The Adam Mockler Show - I got a MAGA Leader to admit THIS…

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Support the show: https://adammockler.com/subscribe This is the premiere episode of our new debate with a simple goal: create dialogue at a time when America is uniquely divided. Filmed in Chicago. Featuring new voices. Every single Wednesday we will be posting. CASTING: [e-mail] Today’s guest: Brady Cupples https://www.instagram.com/bradylcupples/ Produced by Amelia Spitler Produced by Hayden Wright Filmed by Nathanial Brown JOIN THE COMMUNITY: Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AdamMockler/ Discord: https://discord.gg/y9yzMU3Gff Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adammockler/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/adammockler.com/ Twitter: https://x.com/adammocklerr/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@adammockler Contact: [e-mail] Business inquiries: [e-mail] Adam Mockler - Mockler Media LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seriously, why aren't Democrats in Washington doing more to stop Trump? I know. Have you heard about Phil Weiser and Colorado, though? No. Is he different? Yeah, A.G. Weiser sued the Trump administration 65 times. He's beating Trump in court again and again. Things like protecting Obamacare against Trump's illegal tariffs, and he even won against Ticketmaster. So he actually gets results. Exactly. As governor, Phil will fight for Colorado. Paid for by Phil Weiser for Colorado registered agent in Nand and Nostasy.

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Conversation is what's missing in America today, so I am proud to be joined by 26-year-old Brady Couples, a Gen Z Conservative who is the chairman of the young Republicans in McLean County, Illinois. Brady has come with one claim, and I have come with one claim. We have 20 minutes to debate each claim. Brady, I'll let you go first. My claim is that tariffs are an integral part of a necessary industrial policy.

You know, I like this topic because it allows us to touch on a few different parts of tariffs, But what worries me when conservatives are talking about tariffs is they're generally defending Donald Trump's self-destructive illegal Liberation Day tariffs. Do you agree with Trump's Liberation Day tariffs? So I agree with the sentiment of his tariffs and the idea of it. There are some aspects of his Liberation Day tariffs that I would tweak because I do think there were aspects of it that were problematic and did cause some pain to the economy, but that doesn't change the fact that I still support tariffs and I still support his attempt

to implement tariffs. Let me ask, do you think it was a net positive or net negative when he implemented those Liberation Day tariffs? If I were to do it, tariffs, I think, need to be more industry-specific and have more clarity and have more of a long-term schedule implemented with it. I think his was very broad when he implemented them. Even before the Liberation Day tariffs, he uses tariffs as a negotiating tool. Your claim on its face saying that tariffs can protect certain industries, That's how tariffs are supposed to be used, like a scalpel in order to protect certain industries.

Like an example would be if China invades Taiwan, we want to have our own strong semiconductor supply chain so that when China invades Taiwan, we're not reliant on one of our enemy countries. Is that a good example of tariffs? Yes. That's another good thing of tariffs and just industrial policy, you know, more widespread, is that it can secure supply chains. The problem is that's using tariff like a scalpel, and as you pointed out, Trump kind of uses it like a hammer. Like he's kind of just swinging the hammer around, hitting every single country, and then he starts to hit our allies, and then he starts to hit countries that we already had free trade with.

And I guess the answer to the question that I'd have, if it's net negative or net positive, is they've been net negative. The Trump tariffs have been so incredibly self-destructive. And what you're arguing for is like, if I were talking to a Mitt Romney conservative, he'd be like, yeah, of course, we need to surgically target countries. But that was Joe Biden's policy. Joe Biden had the Chips and Science Act, and the Chips and Science Act specifically targeted. semiconductors in China. Did you think that was a good policy? I actually do. It seems like you and the Supreme Court and I all agree on the idea that Donald Trump's tariffs were just way too broad, right? They were not surgical at all, and this led to sort of a self-destructive policy, which leads me to ask, like, how can you say that this man's signature fiscal policy was kind of too broad and maybe a little bit negative effects, but then still support his economic policy. I think execution matters a lot. If Joe Biden came in and Joe Biden's sentiment was that

he wanted everybody to have a livable, amazing wage that outpays, it doesn't matter what the sentiment is. It matters what the actual policy that they implement is. Yeah, again, I mean, I'm not necessarily saying I fully support. I mean, because like I said, there's some things that I would tweak. But I still support, again, the idea of imposing tariffs and being aggressive on tariffs. I think he is doing that. I support that. And yes, there are going to be some negative consequences. It does have an inflation. What positives have we seen, though, from the tariffs that Trump imposed? Well, yeah, there's not much. So it is a net negative, you'd say.

