, but it was repeated at on January 6th of the other day. It's supposed to show that, like, so all the Trump-adjacent people or the Trump-supporting people who would have loved what I was doing on Russiagate because it incidentally seemed to exonerate Trump on some level could just easily swing on a moment's notice to despise me after the 2020 election, which is why I can never kind of consciously determine what it is that I'm going to focus on journalistically by reference to any kind of partisan framing because I think that's just a fool's errand. You're never going to make everybody happy. Well, no, that's why usually people just stick to one side. Like, there are tons of people that watch me when I was friendly or towards conservatives a couple years ago. The comments that I would always see when I'm in conservative podcasts are Destin's actually really smart sometimes.

But when he goes about, when he talks about Trump, he's got TDS. So when I see a comment like that, what they're hearing is, when I'm willing to say there are people on the left that are crazy, they're like, oh, this guy's spit in fact. But then if I criticize their side at all, it's like, oh, he's a fucking sellout, retard idiot, TDS. And people will do that with every political issue ever. So if you're, if you have a mixed bag of political issues, the things that align with them, they'll say, oh, this guy's brilliant. love his thought process is really cool. And then we go up here, like, oh, but he's still deranged and diluted on this stuff. Not even like, well, maybe he's got points over here that I consider, but I disagree.

But he's deranged and diluted here, but he's super smart and a great thought process here. That's just how it goes right now, especially. Yeah, and you're doing a different thing where, I mean, you are, I think, honest in saying that your sort of aim or one of your main aims in having your public profile is to support the Democrats or to maybe tell the Democrats, like, what their best arguments are, like, what are the best arguments that Democrats can capitalize on against the Republicans and Trump, et cetera. So, like, that's a perfectly intelligible and, I guess, defensible aim if that's what your actual partisan belief is.

But, you know, people sometimes think that I'm being sneaky or cagey when I, you know, declare that I actually am not guided by any particular partisan motive because I'm sincerely not. And I can give, like, a million examples of, like, the pendulum swinging back and forth between, like, when various factions hate me. And it's just incidental, right? because like if I think that it's journalistically necessary to explain why it is that some of these crazed theories around the 2020 election are worth dispelling that I'm going to do that even if you

like, you know, a year before would have liked what I was saying about Russiagate or maybe you liked and then, or you liked six months before that where I was a little bit skeptical of some of the George Floyd protest excesses and some of the ideology that was spawned from that. But then, you know, we fast forward and then all these people are on a rampage against me

because I'm saying this RFK Jr. Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk narrative about Trumping, this Avengers squad hero against the deep state. That's just nonsense. So at a certain point, at least in my experience, you've got to just accept that you're always going to kind of swing back and forth between angering this or that faction and you just kind of have to follow your journalistic intuitions. Who are other journalists people that you respect or that you think also operate in a similar manner? Well, I would be mainstream alternative

Twitter posts or whoever. So, I was asked recently to become the new podcast partner of Matt Taibi. Oh, God. So I have a longstanding respect for Matt Taibi. I definitely have... I hate that's another guy that I hate with all my fiery park out.

I definitely had some misgivings about some of the stuff that he's done in recent years. And I think now he's kind of almost even accepted that some of the approach to Trump in 2024 wasn't great. Okay. I will always, you know, like Glenn Greenwald. I mean, he's a personal friend of mine as well.

Another guy I super hate, yeah. I'm sure, I'm sure. But, you know, we, and we fight behind the scenes about a lot of stuff, too, and still about Trump. And, yeah, there are some more. There are some good mainstream reporters, too, that, you know, I would have a, it's not quite as overtly political in terms of how I would align with them or something. But, you know, I think

I'm going to Google at the New York Times is a lot of good stuff. That's one. And there are others. Let's see. Who else? I'm curious.

For somebody... There's nobody really on Epstein. Like, I'm on a raft on the middle and the middle of the ocean on that. Hanania. Yeah, I think he's still not quite sure if he actually considers himself a journalist or not. I know.

I think he's done journalistically oriented things. It's funny. Well, now, listen, if Nick Shirley considers himself a journalist, then I think we can all be. It was funny. Like, we were in September, we were at this Epstein.

Survivors Press Conference. I don't know if you remember that. This woman comes up and says, we're going to make our own client list. Oh, I think I remember this, and they were getting much a civil out against the-in-front of the Capitol. But Thomas Massey at that point didn't want to talk to me anymore because he was like angry at me. So I kind of deputized Hanani to go do

like a journalistic task on my behalf to like ask Massey some questions and get his answers. So I guess I forced Hanani into some journalistic activity. Yeah, I mean, I get along with him. I'm friendly with him. We do streams and stuff together. Can I say I'm curious?

I'm putting you on a spot a little bit here. What was the last good piece of reporting that you feel like Tybee did? Last good piece of reporting that I feel like Tybee did. Let's see. I mean, he's had some good stuff. He had a series. We had an article recently having to do with the Labor Party in the UK. I'm not going to be able to summarize it well.

But he's done good stuff. Okay. Okay. I'm now stammering. because I'm not going to be able to summarize it well. But there was something that was good. Because he's a dog shit reporter who does dog shit work. That's not true.

Free PR for Elon Musk. Absolutely. I'll still defend the Twitter files. I mean, I think that was perfectly justifiable journalistic practice on his part. I think the concept of the new owner. If you're not journalistically interested in the behind the scenes conniving between major social media companies and the security state apparatus.

Oh, that would be really interesting. That's what the Twitter files was fundamentally about. No, the Twitter files was a guy who had a personal hatred for the last CEO, bought a new company, and then brought in a bunch of journalists to talk to his engineers to see stuff that he exposed to them to write articles to hit pieces of it. 100%. They were given free reign to search through the archive. They were given, first of all, you have no idea how much the archive they could search through. None of us do.

Only Elon and his employees do. You don't know what exists. You don't own Twitter. You're trusting that Elon, there is an implicit truster that Elon is providing everything that would need to be provided to them to do all the digging that they need to do. Number one and number two. And the access they had was talking to guys that were working at Twitter who were searching through stuff for them or making stuff available too. All I know is that Matt Tybee, Lee Fong, he's another one. He's another journalist that I would say I respect.

