The Chris Cuomo Project - Adam Mockler Charts The Path Forward For Democrats
Episode Date: September 30, 2025Adam Mockler (podcast and YouTube host, The Adam Mockler Show, and Commentator, MeidasTouch Network) joins Chris Cuomo to examine the Democratic Party’s challenges in the “attention economy.” Fr...om Gavin Newsom’s rise to Trump’s strategy of grievance politics, they debate whether Democrats can counter MAGA without becoming its mirror image.Mockler shares his journey from making YouTube videos at age nine to debating Trump supporters and growing into one of the most prominent young progressive voices online. Their conversation explores social media’s role in shaping political culture, the dangers of radicalization, and the opportunities for Democrats to present real solutions on affordability, immigration, and leadership. Go to http://ffrf.us/school or text “CHRIS” to 511511 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Is the best hope for liberals, the left, Democrats, anybody who wants MAGA to stop the new generation.
Adam Mockler has millions of followers, huge reach all over social media, and he is making his mark.
Is this the difference?
I decide to test Chris Cuomo here from the Chris Cuomo Project.
Thank you for joining.
I wanted to sit down with part of the tip of the spear, let's say, of the influencers who are really making an impact on the left, or Mochler would call himself a liberal.
What's the difference?
What are they trying to do?
What do they believe is working for them?
What isn't working for them, in my opinion?
Time for conversation as a cure.
What do you say?
Let's get after it.
I think that in politics right now, like Newsom only started to pop off when he started projecting this level of strength.
Like, do you think that empathy, I think that's the Democratic Party trying to lean into being empathetic and sweet and soft.
It's kind of burned us for the past decade, right?
I think it's about how and I think it's the balance.
And I think Newsom is resonating, yes, but for the wrong reasons.
And I'm totally love that we're jumping in midway because this.
is where Adam Mockler and I are, all right?
I love your success.
Yeah, because you're young.
Yeah, that's cool.
And you're connecting with people your age and beyond.
Yeah, that's great.
But there's a thoughtfulness that is not just, you know,
you lefties have a tendency to beat us over the head with your intelligence.
And it comes off as an arrogance.
And that turns people off, even if you're right.
And we're talking now about what the left needs to be.
All right. So let's take a step back and say, what's the goal? Like, I'll tell you how you should be if you tell me what you want. What do you want? What is the goal for people on the left? Yeah. I'd say that, first of all, I call myself more of a liberal, not really a leftist. I don't know if there's a distinction for you there, but I'm more of a liberal. I think the goal should be to maximize the happiness and well-being of everybody in America by making sure they have a strong family, they have access to health care, access to things that people need in a society. So I'd say we can reverse engineer from just maximizing.
everyone's well-being, which is the pretty basic. Do you want more positions of power in government?
More positions of power in government? I think that, yeah. So you want to win more elections.
You want to win the midterms. Of course, yeah. So here's your problem, or your challenge, let's say.
To win elections, you have to make the other side lose. Okay? Yeah. That is the easiest path to victory,
right? That's why gerrymandering is such a big thing. Because you limit the ability.
to lose. That's why you have an over 90% retention rate with an under 30% satisfaction rate.
Yeah. Right? That's the only time you get that. No one stays where they are if everyone thinks
you suck unless it's rigged and it is. Yeah. So if the straightest line in Machler versus Cuomo
is Cuomo sucks, I think that that's how you win elections. The problem is that's not a liberal
at their best. That is an anti-liberal at their best. So you're saying that, so I get what you're saying,
but our whole strategy was sort of Trump sucks, but you're saying that needs to be matched with
a more forward-looking vision, like from the Obama era. I think Trump sucks is MAGA. I think Trump
sucks is all grievance, all outrage, leaning into it. Yeah. And I am your retribution. I am your
That famous line from the movie Snatch, where the guy says, do you know what nemesis means?
It is the righteous infliction of retribution as manifested by an appropriate agent, in this case, an orable cunt, me.
That's what Trump is. He is the nemesis of the left. He is going to punish all the people that MAGA wants punished.
Yeah. I see the reaction to that becoming more likely.
like that. Newsom's popularity to me is a yellow flag. Maybe not a red flag, but a yellow flag.
But it worked for Trump. He attacked the enemy. He was able to consolidate power off of, you know, talking to people's grievances, saying you're not happy with the system. You're not happy with what's happening. And with Newsom, the whole framework I've been using is the attention economy. That Newsom is dominating the attention economy because he realized that's what Trump's been doing for the past decade. And you see Newsom out there getting millions of
millions of views on these all caps tweets, if you wouldn't have tweeted it in that format,
it would have gotten way less views.
So what I think Newsom is doing is, number one, playing to the grievances of the party
saying, hey, we should go after, like, the opponents.
But two, just trying to dominate attention so we can drive the narrative for Prop 50.
Look, for you, that's enough.
If you're getting gazillions of views and getting paid and getting reach and getting your
eyes out there, that's fine.
But you're not a leader.
You're not elected to get something done.
Yeah.
That's the space.
No one's getting elected to do anything except stop the other side.
In that, I believe there is opportunity.
Mm-hmm.
Okay?
We've been here before.
It's louder because of social media.
And we have this weird thing going on right now, which I think will change in the not-too-distant future.
What is it?
Fox News and Newsmax almost got sued out of existence because they fill in the strong language you want,
misinformation about smartmatic.
Okay? They lie. They intentionally
this. Whatever. They almost
got sued out of existence. Yeah. Right.
They are a
wastebasket fire compared to
what social media did with the same
information. Those
companies get a pass. Why? Section
230. Why? Because I don't control
Mockler. I just built the house.
I built the house. I maintained the apartment.
Mockler's coming in. I don't make the
content the way Tucker Carlson did.
And I don't buy that
anymore. Why? Because I amplify Mochler. Because I know with my technology how to pick up on what he's saying
and whether or not it will resonate. And what is the resonation that I want? Oh, the resignation I want
is outrage, is grievance, is negativity. Why? Because it sells best. It gets me the best click through.
And that's where I put my ads. So I don't know what Mochler's creating. Okay. But I'm taking what he's
creating and I'm using it and I'm amplifying it and I'm drowning out.
other voices and I'm prioritizing yours and I'm making a trend and I'm taking shorts of
it now with software that you don't even know about and I'm making smaller clips of it.
Now am I a creator? I say yes. And if you're making money off it and you're amplifying certain
things and not others, you're making choices of what creation there is and what there isn't.
And as soon as you do that, there should be a responsibility. That has to change. That's the problem
with social media, is that you can say, I got to tell you, I don't think that this Tylenol
research that just came out from Harvard is dispositive, right?