The economy, maybe, into maybe results. But again, I agree. It's a net positive for the sentiment because I want tariffs to be a focal point of industrial policy, an economic policy. And I think he's doing that. I think the way he's implementing it is a little bit flawed. But it's, I think, again, in terms of a net negative or positive, it would depend on, what specifically we're talking about. Well, we're talking about the economic effects on Americans. Yeah, I would say it can be a net negative. Yeah, what about manufacturing in America?

Well, if implemented correctly, I think it would have a net positive. But you've said it wasn't implemented correctly. Failed execution on it. This is the problem here. Well, I will say, and maybe not for this term, but his first term, when he initially imposed tariffs, he increased a lot. We had about maybe 500,000 manufacturing jobs that were added from 2017 to 18. So it can work.

But there's also something to be said about, America shouldn't be making everything. And this is where Trump seems to kind of differ and get it wrong. He thinks that we're being screwed over by every country and that everything needs to be made in the United States. But we have specialties. What do you do day to day for your job? I'm in the roofing industry. Yep. And then you do the sales aspect, right? Why do you do the sales aspect and not the roofing aspect? Is it because you're better at sales?

For one, it's better money for me and less hard manual labor. Exactly. So it's kind of like your specialty. You're also just like an affable guy, so you're probably able to make sales. Whereas I'm sure some of the roofers you work with are very, very talented at building roofs and doing this. There's a reason why I focus on my video creation and editing, and I'm not out there hunting and killing food, and I'm not out there trying to build my own house. It's because oftentimes you can kind of delegate things off to other people when they're better at it. It's called comparative advantage.

Yeah, exactly. So the reason why you do something that you specialize in is because, it allows you to be more productive and everyone else to be more productive. Trump seems to have the zero-sum view of the world where everything needs to be made in the United States, but the reality is we're good at making a few things. And other countries are good at making their things.

We can't really grow bananas in the United States, but Ecuador can. So we import bananas from Ecuador. We probably have a trade deficit with them. That doesn't mean it's bad. And then we're able to actually have a stronger economy for it. Absolutely, yes. Yeah, the perfect example is,

especially produce bananas. Yeah, we can't grow everything here. But I guess my focus would be for tariffs and industrial policy is to protect the advantageous industries of the future. And industries that can provide good paying jobs for Americans is what I would focus on more. And that's where I would impose tariffs. I agree that I like aggression.

And I agree that Biden maybe wasn't as aggressive as I'd like. But what Donald Trump is doing is quite literally swinging a hammer around and hitting 99% of our allies. And for some reason, I don't know if he knows, but he didn't tariff Russia or North Korea, but he tariffed every other country on the planet. First of all, that's weird. Second of all, the aggressive posture

is something that I can maybe deal with if it made any sort of economic sense. Right now, I'm pretty sure before the Supreme War started down, we had tariffs on Heard Island. Have you ever heard of Heard Island? I have not. It has zero people living on it other than Penguins. And the McDonald Island has zero people living on it.

It's not just aggressive. It's like self-destructive at that point. You said it was a net negative. So I just, I think that if we would have kept in Biden's tariffs and not even done this entire aggressive Liberation Day tariff where Trump has a misunderstanding of how comparative advantage works and how specialty works, we would be better off. With regards to Russia, to be fair, he was in the middle of trying to attempt a peace deal with the Ukraine war.