It does a lot of good stuff. He was brought on with Taibi to do the Twitter files research. They went to the office in San Francisco. Yep. And they had basically, according to them, and I trust them, they had unfettered ability to search through the materials that were presented to them. Does that mean that literally everything was provided? I don't know. I'm just saying that what was available to them.

them, they had unsrammeled ability to search through. In any other circumstance, I think that people would have looked at that story a lot differently where the new wealthiest man in the world who just bought a company who had personal hatred for the last owner of this company on a platform that was bullying him, bought the new company and brought in a bunch of journalists to write hit pieces about the old owner. Well, Elon didn't even hate Jack Dorsey. Jack Dorsey supported Elon taking the company over. It might at some point, I think a transition because Jack got weird or whatever, but

Elon had a deep, Elon was deeply personally bullied by a lot of people. on Twitter and everything related to, because Twitter was back at the time, people went to forget this, but Twitter was considered somewhat like wokeish platform. Yeah, it was. Right? And Elon's whole political identity. There was a lot of convoluted speech regulation going on around like dead naming trans. Sure, yeah.

And people get real. Oh, and yeah, the transitor is, is animating 51% of the Republican heart, okay, and has been for the past 10 years or whatever. But I'm saying, it went beyond that. Sure. Sure. There was always a very convoluted speech codes that they were debuted. I'm just saying that if somebody, if a billionaire bought a company, if I, let's say me and

Jeff Bezos start fighting a ton. And then let's say tomorrow I buy the Washington Post and I bring on new reporters to write about how horrible the Washington Post used to be under the old ownership, who happens to be a guy that I had huge beef with and a publication that was like writing a bunch of bad things about me. Everybody would look at that and go, okay, bro, you brought a journalist to do hit pieces on the old owners that you now control the access of information they have about them, right? That's like a crazy set of circumstances.

Regardless if the reporting was good or bad, like just the start of that is kind of crazy, right? It's kind of crazy, right? Irrespective of whatever Elon Musk's motives were, right, we still had a bunch of unimpeachable, verified primary source material that chronicled the surreptitious coordinations that were going on between a major social media company and aspects of the national security state. Sure, but I mean, I feel like... You could read the primary source documentation. You do have to take Matt Taiy or Lee Fang or anybody else's word for it. And to me, it was a very illuminate. window into how that stuff works.

Yeah, but I would say the vast majority of the people that even bring up the Twitter files never even read them or engaged with them all. I did. I mean, a lot of people are dumb. I'm not going to dispute that. Sure, no, I know, I know. But like, it's not like I see Tybee or these people fight against these interpretations. But like one of the things that stood out to me a lot when Tybee was reporting about like Twitter's coordination with the federal government, like the two big takeaways that people never seem to get from this, because they've never read the Twitter files is that one, Twitter, generally speaking, didn't cooperate with the federal

government. There are a lot of huge lists that were sent for banning people, whatever, that they just, they ignored. And then two was that... But there was one email where Adam Schiff, when he was a congressman, tried to contact somebody at Twitter to ban a bunch of accounts

and it seemed like they didn't take action on. Sure, they were like, they were like Chinese. I would still like to know that Adam Schiff or his office were trying to get that done, right? That's fine, that's fine, that's fine. And you can know that, it was okay. But then two, like, one of the huge, one of the largest talking points

had to do with that laptop story. And Taibi's, like, claims on that were that there was zero involvement between the FBI and Twitter relating to that story. And I remember his story. And I remember his specific tweet. He said there was no back and forth between the FBI and Twitter for this story. And that might have even been the problem.

There was literally no communication. But most people will say, like, oh, well, we saw on the Twitter files that people like the FBI were lying about the laptop story and stuff like that. And then all the emails that you do read about Twitter figuring out, like, around the laptop story, especially about what to censor and what not to censor. None of it. None of me looked like, we're evil people and we got to follow the government censorship. But like, a lot of people who were genuinely in the wake of like Cambridge Analytica and everything else were trying to get things right and didn't really know like what the pathway was and we're trying to figure it out. of overreach. I mean, Twitter did.

Well, I mean, Twitter did at the time. You know, and this was like, I think, October of 2020, right? So it was not long before the election. They did ban links to a New York Post article on the Hunter Biden laptop. I'm not saying the Hunter Biden laptop story is the most monumental story

in American political history. Sure. But I'm saying, I remember I tested it out myself and you couldn't tweet the link or even send it in a DM for a while. For less than one day. Yeah, for less than one day. Okay, fine.

So I would, but I would still like to know how that policy came about. and the Twitter files did shed light on what the thinking was behind that policy. Less than 5% of people will know what you're talking about though. Because people will assume that the Twitter files confirmed that that story was censored at the behest of the FBI, which was Trump's, by the way. I think, I mean, my memory has to go, you know, refresh my memory on some of the granular details of it.

But my memory was that the social media companies were kind of priming themselves, sometimes in concert with some government agency, but almost on their own accord, own accord to prove to the public and to their government regulators that they were not going to succumb to any kind of foreign interference campaign as they allegedly had in 2016. Sure. So they instituted all these policies that like went above and beyond in terms of potentially curtailing the distribution of certain materials that might be attributed to some foreign actor.

And that's what, then that's what they, that's what happened with the Hunter Biden laptop story, which I'm sorry, again, I'm not saying it's the most momentous scandal in history again, but the material on that laptop was proven to be authentic. Well, but we don't know, we still don't know if that was a Russian planted story or not, though. Whether or not it was, the material's still authentic. Sure, but it would dramatically change. Just like the job, just the emails were all authentic, even if arguably or allegedly,

they could have been disseminated as a result of some actor connection. But that's one of them. That would be one of the most important parts of the story, right, is knowing who disseminated that information. Because selective transparency. It'll be interesting to know. No, no, not interesting. No, it's a crucial, fundamentally crucial, one of the most important part of the story.