And you get drowned out by people saying, never take Tylenol again.
They've been killing us the whole time.
We knew it.
That needs to change.
So in the information economy, as you understand it and benefit from it, you're right about Newsom.
And you're right about what the opposite.
to MAGA needs to be.
Yeah.
However, I don't think that that's the only standard, and I don't think it wins elections
for Democrats.
I don't think becoming what beat you gets you where you want to be.
And I am not being high-minded or overly virtuous.
Yeah.
I get we're saying that you can't just become what beats you.
But at some points, before having to change the game, like Newsom can hopefully change the game
so he doesn't have to play like this, but you have to play the game that Trump is playing, and that is attention.
I think that there's a second part to what Newsom was doing, beyond driving the attention and getting these views,
he was driving a narrative about Prop 50 that he's trying to push, which is their effort to redistrict in proportion to what Texas is doing, right?
So he's been using this, I think this entire stunt has been to push attention towards Prop 50, and it seems pretty brilliant.
We now have, like, millions of views on tweets about Prop 50 that wouldn't have those views otherwise.
The views, though, are a...
But it's a double-edged sword.
It is because, look, if I get a lot of views by showing how small my junk is, are those good views?
No, because that's not really something that I probably am going to benefit from in a long haul.
I think that we've lost the plot on that.
It's like, as long as it's getting viewed, look, there are people now, I watch them, who used to be pretty trying to do it the right way in terms of their craft of journalism writ large, okay?
journalism is a broad, broad term, not really narrow, just the facts, right?
There's more to journalism than that.
There always has been.
And now it's straight clickbait with these people when they go digital.
Yep.
I'm going to follow you around and try and get you into a conflict, right?
Hi, a lot of people think you're losing it, Adam.
What do you?
I'm not losing it.
Oh, wait, are you attacking me?
Yeah.
You know, why are you attacking me?
Yeah.
And now it gets clicked.
Click, click, click, click, click.
And that is, I believe, a mistake.
Mm-hmm.
I think it's playing into a problem, but it is effective.
What I want to see from Newsom is mock Trump, fine, get you clicks, information economy, okay, that works, all right, fine.
But then that second piece.
Instead, do this, okay?
I'm doing Prop 50 because I have to, okay?
But what I want to do is I want to change the rules.
And we're also bringing a case and we're doing this.
And I want to run on this kind of platform where there will be no more.
more gerrymandering. It will be done by an independent panel of non-elected officials who will figure
it out for the whole fucking country. They'll figure it out. And both sides will put people on that
fucking thing. And I'm going to incentivize them. They're going to get a million dollars each to
deliver the report. They're going to get $10 million each, though, if they deliver it this much
time and get it done. That's the second piece. That's better. That's not just good for you for saying
that Trump is a miserable bastard. Right after Erica Kirk says the one decent thing that's come
out of Charlie's murder, which is her saying, I'm going to forgive this guy, not just because
it's a statement of my faith, but it's the only way to relieve myself of the burden of how much
I hate this guy for what he did, which was a really, a really,
strong thing to say. He comes out and he says, not me. Sorry. I hate my opponents. Hate him.
To me saying, wow, what an asshole. What a stupid thing to say in that moment, even if he was
joking, which I think he was. But still, wrong time, wrong joke. That's not enough for me.
Of course, yeah. And I think it's why you guys lost. I don't think for all the things about Kamala Harris,
Yes. Yes, you got beat by a bad game. She got beat down and made to seem less than she is. I think that's true. Did she contribute to it? Yes. But I get why your guy's takeaway was what it was. But I also believe with the benefit of having lived your past, okay, which is a little different than studying the past, right? Why did my father win when he wasn't supposed to?
Why did Obama win when he wasn't supposed to against Hillary?
Why didn't Bernie win?
Because of better.
The majority of this country, and remember that too, okay?
Yeah.
Your life on digital media, you are playing to the few, not the many.
Even if you had 10 million, okay?
10 million every week.
You had Rogan's audience.
He's still playing to the few, not the many.
Yeah.
The many weren't reasonable.
They want balanced.
They want sane.
They don't want boring.
That was a mistake describing it that way.
Can you actually do anything
that will make something that I care about better?
One, are you willing to say no?
And not just blame somebody else,
but help me understand why that is
and what would have to change.
And if the answer is yes, what does it look like?
Tell me, because then I don't give a fuck
what he's saying that usually makes me laugh.
Because this way, hold on, shut up for a second.
This actually matters.
That's the space.
That's the space.
The first Pomo project is brought to you by the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
Now, this is an important one, okay?
I choose faith.
I choose it.
I do not choose to put it on you, okay?
And for those of us who believe in the key aspect of the First Amendment,
which is that we do not have institutionalized religion
as part of the state, okay?
The Freedom from Religion Foundation
just helped stop two big pushes
to put religion into public schools.
You want to inculcate values, great.
I think we need more of that.
But religiosity, I think that's more the problem
than the solution.
In Texas, a federal judge blocked a law
that would have required the Ten Commandments
to hang in every public classroom.
And in Arkansas, after another FFRF lawsuit,
A judge ordered that Conway schools in Arkansas immediately removed their Ten Commandment posters.
The rulings remind us, public schools are for everyone, okay?
For those of your faith, other faiths, or no faith, okay?
The wall between church and state matters.
For now it is holding, but that is only if people keep advocating and fight the good fight.
And that fight is to keep our public institutions free and fair.
Go to ffrf.us slash school.
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So wait, your father
is Muslim? By choice, or was he raised? He was raised Muslim. My grandpa's from Syria. You want
to run you through some of my backstory on this? It's interesting. So my grandpa moved from Syria
in the late 80s and started a business out of his car. He like slept in his car. His story
he's told me a million times. He used to like, you know, walk to work and sleep out of his car,
or like walk to his meetings and stuff like that. And then my, it's interesting. My mom had me
when she was 15 years old. She's Syrian too? No, she's from America. She's just, you know,
super white. My dad's pretty white passing, too, because he might, so both of my parents were born
in America, right? My grandpa was born in Syria. My dad was born here. And then he spent a lot of
his childhood over in Syria. My mom had me when she was like 15 and it was this whole, you know,
like they had to get married through the mosque or whatever. And then, yeah, 22 years later,
they're still together. And really quickly, I was going to respond to something you said before that.
I can't remember. But as it pertains to my story in this space,
This is a story that I'm always telling.
I started the YouTube channel that I have now when I was nine years old.
So the channel that I have now with 1.5 million followers, I literally started that when I was nine.