So he didn't want to impose tariffs to complicate that matter. He placed tariffs on Iran in the same regard, though, and he was trying to get a peace deal with that. I don't think, you've even admitted it. Well, that was before the, the, the, the, of the overall. Iran War broke out. They were negotiating a deal though. You even admitted he was indiscriminate with the tariffs, right? Just indiscriminate. So I don't think he was making these intentional, like what's the North Korea justification? He just likes Kim Jong-un. I mean, what do you think he did it with Russia because he likes Putin or something? He does like Putin. Absolutely. This guy loves

Putin. He rolled out the red carpet for him. He's not as adversarial towards Putin as maybe some of the Democrats are, but again, the terrorists with Russia, again, I think has to do with the, see, this is where it's backwards. This is where it's backwards. So your entire, the reason you seem to like the tariffs is because it's a show of aggression on the global stage. You like when Donald Trump shows aggression. Would you like him to show more aggression to Putin? Because you just said the Democrats are adversarial, but the Democrats seem to be aggressive in the places that it matters.

Joe Biden was aggressive towards Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, as we should. We should be aggressive towards all of these enemy countries. But Donald Trump was like, I'm going to get in, I'm going to be the biggest asshole possible to Switzerland, South Korea, the Penguins on Heard Island, and then let's throw in Canada as a big FU. Like, what was the purpose of tariffing the shit out of Canada? I think tariffing Canada is still good because, again, there's a lot of manufacturing there that we need to, again, the purpose of tariffs, again, I want to be implemented is to reshor manufacturing, bring jobs here. I mean, if we have jobs that are over in our

allies countries, I want them back here. I mean, at the end of the day, I want the priorities of the American people and their living and their jobs to be put first over. I mean, listen, I would agree. I mean, if he wants to be super aggressive towards China and get concessions, like, hey, can you guys stop ripping off our intellectual property? That's totally good. But the aggression was so absurd that he threatened a 25% tariff on all of the EU if they didn't give him Greenland as a land. If they didn't absorb Greenland or if Denmark didn't give Greenland away to the United States, he was going to put tariffs on all of the EU. It's like, this is insane.

You sound more like a Biden. I'm not like all due respect you sound more like a Biden like supporter of tariffs and anything Trump has ever done. If you're enjoying this video and you want to see more debate content on the Adam Mockler channel, make sure you drop a like. Leave us some feedback in the comments and you can become a member below for more exclusive content. Back to the debate.

My claim is that Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in American history. So when you talk about his corruption, going to more detail, what specifically and list out what you view as him being corrupt? Yeah, there's a few different prongs. that we can use. I view corruption as, first of all, his fake elector scheme back in 2020 when he tried to steal the election by having different electors in swing states that could forge the documents. That's a level of corruption that we've not really seen ever. But even beyond that, we can go to modern day. There's a lot of financial corruption happening in this

administration. Not only with cryptocurrency, Donald Trump started something called Trump coin right before he got into office, and he's made $4 billion off of Trump coin, but also with like this pardon economy that he's created, he's pardoned a bunch of donors that have scammed the hell out of Americans. There's people like Zhang Peng Zhao, who was the founder of Binance. Have you heard of this case? Yeah. The Zhang Peng Zhao case. I know he's involved in crypto and some questionable things with crypto. Yeah, he ran Binance and he basically looked the other way while Binance would allow like sex trafficking and drug trade across the globe. So he got locked away, rightfully so. But then he ended up helping Donald Trump build a crypto platform, donating to Trump,

and then facilitating a $2 billion investment from the United Arab Emirates into World Liberty Financial. Then he got pardoned. And then Trump was asked about it. He said, I don't know anything about the guy. So I understand that politicians can be corrupt and that we live in a corrupt system. I think what Trump has done is unique. I think this is some unique transactional self-serving. Can you see where I'm coming from there? Yeah, I see. Go back to with 2020 with his election. I think he had a lot of reason to question it. No, he didn't. Many of the rules of the election were changed that year by judges.

And as you know, laws and rules of our country should be decided and are decided by the legislature. And that wasn't the case with 2020. That's why he tried to challenge it in the court. They didn't take his case, so they said he didn't have merit. But I think the president of the United States bringing attention to an issue like that has plenty of merit. And he never had his day in court to challenge that. He did.