But it wouldn't change one way or another, the authenticity of the materials. No, but it would give you, I think that it would change a lot. Let's say that it came out that you really did kill a dog when you were 22 out of anger, right? Let's say that. I have not. I disagree with. Sure. Let's say 50 accounts on Twitter are posting that, right?

I'm looking at you and I'm like, okay, that dog killer, that's bad. And let's say they have proof of it. It's like, okay. Let's say that there was a new law that was put into place. that says that you now have to know the country of origin of everybody that's tweeting a thing. Let's say that I see that 48 of those 50 Twitter accounts are posting from Russia. Now, I would know the fact about you, but it would change the lens through which I perceive that information.

Because now, rather than seeing that you're a dogbeater, now what I'd be thinking is, okay, Russia really wants me to know that the sky is a dogbitter. Why? It would change dramatically how I would perceive the information in our landscape. But journalists have acquired information, and therefore the public has acquired information. Journalists have acquired information from Giuliani. From a whole host of Giuliani who passed it to the New York Post. Yes, Leezy are giving criminal sources who maybe initially obtained the information through the dodgiest possible means that you could imagine. But, and that is interesting in terms of how the information got acquired.

Yep. But I think you have to kind of separate that from the authenticity or lack thereof of the information itself. It's inseparable. How? Because who is publishing it tells you a lot about why you're reading what you're reading, right? Like, there's a ton of information to read about. But it doesn't change the authenticity of the actual material. No, but nothing, you don't perceive anything in a vacuum, right? No.

Like, if you're getting leaks from, like, the fact that somebody, when Putin is speaking, right, oftentimes he's speaking, it's political propaganda is a lie, right? Or sometimes it'll be a lie. Or when leaders of countries are speaking, it's a lie, right? But that doesn't mean that just because something is a lie doesn't mean that it's arbitrary or that it's random, right? The lies that they're speaking, they're speaking for a very particular purpose. And it's good to know why they're saying the things that they're saying, right?

How about this? So in the Podesta emails, right, this is in the 2016 election, one of the things that was unearthed in those emails was the transcripts of speeches that Hillary Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs and other major banking institutions that she had promised during the primaries with Bernie Sanders to release and then never did. She wasn't president, but yeah, she didn't get elected. No, what?

Did she say she's going to release them during the primaries? Yeah, she did. Okay, I don't know this. But she never did it. But we finally got the transcript of these speeches as a result of these WikiLeaks releases. Now, even if we want to stipulate that the origin, that the reason

why we got the WikiLeaks releases is because some Russian connected attacker got them and then put them onto WikiLeaks, how would that change, how we view this transcript of the speech itself, which was determined to be authentic? It was unassanably authentic. You can have a view.

view of the transcript itself, but all of this is being taken into account in a broader political context. It would make me look at the leaker as somebody who really doesn't want Hillary Clinton to be president. And that would influence how we would view other policies. When you've got people like Assange explicitly saying they're not leaking about Trump and all the leaks happen to be about the other side, it changes a little bit the way that I view leaks. One is because there could be stuff like in my mind, I don't know if you believe in this epistemically, if you've got two parties, you're better off having no leaks than just leaks of one side. because I think partial information can be worse than no information because it can relate you to totally crazy conclusions.

Like, for instance, the Democratic Party is so corrupt and horrible and crazy, but the Republicans must be clean because nothing of their shit gets leaked. Meanwhile, we've got Whitkoff and World Liberty Financial and Trump phone and the bitcoins and everything else going on. It is like, holy fuck. I mean, I'm always in favor of the more, the more information, the better, even if the partisan distribution of who the information impugns is not even. But like, so, for example, in 2020, we finally did get some of Trump's tax return. We got leaked. It breaks my heart. First of all, it was like two pages. It was like the front of his 1040, but like 10 years ago. No schedules, nothing else. But whatever it was we got, though. Does it really matter that much of you what the motive of the leaker was? I mean, it could be interesting side story to be aware of. But I'm more interested in the actual material that was provided. I think it would heavily influence how I would view the material. And I think it would be monumentally important to know who the legal was. What if this got leaked two days after Trump came out and gave a speech about how much. he hates

he hates Israel or something and then you find out like the Mossad was the one that leaked it to who is the name of the lady it's not Nancy Grace I don't know why you want to say that the lady who does the

it was on MSNBC because I remember watching because she hyped this up for like 24 hours Rachel Maddow? Yeah yeah yeah it was Maddow I think that did this and it was such a nothing burger

but it would just dramatically changed the way on how I do things or also like in this hypothetical let's see you've got two politicians let's say that both of them have murdered a person okay but let's keep going to get through these murder hypotheticals

okay let's say that both of them had stolen a ton of bubble gun from a gas station okay So we've got two politicians, okay, and, you know, one of them has stolen, or both of them have stolen lots of bubble gum from gas stations. Let's say that you find out that one of them has stolen a lot of bubble gum, but you don't find out about the other person. I feel like the issue of that is that now when we're looking at these two people, we're making assumptions about this person, but we're also making assumptions about this person because it hasn't leaked on them. And it's giving us a one-sided perspective that might have been, that might actually be worse than if we just had no information at all.

Okay, so let me give you a hypothetical. Go ahead. Like, say in 2020, right? I get leaked from somebody something that's incredibly damaging on both Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Yes. Sorry, I screwed up the hypothetical. Let's say I get something leaked from somebody that's incredibly damaging on Donald Trump, but I don't get something on Joe Biden.

And they're like roughly equivalent, some kind of financial and prepripped. I'm still screwing up hypothetical. The point is, if I get leaked something that reflects negatively on Donald Trump, but I can't couple it with something that also reflects poorly on Joe Biden. Should I withhold the material on Donald Trump just because it doesn't balance out in terms of showing revelatory information on both candidates? I would think that would be totally arbitrary. And although I would welcome anybody to also leak me something on Joe Biden, the mere fact that I have something on Trump would be more than enough reason to put it out there,

even if it doesn't satisfy people's cravings for some kind of almost artificial balance. Not artificial balance, but real transparency. So I think that in that example, I would agree that you should publish whatever. But what if you were somebody who wanted transparency from politics in general, you were really trying to find some tax forms or whatever else, but you were consistently and constantly only digging on one side? And you finally found something. That would change the way that I would.