I used to make these dumb fucking Minecraft videos after school, but I would sit there and edit all night, edit these videos all night, play Call of Duty or whatever.
And then when I got into high school, I realized I don't want to do Minecraft stuff.
I want to get girls and be normal and actually go out there.
And then when I graduated, I was like, wait a minute, I have these skills in editing.
I'm still good at conversing with people and talking politics.
So I went to a Trump rally two states over, and I debated the people there in a very respectful way.
A lot of the debates that were out there were just like people being condescending or trying, how dumb can I make this Trump supporter look?
But my whole thing was, hey, you think that Trump is putting America first, and you think that we should stop funding Ukraine, but I would say funding Ukraine is putting America first.
And then I give them my whole framework, and I try to pull them over.
And a few clips went viral of me like changing Trump supporters minds because I'm just, I was 20.
the time, and I was giving them arguments they hadn't heard.
So essentially, this YouTube channel that I created when I was nine years old, making these
dumb fucking Minecraft videos, has parlayed into this broader thing, this sphere that we're
now at the forefront of where we're doing online politics.
So it's really interesting how a bunch of skills can combine later in life.
And what do you make of your association with Midas Touch?
Yeah, they're, I'm a contributor for them.
So they essentially helped accelerate my career at the perfect time.
When I started doing those debates, they went viral in certain areas of the internet.
And the main dude from Midas, Ben, he hit me up and was like, you're doing great work.
Let me know if we can help it anyway.
So then I signed on to them as a contributor.
And they helped just accelerate my career with connections and an audience.
And now it's...
Why do you think they're doing so well?
Midas Touch.
I think they're speaking to...
Well, there's a few things.
I think they're speaking to a broad audience that wasn't spoken to for a while.
So Fox News is the biggest network in the United States, right?
isn't the five the biggest show right now with like on cable on cable yeah that's yeah so on cable
the five is the largest show right now and it's because you know they have jessica tarlov there who
pushes back but a lot of fox news is just speaking straight to the base is giving the base what they
want i don't know if there was a strong democratic version of that i mean you could argue like
msnbc or cnn but even cnn and msnbc are are uh still different in how they cover things
They're more mainstream.
So Midas Touch decided to essentially, you know, create something for our base, for a pro-democracy base that wants to hear stuff that doesn't just sanewash what Trump says.
So I think that's why Midas does well.
I mean, a lot of people in America right now turn on the TV and they feel crazy when they hear Trump speak and say these crazy things.
And people aren't really calling it out as much as they should.
I mean, you probably disagree.
But on certain networks, Trump is sanewash is what they say, where he'll say.
some crazy shit about Erica Kirk or about how he does hate his opponents.
And they just kind of make it a little footnote.
It's not a big deal.
You would do nothing else.
If you were to police Trump's statements, you would have time for nothing else.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's by design, by the way.
Yeah.
He floods the zone because there is a genius to his manipulation.
Yeah.
I'm not saying he's a genius and he's going to beat you on jeopardy.
That's not what I'm saying.
No, I always wonder.
though. He's got to have some sort of instincts with PR. He knows what drives the media.
Yeah. And he knows what works. And he knows how it works. And he knows with whom it works.
Remember, this guy is not organic. Yeah. To his base. He listened to Tom Tancredo. He listened to Steve
King. The wall was an acronym, was a euphemism that was offered him on a campaign bus, just to have an idea.
in his head of metaphorically what to do.
He made it literal as he learned that the more simplistic he was,
the more sticky at God.
Yeah.
And that's not to disrespect.
See, the mistake is, yeah, because his base is stupid.
No, because politics is stupid.
Mm-hmm.
The base isn't stupid.
These people aren't stupid.
There's a whole range of sophistication of people who are within MAGA,
who are now hating MAGA.
There's a whole range.
It's what their expectations are of the people who want the power.
Yeah.
of campaigns, of politics, that's where the bar comes down.
If you went and tried to sell them a new roof and did it the way Trump does, you're going
to be on your way.
If you want to invest their kids' college money, you're going to be on your way.
But for politics, their bar is very low.
And that's where I see opportunity.
I'm told the minus touch guys don't like me.
They want a piece of me.
I have no clue.
I've never had, they've never reached out.
it. I'm fascinated by this.
Let me tell you. I'm a Midas Touch guy and I like you. So it's all good.
Thank you, Adam. I've never said anything to me about it.
It's nice of you to say also when you're trapped in my house right now.
But I think it's an interesting aspect of the new media that I hear a lot more of that
from that space than I would have ever heard. Like, when guys on Fox didn't like me, it wasn't,
I want to find that guy and beat his ass, especially when that's not going to happen.
But I hear it all the time from digital media.
People don't like you.
Or that, no, but it's like a, it's not, I don't like you.
It's not, I think what he says is silly.
I think he's useless.
Those kinds of things, that's what you sign up for when you want to be judged.
It's personal.
Oh, yeah.
And it's often aggressive.
And I don't think they mean it that way.
I think only like an Andrew Tate means it like seriously.
But is that just like how it is with you guys that you talk about like, you know,
destroying other guys?
I don't know about destroying other guys.
I think that, you know, I'd have to know exactly what's been said, like, between Midas or
whatever.
I don't know if they've said anything.
But regarding the people in the audience, is that what you're talking about?
Like, people going after you?
No, those guys, I heard.
And I'm happy to go on and talk to them about whatever they want.
I never say no unless I feel that.
The Midas guys said they were going to kick your ass?
Yeah, that's what I was told.
I don't watch.
I don't follow the content.
Oh, in numbers or in person?
Oh, they definitely kick my ass in numbers.
Anybody who plays to a side is going to kick my ass in numbers.
I don't.
So here's the thing. I don't think there's a reality. The Midas guys are actually quite non-confrontational. They don't really do debates. They don't really do on TV stuff. I'm the guy who does the debates because I can talk to the other side and go on CNN and stuff. They honestly are not that confrontational. I don't think they would say they'd kick your ass, but maybe I can see them thinking you play both sides too much. A lot of people think that. But I don't think they'd say anything like that.
What's the alternative. If you reject the binary system, which I do, okay, I really believe the parties are the problem.
And it can't be a coincidence that George Washington took all that time in his farewell address that was written by arguably the two greatest minds of that period within our founding, which was Hamilton and Madison, because that's who wrote Washington's thing. He did it twice. To say, avoid the parties. I really believe that it's hard for us to get better in this setup. So to pick a side, do I think the sides are equal? No.
but they're playing the same game, and I hate the game.
Yeah, but you should still pick a side.
Then nothing gets better.