So, okay. The problem is him questioning the election results is one thing if he said hey I don't really like these results That would be one thing him taking it to 60 different courts is also one thing But every single one of those 60 courts except for maybe one out of technicality Shot it down because he has no standing Let me ask you that if he had if he was able to go let's say they rule and that He's it he can go to court he has standing he goes to court he presents his case and then they rule against him Do you think there's a less likely that January 6 happens? No Donald Trump had

already been told by everybody around him that the election wasn't stolen. His Attorney General Bill Barr, Mark Meadows, all these people told him. He pushed them away and he decided to embrace Rudy Giuliani's election fraud lies. Donald Trump was stuck in this effing schizophrenic psychosis where he thought the election was stolen. He was spreading election fraud lies. And then he said it was stolen before the votes were even counted. Before the election even happened.

I will give you this as part of my problem. He did make a lot of bold claims and I do think there was a lack of evidence on his part. But again, I think he should have been given the opportunity to present that in court. And if he didn't have the evidence, well, then we would have walked away. He didn't. He did present it in court. He didn't have the evidence. And then he doubled down and told his followers to show up on January 6th.

If what Donald Trump was saying was entirely false about the election fraud, and we just, you know, we accept that framing. Do you think it's harmful for the president to be spreading these lies so boldly, as you say, and aggressive? If it's lies, and yes. Do you think that January 6 would have happened if he never said the election was stolen? No, I don't think it was happening. So you can draw a direct line between Trump's. you know, lies about the election. I would say claims.

Claims, okay. I would say lies because his own judges said that there was no standing, no evidence whatsoever. There was one case that Donald Trump posted over and over about. It was about people sliding ballot boxes from under a desk and then putting those ballot boxes in somewhere. Have you ever seen this video or heard of this? I saw the video myself.

It was a very, very popular election fraud case. I'm so glad that you saw it. They took that to a Trump-appointed judge, and they said, dude, you've got to look at this 30-second clip. So the Trump appointed judge said, I'm looking at the 30 second clip, but let's look at the full 12-hour footage of the day. It might have been 16 hours,

because during election day you have to set up, you have to tear down. And I worked on election, it has to be a Democrat and a Republican. So look at the full footage of the day. They found out that these are just spare ballots that quite literally were empty, blank, and that four hours earlier, the commissioner, who's a Republican, like put them under,

and it was all incredibly legal. The same thing happened in each case, Trump and Republicans and these actors, that are bad faith are spreading these lies, then they go to court, and then we find out that they were just that lie. So Trump doubled down, and then bringing it back to the fake elector scheme,

if he did try to use his power in order to rig the election or nullify Joe Biden's election results, would that be corrupt? If he rigged the election, by how? The fake elector scheme, and by trying to hang Mike Pence. So where is this fake electric scheme?

Who reported on that? What's the evidence for that? Oh, there's so much evidence. So it happened in Georgia and there was a RICO case. The RICO case included Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and four other names that I can't remember, who signed onto this fake elector slate. And basically, Trump was trying to take the real electors and then push them out with his fake electors and say that because he's the president, you know, he can do that.

Is that corrupt? Well, I'm not familiar with that case. I have to look into it. If you grant what I'm saying, is it corrupt? It could be, but here's what I would ask is, you could. have many cases like in Michigan for example where and here's why I think he has reason to say make the claims he made is because you have where he's in many many of the swing states he's he's up early on you can see the trajectory where it's on the votes counting stops and then all of a sudden

then it resumes later in the night and all of a sudden every there's a new batch of ballots all for Biden now Biden's in the lead and just goes on to take the rest of the way you see a graph where it's going this way, and then Biden shoots up, and then that's almost a statistical nominee. That graph that you're pointing to, I can picture the exact one. That's like a meme that they made. That's not the actual graph of Michigan,

but this is all- It was pretty accurate. It's so explainable though. The voting was never paused. The counting was never paused. There was a systematic effort from Donald Trump to undermine mail-in voting before the election. He would tell everybody, if you're a Republican,

do not do mail-in voting. They are going to rig it for you. So his Republican base decided that they were going to show up on election day on mass. And they said, we're not going to do mail-in-voting. We're going to show up on election day. That's the goal.

Democrats, however, who probably believed in COVID more, Democrats were probably more worried about COVID. Like, they predominantly voted via mail-in ballot. Probably like, you know, 50% of Democrats decided to vote via mail-in ballot due to COVID. So Trump actually intentionally took advantage of this effect. Trump came out on election night and declared victory when 40% of the national votes were counted.