It's like, well, you're not going to release anything. You don't even search on the other side. So if I would have to find out that all the leaks and everything are coming eventually through these Russian channels, well, obviously Putin fucking hates Hillary Clinton and absolutely doesn't want her. anywhere near the presidency. So it's not going to be surprising to be that Russia's going to try their hardest to do the pedestrian email hacks and leaks. Most, I think probably that laptop story, I think was a Russian-planted laptop. Like, all of these things releasing from one side. I don't think there's any evidence that was a Russian-planted that was a Russian-planted that was a Russian-planted that was a Russian-planted that was a realtor. It doesn't even particularly. I mean, like, there's- something shady in terms of Rudy Giuliani acquiring it from whomever, but I don't think there's- Like, we know that I think the ultimately that the drive that ended up. implanted that kind of gives the impression that it must have been inauthentic material that was pilfered from the laptop when it's all proven to be basically authenticated whether or not it's important some of it wasn't but when we say authenticated like meaning legitimate material i mean it was real it yes but like an amalgamation of stuff from like different time periods and different email inboxes and everything that happened to be on one laptop like it was put there because somebody wanted somebody to see it all like it wasn't just like a laptop with like random files in a folder it was like yeah but like that but that's how all information gets out there

Like somebody was a political motive. No, no. There's not a lot of amazing because a guy left the laptop supposedly at a blind repairman's shop that happens to turn it over to Rudy Giuliani that makes copies of this drive that look like they've been edited on some of these files and then hand it off to like other publications or whatever. And I don't even know if the, I think the FBM might have finally gotten the original drive. But they originally were given like a copy or an image and a disc image of it. That is not a normal story. I went to that.

That's a really weird story, right? I visited that computer repair shop in Delaware actually just to confirm that it existed. Did the guy make eye contact with you? They were not taking any queries at that point Because they were such a firestorm Oh What is this thing, by the way? Is this like a radio DJ?

It's my sound, where it makes sounds. Oh, I want to make sounds. Can I pick a sound? Sure, here's chank sounds. I want to go bro one. Bruh. That's pretty funny, actually. He's such a goofball.

Oh, my God, you're giving me flashbacks with the jank. Yeah, I love jank. That's the donor class! Yeah. He's a guy. Bruh. I'm going to get one of those. That is funny.

How are we doing on the stream here? Are people enjoying this, or are they angry at me? I mean, I always assume that most comments there's anywhere that I appear on either and now will just loathe me. That's good. If you don't have haters, you're not trying, okay? Yes.

What do you think? What do you think we're going in the United States? Stephen. What? That's a very open-ended question. Do you think that, how long do you think this? I almost want to sing a song in my as an- That's okay.

We don't need to sing- What do you think? How long do you think the Iranian war? I'm never singing on this dream. How long do you think the Iranian war is going to go on for it? We've all gone to look for America. Bruh. You never sing, really?

I mean, I see all these musical instruments you have around. Yeah, that was when I was in college a long time ago, okay. All right. So, sorry, restate the question. How long is the Iranian war going to go on for? So, I mean... Do you think markets or oil prices will force Trump to capitulate, say victory and then leave? Or...

It's hard for me to imagine Trump willingly capitulating in a way that is just obviously a humiliation for him. Meaning if he just says, okay, guys, pack it up, we're going home, we're just going to declare victory. And Iran continues to restrict passage on the straight and form of war. passage on the Strait of Hormuz and continues to attack. Well, I think Iran would stop. I don't know, but why would Iran stop at that point? It seems like the calculus that they want America to get the fuck out and stop destroying their shit. I mean, one of the demands that the Iranian government officials that I've seen have been making lately

is that all the Gulf Arab states that house American bases have to eject the American force presences. Sure, but that's because Iran right now is something that I think Trump fails to understand he's a fucking moron. Iran is fighting like an existential war for the existence of their regime. So they've like pulled out all the stops. But I think if they could get America to fuck off, I think they would be like, yeah, we're going to go clean our minds up and peace up. But even if like Trump decides, you know, okay, maybe we'll kind of like call it a day on this particular phase of the operation, that's not going to be the end of it.

You're still going to have in place the new Supreme Leader whose father, mother, wife, and son were all killed in the American airship. It would be bad. Like Iran wouldn't be happy with it. No, but I'm saying it's not going to. And Trump wouldn't have like a total victory. The conflict is still going to continue. continue in perpetuity to some degree or another.

Yeah, but what is Trump? Because they can still, they can then just resume their nuclear. I don't disagree. I don't disagree with any of this. I'm not asking you for. That's why I'm saying the whole thing is fucking retarded. But like, it's like, what are we doing right now? But that's why I think Trump is going to survive $200 a barrel oil or we're looking at losing

the Senate from the Republican side. That's not even supposed to be possible. But that's why I'm quite, that's why I question whether there's even a scenario where Trump could just do this kind of premature withdrawal or something and end this current phase of the conflict, because that's just going to allow for an even more radicalized and emboldened Iranian government to, first of all, declare that they defeated the United States, which I don't think Trump is going to take kindly to, and declare that Trump now, they're probably going to declare a new fatwa against Trump or something, and they're probably going to tell lots of

people to take retaliatory action against Trump. So I think that by the logic, to the extent that you can discern any logic, which you really can't, in terms of why this mission was launched, what Trump said the night that the bombing started probably is the only viable outcome from his perspective, which is regime change. Otherwise, I just don't, I don't see the scenario where Trump can just, like, pick up his ball and go home.

So I'm doubtful that even if there is economic ramifications here that are very disruptive to the global economy or whatever, that they really even can just quit. Because, like, why are you not negotiating a political system? with the United States at this point. Well, to survive, right? Or maybe they think that, you know, look, they've withstood this onslaught from the United States

and the regime is still intact. Yeah, but they're not really surviving, right? Like, they're getting fucked. They're getting super big of fuck. They're getting kind of decimated, sure. But, like, I don't even know. Like, who could, like, there has to be some political settlement, right?