Because look, right now it's getting worse.
The left, liberals, Democrats, whatever you want to call yourselves,
are resembling what you oppose more and more.
Why?
It's contagious.
It works.
Look at Newsome.
He would laugh.
If you go back in time three years and say three years from now, you're going to be
pretending to be Trump.
He'd be like, fuck you, I'd get out first.
to be fair it seems like the other side is becoming what they opposed to though because republicans the moment they got in power didn't even wait a year to start canceling people getting people fired so it seems like both sides begin to morph into the other side yeah so you carry the burden on your side of being purists they only carried it as a faux christian orthodox yeah right and why because they have an escape hatch that Catholics don't have on the evangelical part of their faith of Christianity which is hey I just found out Adam that you do all these horrible things I know
I beg forgiveness from Jesus, my Lord and Savior, and now it's okay.
For Catholics, you've got to live with the guilt for the rest of your life, and it never goes away.
They get a free pass as long as they say they're sorry.
So it's easy for them to traffic and hypocrisy.
And they do.
That's why whenever you see a little crucifix after a name on social media, you know you're getting a beating.
You know what I mean?
They're going to come at you.
Why?
Because they're always forgiven.
I expect that of them.
Yeah.
And I don't think it's the same on.
both sides. I think that there is an opportunity. I was raised in it. I was raised by a real one,
as you guys would say. Okay. Mario Cuomo would be a dream for you guys today. Yeah, he was
technically a white male, even though he wasn't called that in his time. He was dismissed as an
ethnic, the way your grandfather would have been. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Even though, you know,
pale, not pale, doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, well, you're Italian, gap tooth,
swarthy, mafia. He had to share his valedictory in college and in law.
school with an Irish guy because the schools were Irish dominant. He couldn't get a job on Wall
Street as a lawyer, even though he was a genius because he was Italian. So it was a different kind of
whiteness than I am. But he would be a dream for you guys. Why? Tough as fuck. But he's not going to be
like you. He's going to be better than you. Like, yeah, yeah, you can say what you're going to say
about me. We can take that up later. When we're off the stage, I'll talk to you. We'll see how it goes.
But for right now, you tell me how you think that you can help people with affordability
when what you're doing is taking money out of their pockets or this and that.
That's what he was.
That's your sweet spot.
We need a fighter.
I mean, as a young dude, I think the Democratic...
Fighting the good fight.
Fighting the good fight, but the Democratic Party has just gotten suffocating.
And we thought we were fighting the good fight for a few years, but I've got so many young men
who were liberals who share the same values as me about gay marriage and about all these things,
but they just feel suffocated by the overall party.
Gay marriage is not a value.
It is the law of equal protection.
It's not a cultural preference.
It's not, there's no religiosity to it.
Marriage is a legal construct.
It is an equal protection, no-brainer issue.
Yeah, tell Michael Knowles that.
Michael Knowles thinks gay people shouldn't be able to adopt kids or get married or have these.
That's right.
Those are feelings.
He can have those feelings.
Legally, they're either people or they're not.
Yeah.
If they are persons in the eye of the law, this is the reproductive.
rights problem. You know, he's making a straw man argument, which is they're not the same as
me. Yeah. They either are or they're not in the eyes of the law. And if they are, then they are
accorded all the same rights as you. Yeah, but I don't like it. That's a culture issue.
Yeah. That's a culture issue. And indoctrinating culture through law is very dicey. And they're
supposed to be against it. Yeah. Small government, right? That's why they love to call themselves
libertarians. Libertarian means, I never run anything. I never do anything. I don't have to make
anything better, but I'm better than you. And that's why I get, I get frustrated by that
moniker. But so you're saying you have like-minded individuals and what do they want?
I mean, I've got a lot of young, say young dudes, for example, that I talk to who are just sick
and feel suffocated to the party because they think it's two things. Number one, a little bit too
finger-waggy. But at the same time, while they're finger-wagging, it's like risk-averse.
So the Democratic politicians always seem risk-averse. Donald Trump is not
risk of us. He'll go into any space, anybody with a microphone, he'll go debate and talk to you.
Because his own won't attack him and yours will.
That's also, that is one of the problems with our media ecosystem that we can get to. On the
right, everybody from Nick Fuentes to Candice Owens to Ben Shapiro lines up at the end. But on the
left, you know Hassan Piker, one of our biggest creators. He's a cool dude and I've watched him
before. But during election time, he did not say to vote for Kamala. Our biggest creator on
the left was not advocating to vote for Kamala. Meanwhile, on the right, they all completely
line up. So people in my
age cohort, and I think throughout the party
too, just think that we've gotten lame
to risk averse, and we need to be in
these spaces making these arguments.
Not saying we're going to kick the shit out of people. I don't
know if it might have actually said that, but not saying that, but I think that
going and actually presenting the argument in a good
faith way, not going to lie, the Charlie Kirk
model, what Charlie Kirk was doing worked very well
and it's created this cultural dominance
for the right. It's this theory that I
have called the pipeline
to volume theory and the algorithm.
And I've seen this happen where a lot of
young men who are looking up dating advice, for example. Like, say every young dude has dating
problems at some point. You get sucked down this Andrew Tate pipeline, this rabbit hole. And
before you know what you're watching Andrew Tate, what about my friends that just work out? They
like working out, so they're watching reels on that. Then they get sucked down this pipeline to
make America healthy again, meaning vaccines and Tylenol, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.
There's also this pipeline with young mothers, where young mothers, just had a baby,
are now getting pulled down this sort of antivax, like weird health pipeline.
And then once you're down that, they hit you with so much volume, you can't escape it.
Think of Elon Musk's Twitter feed.
If you've ever scrolled through it, he posts 100 times a day, right?
100 tweets a day with millions of views, that's the volume.
So on the right, you were saying earlier that Joe Rogan doesn't speak to the many.
He still speaks to the few.
And I do agree, actually.
I agree a lot that us on social media, we're all speaking to...
But it gets amplified.
It gets amplified, and there is a cultural shift.
You asked at the very beginning why I think it's important for us to talk about Charlie Kirk's beliefs
when he just passed away.
And I think we see this insidious amplification of his beliefs throughout the culture,
throughout young men, young women, people of all ages that are now getting this amplified.
And I think it's very important to be out there and be like, listen, Charlie Kirk shouldn't have
gotten shot.
Obviously, that's terrible.
He got, like, publicly executed.
It was terrible.
But at the same time, this is a dude who repeatedly said the Civil Rights Act shouldn't have been passed.
No, not at the same time.
Two things.
Yeah.
You're about to make the AOC mistake.