Mike Pence, who do you trust Mike Pence, or do you think that he betrayed Trump? I'm not a fan of him. Not really, why? I think he did betray Trump. In what way? How so? When you're the vice president, I think you should remain loyal to your president. Whoa, but you're supposed to remain loyal to the Constitution over the Constitution.

We swear an oath of the Constitution over the president. That's true. But again, I believe Trump made plausible. He had reason to make the claims he was making, and Vice Pence, I think, was wrong. So you think Mike Pence should have completely nullified the Constitution and trusted Trump's gut. The same gut that you've said was wrong on tariffs, too aggressive on tariffs. You think that after 60 court cases shot him down, Mike Penn should have still said,

I'm gonna nullify these election results. That would have been the end of American democracy. I don't think that he's completely wrong on terrorists and I don't think he's not completely wrong with the election claims. Can I ask you, what do you think about his cryptocurrency, Trump coin? Did that bother you when he announced that the day before he got inaugurated? It does. It's a bit rough, right?

How are you going to profit directly off of your own name, own 70% of liquidity, and then basically scam your followers? scam your followers. So that's uniquely corrupt, right? Is there any democratic equivalent to somebody, like is there Biden coin or Obama coin? No. Well, cryptocurrency is relatively new, to be fair, but no, it's, with regards to Trump coin, yeah, it's, I think I don't know a whole lot about it, and a lot I think there's still a lot that we don't know about it, but it's concerned me. We know enough. I think we know enough to know that it's pretty bad. And then he even has done thousands of trades during the first quarter of this year. Like if Nancy Pelosi's

insider trading bothers you, as it does me, then the president of the United States doing $3,000 trades making, I think it was $200 million in the first quarter, by pumping stocks that he's then giving contracts to, that's wild. Is there any equivalent of that on the Democratic side? I have to look into it, but, no, again, I do think the cryptocurrency situation is not good, and I have no problem saying that. Yeah, no, it's bad. Do you think it makes him the most corrupt president in American history? No, I think there's plenty of corruption that's existed before. I think at the end of the day, insofar as Trump is cropped or Biden has cropped, I think

I would say it's the byproduct of a corrupt system. That's what I believe. I think it's existed for a long time, but I would not say you the most corrupt president ever. And to the extent of his corruption, there's some things that I wouldn't consider corrupt. I actually, the part that I agree with is that we do have a corrupt system that has been rigged, But I think the size, scope and scale of the way that Donald Trump has re-rigged the system for him and his friends and for Elon Musk and for SpaceX and for Peter Thiel is unprecedented. Biden's net worth went from $8 million to $12 million over four years.

It was like, you know, investments and everything. And he put it in a blind trust, just normal investments. Trump has already increased $4 billion since the beginning of his term. That's it, Brady Couples. Thank you so much for coming on. I hope to have you back on again soon. I think it's very, very important that young people across the country model these conversations, have these conversations.

Obviously, we disagree on certain fundamental things, but we are respectful to each other. I genuinely think you're somebody who will have a fruitful, successful life, and I wish the best for you. And I think it's important that Americans kind of come back to reality rather than always going after each other online. So any final thoughts? Yeah, thanks for having me. I think what you're doing is good. More conversation and dialogue, I think, is healthy for our country. what we need right now, and so I encourage you to keep it up.

Thank you so much, Brady Couples. You can find his socials in the description below. Make sure you drop a like on this video, and hope you have a rarest here, Damon. Thank you. Listen, we're building this debate show and we need your help. If you know someone that would be good on the show,

scan the QR code on screen or contact team at macklermedia.com. Thank you all. Seriously, why aren't Democrats in Washington doing more to stop Trump? I know. Have you heard about Phil Weiser in Colorado, though? No, is he different?

Yeah. Yeah, A.G. Weiser sued the Trump administration 65 times. He's beating Trump in court again and again. Things like protecting Obamacare against Trump's illegal tariffs. And he even won against Ticketmaster. So he actually gets results. Exactly. As governor, Phil will fight for Colorado. Paid for it by Phil Weiser for Colorado registered agent in Nand and Moskazi.