And Israeli seems to be to just take everybody out of the government. I would understand what you're saying. Larjani guy who, I agree with what you're saying on their ordinary political analysis. but like Trump and the like populist type people, especially Trump, have this ability to just waltz from one thing to the next. Like I feel like the largest thing was if you were reporting on tariffs when these things dropped, it was a nightmare because they would change hourly.

And there were so many times where Trump came out strong and then like, oh no, it looks like interest rates might be ticking up. Or, you know, there's talk of China or there's talk of like Japan and Canada selling their treasury bonds or the stock market is starting to depart core, where it seems like Trump is willing to walk back as soon as he feels like there might be actual on paper ramifications. I say on paper. Yeah, on paper like ramifications where people's portfolios are measurably changing or fuck, I saw pictures of gas today. I don't know if this was real or fucking bullshit like 750 or 850 a gallon in some fucking place. There's no way Americans can't do that for weeks or months. It's one thing to like Trump's going to get killed in a video game. It's one thing to taco, you know, Trump chickens out or whatever on tariffs.

It's another if we're talking about an ongoing active fluid military situation. And we also have to have these marine expeditionary forces headed to the Persian Gulf with the idea, presumably being that they're going to do some kind of ground deployment. We don't know the scale of it or what the precise mission of it will be. But it seems like Trump maybe wants to have some ground deployment to take over the Kirk Island or whatever it's called and somehow drive the Iranians out of the Strait of Hormuz such that commerce can continue. And so I just think it's like it's sort of, it's like categorically different to say, as a matter of, of economic policy, maybe the pain being caused by this broad blanket imposition of sanctions is something I can, you know, rain in if the markets drop. And having a live military situation with like thousands of American troops in the fight and lots of other interests

in terms of the Gulf states and Israel and whatever, it's just not something that Trump can just like, you know, wave a magic wand and all of a sudden be done with in the same way that he could do with tariffs. I mean, on an ordinary circumstances, I would agree with you, but I think in this, I think he literally can. I feel like he's going to pull everybody out. What do you think he's going to do? I think we're going to leave and he's going to say, we won and then just be done with it. Because these gas prices can't persist like this.

Because like, authoritarian have the benefit of not having to respond much democratically because they don't care about that. But like there are limits to what people will tolerate such for like their personal safety or other things. And I just can't see Americans tolerating that much. But how do we know that Iran is going to even allow the straight of, to reopen if the U.S. withdraws. My, I mean, I'm just guessing, but my guess would be it would take the American boot off their neck. Like, Iran historically has played by the generally understood rules of war in every other thing. Even in the last, even when our B-2s or whatever came in and fucked up.

They calibrated the reprisal. Yeah, 100%. And then they announced, like, they killed one person. Like, we won their shit, right? But now they're saying, look, we're not negotiating with the United States anymore. Because the United States saying, we're not stopping until your regime is dead. All of you are gone. So I think in the U.S. is like, okay, we're going to change your mind and back up.

I think that. I'm just going to say, you know, oops, take it back. You know, here's an olive branch. I don't really see that. I think Iran would desperately jump around. Because Iran is never surviving this conflict in a long term. And who they even extend the olive branch too. I mean, there's new Supreme Leader who we've never even seen on video.

If they wanted a leader, they could find one. This is like, this is like when Trump was like, we're like, well, he's gone. A break over here's gone. We can't get him back from fucking, from El Salvador. We can't get him back from El Salvador or whatever. Seriously? This is before we, of course, kidnapped the leader of fucking Venezuela. but it's like, come on.

Like, I, if, I think, I understand what you're saying. I just, I think you're, you're trapped in conventional political analysis where Trump can just do, because if I would have asked you like a year ago, do you think that Trump's admin could block the release of the Epstein-Viles and stop talking about it? We would say, of course not, but I mean, they have, right? Well, they didn't, I mean, they ended up not blocking it. Well, they blocked it for as long as possible until Trump was like, fuck it. I don't care about this shit anymore, I guess.

And fuck Mike Johnson over and then now everybody's getting fucked on the Republican side for it. I just think that when Trump launched the war on February 28th, he opened Pandora. in a way that's not going to be able to be contained other like other stuff that he could have contained a little bit more concretely. I agree to some extent. Yeah. When you kill like 36 of their leaders or whatever in a single night, yeah, you kind of like a lot of that.

I mean, the tariff policy is something that he could just basically flip a switch and remove. You can't do that with this giant military conflagration. I mean, he could just say, fuck it, I'm leaving. He tried to at the end of his first term with Afghanistan. He was like, let's just blow everybody out. Fuck this shit, you know? He could, but then, you know, you got Israel that still has its own kind of, uh, uh, agenda to some extent that is more thoroughgoingly regime change but Trump seems to

agree with that I mean that's why he gave the speech the night of the bombing starting and said look you know Iranians rise up overthrow your over throw your government yeah that seems to be what he wants and it seems to only be escalating and it seems like that you know just past couple days I mean there seems to be a lot of reporting indicating that there is a planned ground operation of some kind which is why these marine expeditions the 2000 Marines or whatever yeah yeah yeah and then there was another one that left from San Diego I think Once we start having ground troops committed, then we're in an area where I would agree with you just like physically.

Like right now it's an air campaign and Trump can say or do whatever the fuck. Like this administration is cooked anyway. The Republican Party is cooked this fuck right now anyway. But if we start sending in Marines and we start getting people on the ground, one, obviously when you start setting up the logistics, you have people there, you got a whole thing going to go. But two, the thing that people don't consider often is if there's a big attack, then is up killing like 30 or 40 American soldiers. Now we're, now we're fucked because now we're stuck here for a long time. And now the American people are going to start to feel. rocketing even higher and higher up at like warp speed on the escalation ladder.