And to be very clear, I say this all the time.
You've got to say everything a hundred fucking times.
I think she's one of your best in terms of personal, political cachet.
I don't know if she's one of your leaders, and I don't know that you win a major election with her pushing socialism and a higher tax burden.
She's like a democratic socialist.
I don't like the word socialism either, but it's high taxes.
Yeah, no, I get it.
And it just, it's a tough, tough, it's a tough sell.
Well, pragmatic, but hold on.
Yeah, yeah.
Charlie Kirk never said the civil rights.
say i've studied this very deeply and it's pretty simple it'll take you five minutes it's not what he said
i've looked it up i've looked it up he said was civil rights act good needed it great no was then
used to inculcate de i and do these other things by extension of that law that he was against
and that it should have never been used for those purposes not to help black people vote that's
he believed in but to make it as an extension of a of a welfare program for blacks in every
manifestation that he was against yep now I happen to disagree I actually think it was necessary
no I've heard make that argument he didn't say get rid of it I've heard of it I've heard
I make that argument I didn't say he said get rid of it he said they never should have passed
it and he also used he said that right they never should have passed it in the first place and he
made all I don't think he did say that I think what he said was the way that they what they
did with it, made it a mistake. I did a lot of research on this because I wanted to make sure he
actually said this. And essentially, he also made this other argument that black Americans committed
a lot less crime and there were more households with both parents before the Civil Rights Act,
which is actually true if you look up the statistics, but it's a lot more complicated than he made
it out to be. Yeah, so it's very complicated, but this is what Charlie Kirk would do. He would
bundle, he would bundle these arguments together. He would say the Civil Rights Act shouldn't
have been passed. I think that was his view. And he said it accelerated DEI being
integrated into the workforce. He said that a lot. But then you'd also make these arguments
like black Americans committed way less crime and there were less fatherless households before
the Civil Rights Act. So you can't blame someone if they get confused when Charlie Kirk is making
all of these arguments. I just think the way to do it matters, right? How should I? So when I said
that he shouldn't have been killed. Yeah. How do we stop the next one? Here's how we stop the next one.
We have to check toxic ideas when we hear them. We have to do it consistently. And we have to show
that there is a better way to think about these things in America. And Charlie got shot for his
beliefs and it was wrong. Okay. The idea of memorializing beyond that point is problematic. Okay.
Charlie should be remembered by those who want to remember him for whatever reasons they want.
The idea that we should enshrine his politics, I do not agree with. I agree that despite his
politics. In fact, the more powerful point to me is I absolutely disagreed with seven out of
ten things that would come out of Charlie's mouth. And I would have thrown myself in front of that
bullet if I had the chance. Really? His kids are young. Yeah. And they need them in a way that my kids
don't. I would have thrown myself in front of them. Why? Because when you start killing for ideas,
the ideas will die. All of them. Yeah. And the way to finesse this argument is I have no explanation
for anything but wrongness
when it comes to what happened to Charlie.
You want to memorialize him
and say he was a great leader
and an organizer.
He was great.
He would help Trump win.
No question about it.
But that's where it ends for me.
Well, his ideas are now great too
because he was killed for them.
No.
The ideas are not great.
Killing them made you worse
than his ideas, in my opinion.
But I do not want to enshrine those ideas.
I don't want to...
But they are being enshrined
and we can't let this value.
vacuum exist in society that's being filled by Charlie Kirk's ideas. What about in like three
decades? Can we take them out of him? The mistake that Medi Hassan and these other guys make,
okay, is they're forgetting their humanity and saying, look, Charlie King, Charlie Kirk was a racist.
No, he was just murdered, not the right way. You talk about the ideas, talk about the ideas.
And I'll tell you why Medi should get this. The same thing is true for your father's faith.
Obama was right to not want to say Muslim terror.
He was right.
Why?
Because 90% of Muslims reject that idea, okay?
Yeah.
That's why he didn't want to say it.
You have to say things the right way.
Yeah.
And there's a burden on that.
And it's harder to do it that way.
So how should I hypothetically attack, even if I do disagree with the Civil Rights Act statement that we agreed he was making, how do I attack that?
pervasive in society.
Say my friend from high school
who was apolitical then posts on his story
Charlie Kirk saying that. Do I just like not
bring it up to him? No.
You just go with the idea. It has nothing to do with
Charlie. Charlie isn't the first one to say that
DEI was a mistake. So you don't like people looping it together.
Not right after a bullet just flew
through his head. Yes. Yeah. I get that
because like he talks shit about MLK
but this is 60 years after MLK
was and look. I see Charlie
in the same sentence as Martin Luther King
in terms of people. Yeah, I don't.
No. I think his murder was terrible. Murder for murder is murder. Yeah, all murders for your ideas are terrible. They are not the same kind of person. One was a transcendent leader who lost traction during his day because he refused to succumb to darkness. Can I ask you really quickly? When you said earlier that the sides need to tone down the rhetoric, that it's on, like you were saying essentially the incumbent, it's an
And coming down the leaders of the party to begin toning down the rhetoric.
Here's what I think.
Yeah.
Nobody told it's like, it's like, I'm not saying tone down the rhetoric.
Why?
Because it's, it's empty.
It won't happen that way.
It's like, I'm angry and you tell me to relax.
You know what I mean?
It's like, that's not going to go well for you.
You said something with the fact of returning back to like a less.
What makes you guys formidable?
Okay.
The reason Democrats win elections is because they tap into the fact that America does not
want to embrace bullies and harsh strength my father beat new gringrich in debates all across the country
and they went together as you know not a team but they were a couple and they were booked out to do it
and he would beat him routinely why newt is harsh there's a there's a meanness to what he says
wrapped in christian orthodoxy or not it doesn't matter at the end of the day it's how it plays
and my father believed in sweet strength.
Again, the tough motherfucker
is not the guy who says he wants to beat your ass.
It is the guy who no one wants to try to beat his ass.
So you think it's a display of weakness
when Donald Trump talks all this shit?
It's basically just him.
Yeah, if I were up against him.
Yeah.
If I were up against, it's easy.
But can I ask how the hell, like,
I don't get how Democrats are supposed to operate
in this media environment or this political environment
when Donald Trump went on TV
and right after Erica Kirk, he said,
I hate my political opponents. And yes, there was a bit of sarcasm in the tone that he was
using and he laughed. But he literally said, I hate my political opponents. And then when I covered
that, I got emails, people telling me, like, tone it down when you're talking about Trump or
whatever. Right now, you have a temporal sensitivity. I think that's okay. I felt the same way when
I was covering the riots after George Floyd. For the past decade, Trump has been amping up the
rhetoric. It's like, how do Democrats match this? What do you think Democrats should do when Donald
Trump feels like before Trump? Have better ideas. But we do. Kamala did have better ideas, in my opinion.