Unfortunately, yeah. Because even for weeks now, like people in the administration, especially Mike Waltz, but others have been telegraphing this idea that there might need to eventually be. And Trump has even signaled openness to this to be some sort of ground deployment to retrieve the nuclearium. So this has always kind of been into cards, right? And maybe they'll justify it by saying, and you'll often see this, it's not boots on the ground. if they're special forces or if it's not like, you know, some giant deployment of the army. Once you start happening like the army and forward operating base and all this bullshit, yeah.

You know, if it's not something on the order of Iraq, then it's not really boots on the ground somehow, as though these special forces guys are wearing slippers. Sure. But, you know, I just see, like, I just don't really see much reason to think that the cycle of continuous mutual escalation is going to level off anytime soon. And I think that was foreseeable just when Trump decided to open this can of worms of like unknown parameters and unknown. I mean, who could have guessed that he would have, I think this is true, right? Yesterday, did he lift sanctions on Iran?

They paused sanctions for like a month of a period of like about a month on oil exports. So they're taking some actions to try to mitigate the economic impact. And like the goofiest way possible. But they're still trying to take some mitigating. actions, right, which maybe they could cite as something that they're doing to trying to address people with economic concerns around this without just kind of nixing the entire military operation prematurely. I don't know, like, Trump has been saying for weeks, and Hegsef and others have been

saying for weeks that basically we've obliterated their entire military capacity, right? And yet, like, I think it was just like three days ago. The Hegsef said, today will be the most expansive strike package, is how we've phrased it, on Iran, meaning the most intense day of airstrikes on Iran of the entire war, just like yesterday up to that point was the most intensive day of air strikes. So it seems like they're just kind of like escalating further and further and further. And now you have even reports that Saudi Arabia and UAE might be willing to take offensive military action to retaliate, because they keep getting their assets struck by Iran and they're usually disposed not to get involved

directly, but there's now political pressure mounting on them to maybe even get more intensively involved. Wait a second. My bandwidth is taken away. I don't know why. Losing bandwidth? Yeah, which shouldn't be happening. Sorry, okay, wait, it's back.

That was weird. Trump is censoring me. Okay, sorry, God. It was the Mossade. It was Epstein. It was Epstein might be alive if he could be pulling the strings. Yeah, I mean, I think we'll be before March, May 1st. That's my prediction.

May 1st? Yeah. I think we got to be. We got to be. That's possible. Because I mean, I think they initially, the initial time horizon that was suggested was like four to six weeks, right? I don't know. So that would be consistent with what they at least sort of posited would be the rough time frame.

Sure. Imagine trying to run with high gas prices. Trump has also said, and I have to reach them to the doubt that this is intent, that to the extent that new political leadership is ever going to be appointed in Iran. it's going to be leadership that he has to approve or even that he has to personally select, just like he did with Venezuela, just like he has done now with Gaza. And so I don't understand how Trump could fulfill on his pledge

to basically sort of craft in his own image a new governing regime for Iran, and yet somehow the United States is also going to fully withdraw? I just don't buy it. I mean, just look at what happened with Iraq, right? after the Gulf War, 1991, or 90. The U.S. drives, the U.S. and the International Coalition, they drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.

There's a debate. Should the U.S. go into Iraq? Should they invade Baghdad and overthrow Saddam? They don't do it. And then for the next, like, 12 years, you have these kind of intermittent, you know, air strike campaigns and no fly zones imposed. And the U.S. is never really quite out of Iraq at that point.

Like, it's just like a long-term, slow-moving incremental lead-up to a full-fledged regime change operation finally being launched by Bush in 2003 with like the with 9-11 and the whole sort of frenzy around that time kind of seen as giving him license to do so I just think that like the can of warrants was opened here such that like we're not done with Iran anytime soon even if they do want to maybe pause this current wave of airstrikes or something just like I said the same thing And people told me I was crazy when he did what was seen as a more limited strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities in June of 2025. Because it's not just like, that to me always was not just some carefully circumscribed military intervention that was just going to be a one done.

It was just a new phase of like active kinetic warfare between the United States slash Israel and Iran that was inevitably going to blow up again or it was going to come to a head again in short order. And sure enough, that happened. And it's even more the case now because of the scale and intensity of this operation, it just doesn't lend itself to just like picking up your ball and going home now. Like there's going to be some final resolution that is going to be perceived as having you to be imposed. Otherwise, you're just going to allow an even more radicalized Iranian government to fester there and like plan some kind of retaliation against the United States in perpetuity. We'll see. How long have we been going?

When did you get here? probably about three hours. That's a long time. Yeah. Do you have any big predictions politically for the next? How do you, do you think the Democrats going to win the Senate? I think the historical trends already pointed toward the Democrats winning in the the terms.

To win the Senate? You know, I haven't done a deep dive on the map. Do you think the Save Act? Like what's the tipping point state for whether they could win the Senate? Pennsylvania. I have no idea, actually. I don't know. I saw the polymarket odds, flipped 51%.

I hate polymarket. Oh, okay. One of the Kalshi people. Is that the Kashi, Kalshi? What's the other? Cashy sounds right. Is this like K-A-S-C-H-R-E? Yeah, they tried to proposition me recently.

Hey, do you want to be like a sponsored influencer or something? I'm like, no, I actually despise your parasitic industry. So I hate using the prediction markets. Do you hate gambling in general or just prediction markets? I don't gamble myself, really. Okay. You know, if I'm in Las Vegas or something, I'll just like set aside $100 to like go out for the night or whatever. Okay.

But nothing that crazy. I just don't find it that pleasant. I find it like too stressful. Sure. Even it's just $100, right? I mean, doesn't really matter that much at the end of the night. evening, but like, I just don't like find it that pleasurable of an experience. Okay.

But prediction markets, I feel like there's there's so much potential for corruption there and like, I agree. So, okay, so. Okay, so I'm like, quantifying, like literally everything is I kind of find annoying on principle. Okay, sure. Okay, so forget the Senate stuff. Do you have any big predictions you think the next six months or nine months for this

year? A big Michael Tracy prediction that you think will happen that nobody else is talking about or that you think is a brave, strong prediction. You know what? I have a little bit, and Hanani always gives me a hard time about this because he's always eased into really making lots of predictions and keeping tabs on all the prediction markets and stuff. I don't make that many predictions because I almost find that like it becomes almost like a cognitive distortion where every bit feels like they have to be constantly predicting things out into the future and kind of framing their analysis of what's going on in the present in terms of what they can forecast out in the future. And so I don't know. I like to look at like I like to try to as best as I can synthesize.

what's going on now and like draw in for instance from it rather than say here's what's going to happen in six months it's like it becomes like a cottage industry like this professor young guy like oh he now is supposed to be some kind of profit because he said that Trump was going to win and then the US was going to attack Iran as though like that couldn't be something that you might have an intuition would happen the reason why I like the available evidence yeah I don't know what are your predictions and I'll tell you if I agree with them well I don't make too many bold predictions I do think we're going to do pretty good in the midterms I made my I made my You're not in the Royal Wee with the Democratic Party?

Yeah, of course. Right now I do, for sure. Okay. I don't know if that will change in the future, but... How about Democratic presidential nominee? I don't think about it. It's so long away. I think the obsession over...

The machinations are going on. Yeah, I know, but I don't care. We'll see. Who knows what could happen, you know, use... Who would be your preferred? Um, I don't even know what the policies are of these guys. Like, would Gavin Newsom be a president in the same way he is a governor? I have no idea.

I don't know. I like Newsom. Okay. I like Newsom. I like guys that bully Republicans. That's all I care of right now. I mean, he mixes it up at least. He does.

Well, oh, I was going to say, the reason why I like predictions or appreciate predictions is because if you feel like you have keen insight into the politics or stuff going on in the past and your analysis is good, ideally you should be able to project some of these things somewhat into the future. The thing that I don't like when I've argued with all these fucking losers, the Glenn Greenwall. I'm just kidding. No, I have kidding. But like the Alex Jones, the Tim Pools, like all these types of people is they're always doomstaying. They're always giving the worst, the dumbest predictions ever, the craziest shit ever.

They're always saying this over and over again. I think Glenn does many predictions. Alex Jones, yes, of course he does. Because he also thinks he's some kind of profit who has like a raucular. But I think that if you have somebody who's made, if you have somebody who's made a bunch of predictions and all of them have been wrong over and over and over again. I mean, Jank does that constantly. Yeah. Then I think that's, I think that gives, that's good to know.

Yeah, but it's good to know because these are the guys who, because what is voting besides like kind of making a prediction, right? In a way, when you voter when you address a candidate, you're saying, I think this person is going to be better for the country than this person. So like, if I look at Dave Smith, right, okay, well, everything you predicted about Trump, which you prospectively should have been able to know was not was going. was going to happen, like the opposite of what you said would happen, happen. And you should have known better. That would, I think it should cause people to hedge a little bit more on his predictions in the future. But like there are no accountability mechanism or anything for punish that constantly get things wrong.

So rather than making a prediction in 2024 about what I saw as likely to come in a second Trump presidency, what I focused on doing was to say like a Dave Smith type, look, the image that you're putting out of Trump and this antitious anticipation that you're kind of ginning up about what a realistic understanding of a second Trump administration would be, that's, it's bogus, it's total bullshit, you're doing pure roundless propaganda. Like, that

was enough for me without having to make a firm prediction about something or other. Like, I couldn't have predicted that on February 28th, like there would be a run more launched. I did say stuff at the time like, okay, look, I mean, we have now four years of data with what Trump did when he was office the first time.

He attempted regime change in Venezuela. It stands to reason that he might be intending to attempt to do that again, especially if he's bringing to Marco Rubio, who's already this hardcore hawk on Western Hemisphere in Cuba, Venezuela, et cetera. So, like, it stands to reason that that's something to be cognizant of, right? Yeah, but I think when you get into, like, a firm prediction game, it almost, it almost becomes like a parlor game. It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be, I don't think it has to be firm, but I think

the types of predictions that people make or the types of things that people try to predict. I think it gives you some insight into whether or not they have any fucking idea about what they're talking about anyway, especially in areas that you feel like they should have a lot of knowledge in or areas that you have a lot of knowledge in. So, like, and if people are wrong about these things over and over again, I think that, I think there should be a huge credibility hit. One of the biggest issues that I fought over that I don't know how the fuck this is still the case is Republicans, for some fucking reason, keep getting credit for trying to balance the budget. And they fucking don't. And that was the thing that was so easy to call. He

Didn't do it in his first term for no fucking reason. We had Trump tax cuts and jobs. We were deficit spending more and more and more. And it was starting to get even more than Obama was, I think, in his last term, I think, even before the COVID did happen. Reduce the national debt. Yeah, exactly. But like all these guys, and especially all these weird crypto finance people that have gotten

involved, it's like, well, I think the debt is the number one most important issue. It's like, okay, then why the fuck would you vote for Trump? I know, but they were so long. After $200 billion budget request from the Pentagon. Jesus, yeah, on top of everything else. And how can you be sorry? Or for people that thought that Doge was going to be wildly successful, when Elon Musk comes out and he says he's going to cut $2 trillion from the budget.

Our discretionary spending is 1.7. You're retarded. But not only are you retarded, everybody who thinks you're going to be successful is retarded, because how could you possibly think that when he's so stupid? But what I'm saying is, if you have tried to kiss up to him and say, Elon, I'm available. I will help you audit the Pentagon. Oh, the sadder, even more sad with that. They didn't even pretend to try to do anything like that.

Do you remember, I think it was Brett? No, I think it was Eric Weinstein, who was on some podcast and he was. sense to me. He was crying. He's like, the Trump administration, you only need, you have to lower your IQ. You need to get drunk to understand this fucking moron. But for this guy to be on podcast, I can't believe the Trump administration hasn't called out to any of us yet. And the intellectual dark web to be in the counter. It's like, are you fucking serious? Put me in, coach. I'm just saying that it's frustrating that it's like, when we come around again and all these pundits are telling you who to vote for and who's going to do the best job

and everything, it's like, well, you guys missed every single thing about this administration. Why is the fuck is anybody you listen to you? That's a frustrating part. I agree if there are pundits who make it a habit of theirs. When you endorse a candidate, you are making predictions, I think you are. I just don't like the lack of accountability. I think you're perfectly entitled to look at the argument that was given for why X, Y, Z, pundit, endorse a certain candidate and then compare and contrast it to what actually panned out. That's perfectly valid.