She didn't articulate him.
She didn't, yeah.
But the thing is, was there any politician in the mainstream who called to lock up their political opponent on stage before Trump?
I think he was the first one to do that.
So, like, he entered us into this new stage.
People don't take him seriously the way they take you guys too.
He, look, this is very frustrating to compete against him.
It's so frustrating.
He gets a lot of benefits that you don't, okay?
He is loved by people in a way that very few politicians have been, and they excuse almost.
all of his weaknesses. That would kill anyone running against him. Yeah. So how do you deal with that?
You have to change the game. The game is not which one of us is worse, because even though you should
win in this game against me 10 times out of 10, the people judging don't hold me to the same standard
as you. Change the game. Don't let the game change you. What are you about? I can fix the affordability
problem. And not by giving everybody free shit. I get the word free is scary. Yeah. I get that socialism
is a scary idea, a word, I'm not going to use it. They don't pay their taxes, okay? They get away from
paying their taxes in a way that everyone else can't. Yep. I can fix it. How? Not with this and this.
Here's how. And then you've got to have a plan. Okay. And I'm going to target it to these states,
and this is how I'm going to do it.
I'm going to have a plan.
I'm going to have a better idea, okay?
Immigration.
Okay, they were right.
We fucked up on the border.
Fucked it up.
Oh, yeah.
But he hasn't done shit about legal immigration.
And we're sweating all these workers now
because they're running away.
We already had seven and a half million open jobs.
We're going to start to see a function of our services collapsing.
What I would do is you bring people in here the wrong way.
I will fucking end you.
I will find out who you are and I will take your business from you.
I'll figure out how to do it.
If you bring people in the wrong way, I'm coming for you.
Now, I'm also going to come to you and say, before I destroy you, do you need these guys?
Do you have good guys here?
Yeah, I do.
I have good guys.
They're not here legally, but they're good guys.
All right, give me the list.
Let's vet them.
Let's find a way.
Let's find a way to keep what we need because them telling you that these are the guys who are killing everybody, that's bullshit.
Yeah.
Okay?
I'm not here to bullshit you.
I'm here to fix.
and I think you've got to get obsessed with that.
And what happens when you do that is
the more we tap into what's real,
the less the noise goes away
and the more people want signal.
That the more we're talking about how,
hey, look, grocery prices aren't going the right way.
And let's talk about why.
And this, we got to deal with our monetary system.
We flooded the fucking markets,
all this quantitative easing.
Here's a plan.
I got two or three guys are going to help me do this.
We're going to get it back
and it's going to help us with getting our prices and check.
Now you don't want to hear the bullshit the same way.
Hold on.
Let them talk for a second.
You know that part in a debate?
Hold on.
I want to hear them.
Hold on.
That's the part.
And is that strength?
Yeah, it's strong.
Because the way I'm going to deal with your noise is going to show my strength.
Don't talk about me.
Don't talk about my family.
Don't do it.
This campaign's not worth it to me.
All right?
I'll put you on your ass right now.
And this will be over.
Look, at a certain point, that's what gets said man to man, okay?
Is at a certain point, I can't say certain shit about you without there being a price.
That's America.
Yeah.
Okay, it's a very American value.
You don't insult me to my face and think you get a free pass.
Only Ted Cruz does that, right?
Only he'll back Trump after that.
And now he's trying to have a spine again, but it's probably too late for him.
That's the space for you guys.
AOC is at the top of your potential presidential picks.
I know it's just a preference poll.
That's where we are.
I don't believe there's any chance she can win.
In 2028?
I don't think so.
I don't think anyone.
No majority in American society has ever...
Now, if we become a different society, if we are a majority Latino and a huge infusion of poor Muslims,
well, now maybe you can talk socialism, because they'll be coming from cultural reference points where that's much more acceptable.
to them. Do you think that AOC could ever win in like a decade if she moderated a bit?
Of course. Yeah. Of course. The pendulum swings. Oh, of course. It's a, you know, man meets
moment. Yeah. Right. So, and but what she's saying right now, I'm telling you, even the
Charlie Kirk stuff. I'm telling you my understanding of, and I listened to him eight, nine, ten
times explaining his position on it. He was not, black shouldn't have had the right to vote.
It didn't need to. Jim Crow was, you know, not a problem. All those things. He owns that. It's the
stuff he was attacking.
It is a DEI, but when he intentionally made an inflammatory argument about the Civil Rights Act,
I believe he said it shouldn't have been passed.
I believe that was his take.
But it was to get towards the DEI stuff that he was arguing for.
I just think that, you know, it's fair game.
If you're going to go out there and say inflammatory political stuff.
And let's say he did say it, okay?
And then he corrected it eight, nine times afterwards.
Yeah.
That's because the game is saying something obnoxious and outrageous and provocative.
and that gets the clue.
But he kept doubling down.
There's a clip where he's reading an article
and he's like, they say the Civil Rights Act
never should have been passed.
That's true.
I did say that multiple times.
We talk about on this show every single week.
So I think AOC was doing,
I disagree that the way AOC did it wasn't right.
I think that she said political violence has no place,
but then she began to talk about the actual implications
of Charlie Kirk's beliefs.
But then how are you not saying,
how is she not then undoing her statement?
If you say he should have never been killed,
but he had a lot of fucking beliefs
that you get you killed.
You know, that's the same way that Charlie Kirk, when talking about MLK, said that MLK was a bad guy, he didn't agree with MLK's beliefs, but he shouldn't have been killed. He said the same thing about MLK. Right, but that's why Charlie Kirk wasn't president. That's why Charlie Kirk wasn't an elected office. He was damn close. He was closer. Like, he had a lot of power within the Republican Party. And I think that I- A party is not an elected place. It is just a tradition. He was a big name and a big presence.
in a club.
Can I ask you, do you think it's any more disrespectful for Democrats debunk Charlie Kirk
than Trump going on stage and making it all about himself for 40 minutes?
I feel like that's pretty disrespectful.
You're judged differently.
I get that it's frustrating.
Yeah, I know.
But he doesn't get judged by his own the way you will get judged by your own and the ones that
you're trying to get.
I think that Democrats right now, if some politician came and wanted to capitalize on it,
they could create a blue MAGA very, very easily.
We have a fan base that is ripe.
I think you are.
I think there's reaction formation to MAGA right now.
Look at what's happening in the New York City mayoral race or in Minnesota.