I don't think you need to predict the budget's going to increase by $227 billion. But that's all I think, yeah. Okay. All right. Do you want any closing final thoughts or part of it? Would anybody care for another song? request. Do you want to do a duet? No. I don't said.

Does anybody want me to take my shirt off? No, I'm not doing that. I'm not going to traumatize any of the any of the innocence. God, I hate this guy. He's such a fucking I he speaks in this all constantly like elliptical sort of hinting, winking cryptic way where it just doesn't make any sense but like for some reason a lot of people pretend that it's this. But all these intellectual dark web, all these IDW guys like speak like I pulled up this clip. There was a clip of him on Pierce Morgan recently

where he's talking about his interpretation of Epstein. And I guess people are supposed to find it really smart, but it's just like this tornado of pure blather that doesn't make any sense. It's just amazing. Any concluding thoughts from you? What do you make of this? Was this worth your while?

I mean, if you were going to be on the stream anyway. Yeah, I'm saying, okay, chat. What would you be doing if I didn't mosey on him? Probably just covering random political stuff. Okay. So, yeah, it was okay, yeah, good. I think I enjoyed it. I do think we wouldn't have spoken about any of these topics if Kamala was president.

We'd be talking about much better stuff. Maybe so. Maybe we'd be on a holiday to a tranquil Iran right now together, you know, taking a little boat ride through the canals of. Or we'd be arguing about should we have single-payer health care or a public option or what should we do with all this extra money that we're not wasting at the Pentagon or not tariffing the entire world? Maybe Canada and Mexico would be sending us brand new awesome cars.

Who knows? We could have been building the tallest skyscrapers. We'd have hover cars. 99 cents. Gasoline. There might be active military conflict with Russia over Ukraine at this point. Hard to say. Oh, my God. You're speaking right to my heart right now.

I know you would really enjoy that. I know you would really enjoy that. Let's see. On one hand, we could be going to war with Greenland, Canada, Mexico, getting rid of Maduro and bombing the fuck out of Iran. Or we could be fighting with Russia. I would much prefer the Russia fight. Trump's basically continued the policy status quo from Biden in terms of the weapons provision to Ukraine, and he's actually loosened restrictions on long-range.

The restrictions have gotten loosened, but the Republicans have, and Trump has continued the dramatic fight against Ukraine and supporting them and trying to tie every bit of support we would give Ukraine. If it was a Democratic leader, if it was Kamala, we would be giving more support to Ukraine than Trump is. Okay, but like when the rubber hits the road, on a policy level, the policy is basically the same as the status quo. Yeah, but time moves forward. if I show you a five-year-old and then I show you him when he's 10 years old and he hasn't grown at all. You go, well, I mean, he's the same height as he was five years ago. That's not acceptable, right?

The support that we give to Ukraine should scale over time, I would imagine, especially with the mission and everything else, but it hasn't. So, yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, the, the pretense of trying to come to some kind of diplomatic solution in Ukraine, I am favorable toward that principle. It just has been sort of a fiction because it's not tied to any sort of any change in the underlying policy. Also, yeah, wait, I don't think we do sell stuff. I don't know if we give stuff directly to Ukraine anymore. I'm pretty sure most of it is trying to. Trump came up with a mechanism that he claims is these NATO countries paying the United States for these weapons now, as opposed to the costly and politically perilous giant congressional appropriations under Biden,

but it's still the status quo. I still don't fully understand how it is that Trump is sending these weapons to Ukraine without charge in claiming they're getting paid for them. We're just selling it to European people and then we're I know, but there's also direct provisions to Ukraine itself and not all of it's routed to the room of like a loan or something. I have to do more reporting on it, actually.

I filed some FOIAs and I'm not satisfied with what I've learned so far, but I'll report back. It doesn't sound like the status quo, though. Not in terms of the mechanism by which the weapons are being provisioned, but the weapons are still flowing. And, you know, not as much as it could be, though. It's different from 2022 because in 2022, like, the Europeans were not in a position where they could take up it, pick up any of the slack, really, or much of it from the U.S., but now they've kind of like built up their military industrial capacity a bit more in the ensuing years. Imagine if they were doing that and the U.S. was still helping.

Oh, my goodness. We could have so many more interceptors for Trump's war with Iran. You ought to be marching on Moscow right now, and Putin would be hanging from a meat hook. Maybe he'd be hiding underground like Saddam was. in the little cake thing. Okay. Well, hey, thanks for chatting. Yeah, I enjoyed this. I appreciate it. I hope good luck. What's your next thing you're doing? Your next public debate or show or whatever. I don't know. I have stuff scheduled. I think I'm going to be going to that pro-regime change in Cuba rally in Hila.

Hilalia. Hi-Lilea. on Tuesday. So if you want to go and... If I fly back in time, if it's still going on at night, I'll be there. Okay. And then final thing, where can be... Do you want to exchange numbers or do you want to just... Probably off stream, so they don't. Okay. I think we should announce our numbers for all the comments. Where can people find you? What do you want them to follow you at? Yeah, substack is emmetracy.net.

I also contribute to other publications. I had something in the Wall Street Journal recently. And then X is M. Tracy, Tracy with an E, make sure. It's the Irish spelling. This thing? Yep, that's it. And then also X on YouTube. I don't put as much of an emphasis on that.

But I try to remain as much as I can anchored in the written word, which is going out of fashion these days. But I don't know. going to be a stickler and I'm going to be nostalgic for when not everybody thought that all the only way to consume information about political events is to vegetate in front of some dopey podcast based all right well thank you for joining I love you guys so on everybody I'll see you guys I think I might stream tomorrow a little bit we'll see depending on what I have to do before my flat leaves thumbs up be careful bye