My brother is a traditional centrist Democrat.
That's what he is.
He's a I can get it done guy.
You just said socialism wouldn't work, but how do you explain Zoron's win thus far?
Because I said on a national level.
And I agree.
The majority.
But in New York City, you have.
Tons of ethnic minorities, okay?
Affordability is a real problem here.
Yeah.
It is an exaggerated example of an American reality of top versus bottom,
the little bit on the top and everybody else, okay?
And there is, it's not a have and have not, it's a have too much and have not enough, okay?
And words matter, ideas matter.
So that's New York City.
You also have a lot of Muslims in New York City.
But you have more choose?
You doish, but being Jewish is a complicated matter right now in terms of politics, and they've been weaponized also.
But why is a Democrat who was once a big deal in a struggle against the guy who was an open socialist, anti-police, all these other things, and very deferential to Islamist ideas in a city that suffered 9-11.
How is this happening?
I would have never thought it could happen because, one, packaging, he's not your father's jihadi Muslim.
He doesn't seem scary.
There's nothing scary about this guy at all, right?
And while some of his ideas seem bad, he doesn't seem that bad.
And the affordability is more important than all the other shit.
And young people have been made all these promises that are not coming true in your lives right now.
more of you are moving back home than a generation ago.
And Gen X, we didn't move back home the way you guys are.
Now, there is a lie in that, by the way.
There's a lie.
Who said moving back home and having multigenerational families is a bad thing?
Yeah.
Because that's where we are.
There's an expectation.
You are aberration.
You dropped out of college and you're making a killing and you're doing great.
Good for you.
Thank you. I love it. I love it. But that's not how you're supposed to do it. You're supposed to go to college, supposed to finish, supposed to get a job, supposed to be on your own, supposed to kind of struggle. Come to me for help. Me, kind of go like, I don't know. And then you're supposed to find somebody and get married and have your own house, right? And you come see me once in a while, but never enough. Why? Why? Why are we splintering families? Yeah. Why wouldn't it work better that you do whatever you're going to do, but you stay with me? Yeah. I love having.
you around we get along yeah and by the way it'd be nice for you to contribute a little bit here you know
and you're going to be building wealth because you're not paying the nut the same way yeah because you got me
and i'm not paying my nut the same way now because you're there now when you meet somebody and you want to
get married really and you're ready go and until then you'll find ways to be together i promise you
that yeah and grandma's here so guess what when grandma gets uh frail guess what problem we don't
have what's sinking families and people all over the country right now which is elder care yeah
there's this idea that we're stronger apart.
And I think during the pandemic, we saw that that doesn't have to be true.
But affordability is a crisis.
You guys think you should be on your own.
You can't afford it.
And you're mad about it.
That is reaction formation to MAGA.
And the ideas of how to fix it.
The affordability piece is reaction just to the environment of...
It is, but it's being weaponized on that left reaction to MAGA.
Rightly so.
Yeah.
And the remedies are as radical as MAGA's remedies were on their issues.
That's my problem with this binary setup.
Yeah, I feel like it also disproves.
You did say that like a left-leaning MAGA wouldn't work on a national scale, and I agree to the socialism bit.
But I think Zoran is a really good example of what we talked about at the very beginning, how there's two parts.
You drive the attention, then you drive the narrative.
He was really good at online driving the attention, really good.
And then he used that, in my opinion, to convert people like, oh, what's this guy about?
Or like, oh, I see him on the street.
Then they're interested in his policy.
I think there's a two-prong solution for Democrats.
Grievance, not solution-based.
But the grievances are things that people are living every day.
Same with MAGA.
That is true.
But the grievances with MAGA, yeah, that is true.
They're just not your grievances.
The grievances with MAGA is like somebody in Indiana being mad that immigrants are getting into the border over in Texas.
Because they think that's why.
why their job isn't what they needed to be
and why they can't make ends meet
because all the services and the tax dollars
are going to these people.
Yeah. Now, is that true? No.
No.
But if I'm pissed off and my money is tight,
it makes as much sense as anything else.
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banking account manager when I was on your show I think two weeks ago I floated a theory about
young men getting radicalized in the algorithm I can expand on in a bit because it was a good
it was a good segment that we had with some gen z turning point guys on there but essentially like
I have this theory this a little bit off topic from we were saying I have this theory with
young men getting radicalized in particular, where throughout COVID, I mean, it's been happening
for a while since Columbine before that, but I think COVID, the pandemic, accelerated the isolation
of a lot of young men. And I think what happened is, to me at least, I put a bubble around myself
throughout COVID. I was spending less time with people. And I had to very intentionally tear
that bubble down after and go hang out with my friends and start dating again. I could imagine a lot
of young men who didn't tear that bubble down. And their online radicalization was only accelerated, right?
And then while that's happening, you have foreign actors, imagine, like, China, Russia, Iran, trying to weaken social cohesion.
On top of all of that, you have Elon Musk who bought Twitter.
Elon Musk is radicalizing people on mass.
And then Donald Trump, you may not agree with that, but I think Elon Musk, when he sends out these things with like 100 million views or whatever, I think it's completely irresponsible.
It's very irresponsible.
And then cherry on top is that Donald Trump himself is using all this rhetoric.
And, of course, Democrats can have some sort of blame.
But I think that, oh, Democrats do have a lot of blame, actually.
Democrats did not create a space for young men that was needed.
We, not me in particular, I was still in high school at time, but Democrats made young men part of the problem, alienated young white men.
And I even see this in my audience.
I made a video the other day about how there's a problem with young men.
And one of the top comments was like, Adam, don't you mean young white men?
And I'm like, really, I did a whole analysis and your correction to me was not saying whites.
That's kind of part of the problem with people on my side.
Also, it's not true. Young men are getting crushed right now. Why? Because we've made it that way. They are not a priority except in terms of villainizing. And it has worked. Okay? And that's why you have, and then you, and then you is them everything, right? So now you got them, now you call them in cells. Oh, that's going to help. And you have social media is, you know, completely suffused with,
women posing as these, these sages on things that just reinforce all this toxic stuff.
And then you get broken up with and you see Andrew Tate saying the women suck.
And you're like, oh.
And you're the problem.
You're completely privileged, especially if you're a white male.
But if you're a male and a black male, you're completely privileged because gender matters more.
And if you're white and a man, you're at the bottom.
You've had way too much for way too long.
Everything's too easy for you.
And you suck.
if you don't like being told that, oh, and now everybody does to you what they've said,
you've been doing to everybody else, but now suddenly it's okay. That has worked. And there are 10
other reasons, but it's a real problem. And people don't want to acknowledge it. Why? Well, because
it's not in vogue. In vogue is to take care of other minorities, not what arguably is a majority.
And this is the problem with not being able to put two ideas in your head at the same time,
because we have binary thinking and because it's all one thing at a time and going to war on that one thing
and that's why Trump floods the zone. But it still leaves you at the end of our conversation,
one of many, I hope, and I love spending time with you, is you have an opportunity. Maga is reductive,
it is negative, it is angry, okay? Right now it's justifiably angry because one of their symbols
was murdered for believing things that they think are fine, okay?
I think you've got to separate the man and the message,
and then you can go after the message all you want.
Yeah.
You know, I will enshrine Charlie Kirk because I liked Charlie Kirk.
Fine, that's your choice.
His ideas?
No, no thank you.
And the way you say that matters,
and there cannot be a comma or a butt anywhere near the murder part.
They just can't.
Charlie Kirk should have never been killed,
but he believed a lot of things.
things that were terrible. There's no reason for that. It's inappropriate. It's insensitive.
And, well, then how do I do it? You wait for a discussion about the ideas. Well, we're going to
memorialize Charlie. Well, I'm not in favor of that. I think it's a week to wait, though. I mean,
I'm just supposed to sit here and wait while these ideas. I don't mean wait, like, let time pass.
I feel that way when people say we can't talk about guns because we just had a school shooting.
You mean, like, don't say it in the same breath. Yeah, it's not about the murder. It's not about the
murder was wrong for his beliefs. If you don't like his beliefs, have better beliefs. Don't kill him
for his. Let's have the debate. Give me the issue. The 64 Civil Rights Act, really? I'll crush you
on that about why we needed it at the time and probably need something like it today. Let's have the
discussion. I respect you about it. And that's how you do it. Is let's talk about the idea.
Not Charlie. It's not about Charlie. God forbid what happens to Charlie ever has.
happens again. But let's talk about whatever the problem, the issues are that you don't like
of his. Let me hear you a better idea. That's the way to do it. I have good news. In Chicago,
we're starting this debate show where we're bringing people on, a lot of young people,
people from Turning Point USA or other orgs. And it's going to be me talking to right wingers in the
most respectful way possible. Yeah, that's where I love it. And you don't always have to be
respectful if I have a dumb idea. It's okay to say I have a dumb idea. What I would want to do,
which of course would not be marketable in the in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in,
the information economy on digital media.
I can sit down with anybody.
Don't bring me some actual Nazi or something.
Not Nick Fuentes?
You know, don't bring me someone who is swallowed by malignancy, okay?
But you bring me anybody who says that we disagree.
I guarantee you we will agree about more things than we disagree.
And I know that that's not sexy and it's not clickbait and it won't work the way Jubilee is doing what they're doing.
But that's what we need.
It actually pulls a lot of views.
One of my first Trump rallies I went to, I started doing these Trump rallies with the fundamental
idea that if I just explain things to people in a non-condescending way, they would agree
with it or understand, there was this older Trump supporter, this older gentleman who was
saying, we need to stop funding Ukraine and let's put America first.
And I remember going, funding Ukraine is exactly how we put America first.
We're giving them weaponry, old stockpiled military.
It's helping our economy.
By the end of this, this Trump supporter, in a MAGA cap, it's online.
He goes, wow, I had never realized that funding Ukraine.
was actually helpful for us.
I'm going to go do more research on this.
And I think that model right there,
you can just have that type of conversation.
Just don't let your team put a thumbnail on it
that says watch MAGA get owned, watch him realize.
It works.
I know, but man, it's feeding the problem.
Yeah, no.
And you did it right.
You had a conversation and somebody realized
that their ideas were not the only ones.
And that they're worth consideration.
But when you say, destroys.
Yeah, no.
And now you're right back in the feedback loop.
That's more of like us having to play the algorithm game
rather than me wanting to be intentionally inflammatory.
Now, what will happen here is a lot of your people will come
and say, man, you had Cuomo on that couch with you.
You should sit this, this, and this and this.
It's the combativeness that is keeping us stuck.
And you and I can disagree on ideas all day.
And if anybody has a critical eye on this,
they'll see that you and I are coming from different situations
on most things.
but the conversation is the cure
and I'm always welcome to have it with you
and by the way at some point I would like to go back
and forth and debate a little bit more I've had a long week
so I'm a little bit more like distossile today
invite me on I'll come to you
not to your house because I don't know where you live
but I will debate you on anything
that you want anytime let's do this more
I'll be doing a lot of New York trips over the next year
so I say we continue to have conversations
now you're going to wind up seeing that I agree with you
about a lot of things oh yeah we'll agree with me on a lot of
we'll find the disagreements we'll find the disagreements
that's fine but with
in disagreement, usually conceptually, you're probably close to the right place when you're
talking about politics and social policy in a place that is supposed to be about interdependence
and interconnectedness. And if that's not what America is, then America doesn't work. Yeah.
Because you can't do what we're trying to do here if you're having purity tests because we are
impure. I hate the purity test. I mean, look at you. We look kind of the same for people who want
to check very general boxes. Your background is Syrian, Muslim, you know, your mother's American. I don't
have any of that in my background. I have two Italians whose families were for the same two towns
for six generations. And yet, here we are trying to make it work together. Your dad rose through
the ranks to political fame. And that's the American dream in the same way that my grandpa
slept in his car and then built a business out of nothing. It's the American dream. His father
was your grandfather. My father, one generation, his parents were uneducated, did not speak the language,
had no skills were not from norway okay they were not welcome here one generation later my father
didn't speak english until he was eight one generation later he was the governor of the state that's pretty
that's the american dream that's wild not money not privilege not because he had access but because
the system can work what year was this dnc speech uh well 1984 yeah was his speech but i think the one
that mattered more was actually when he nominated clinton in 92 when people thought he was going to run
And he made the case for Clinton and why it had to be him, which nobody else would have done.
But my father was a different guy.
Mr. Mockler, continued success to you.
You're always welcome on the couch.
Let's do it again.
Brother be well.
That was great.
Smart makes my case that college isn't for everybody because Mockler dropped out and he's doing just fine.
The question is, is what he wants the remedy.
That's for you to decide.
and for us to test right here on the Chris Cuomo project.
So thank you for being with me,
subscribing, following,
checking me out on News Nation at 8 p and 11P Eastern
every weekday night.
And listen, I believe in wearing your independence.
The free agent gear is coming back, wear it.
This is a little special piece that I got from a local artist out where I live
because I love that the crown of thorns are power cords, man,
because social media is killing us.
See you next time.