The Chris Cuomo Project - Chris Cuomo and Benny Johnson CLASH Over Trump’s Legacy

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

Benny Johnson (political commentator and host, “The Benny Show”) joins Chris Cuomo for a raw and often combative conversation about politics, media, and the future of the country. From pandemic hindsight to Trump’s political legacy, Cuomo and Johnson clash over freedom, responsibility, and how America should remember its leaders. The discussion also dives into divisiveness in politics, conspiracy theories surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the role of the media, and whether algorithms and online platforms should enforce ethical standards. Cuomo and Johnson push back against each other, but also find moments of agreement on the need for decency, accountability, and better solutions for families and communities. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Support our sponsors: Call American Financing today to find out how customers are saving an avg of $800/mo. 866-889-4244 or visit http://www.AmericanFinancing.net/Cuomo. NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We need to talk to people who think that everything we say is wrong and that they're always right. And I have one of the biggest in the pod game to do exactly that. I am Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. Who do you have? Who do you have? Benny Johnson of the Benny Show. Mr.

Maga. Millions and millions of subscribers, billions of views, incredible reach, controversy, fame, for me, certainly a player in Maga Land reviled on the left, right? He's a liar, he's a conspiracist, he's this, he's that. Do I believe those things? Does it matter? Do we disagree on everything? Or is the division the real commodity? I believe that that's the truth. No, not that secretly Benny Johnson and Chris Cuomo or anybody not in MAGA. Agree on everything. and he's making it up. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that it doesn't matter where you disagree. It matters how you disagree. And by doing that, by doing it the right way, by

exercising decency, it's not leniency. And you're going to see that right now. Let's get after it. Benny Johnson, thank you very much for coming on. Appreciate it. It's my honor, Chris, to be on. And thank you for the memo to match black t-shirts today. I'm mooching off your look. I only do it because I'm old and it's slimming. So, although it is pretty cool, this local artist made this shirt. And all the wires on the top are power cords. And it's kind of a play on the crucifixion, of course.

But it's about how we're killing ourselves with all these devices and things. It's kind of cool, is that, if you think about it? And it mixes in that memento-mori vibe, you know, the stoic thing. That's way deeper than the purpose of my black t-shirt, which is just to prove that I can bench press more than you. You think so? I'll tell you what, Benny. Would you like to make a little wager?

It's your suggestion, not mine. What would you like to do? I'll bet you one oversized Q-tip. Yes. And what is your problem with the oversized Q-tip? I'll counter you with one BuzzFeed firing. I just want to know who made that prop. Yeah, and the Halloween's around the corner, and they're good.

And so I'll tell you who made the prop, a former Fox News executive producer. Really? Yes, who was working for me. Very talented. Made it. All right. And it was funny. And too many of you guys pretend that you had issues during the pandemic.

that you had after the pandemic. That is my only beef with you, MAGA folk, not that other than the fact that Trump gave us the vaccine, and you guys ignore that in your analysis, but that during the pandemic, we were all figuring it out as we went along and taking it as it came and, you know, questioning what seemed obvious. Later, there became big gaps that needed to get filled in.

But you guys pretend like you were in that same place during the pandemic. And I went back and looked, Benny, and you were just as lost as the rest of us. Well, hold on. One, never ever did anybody that I know or that I roll with ever say that the government should tyrannically lock children out of school or prevent them from learning, take away our ability to breathe fresh air, shame people for masking or not masking or double masking. Right, but all the grievance, Benny, came later. I'm saying when they first said... This is not when we're here to relitigate, but like...

No, no, no, but I think it matters. You know, the question is, the question is tyranny versus freedom. The people I roll with were firmly on the freedom side. But, Benny, Benny, after the fact and later in duration, that's my point. So you're arguing retrospectively what was right or wrong. That's easy. What I'm saying is when we were living it, and states were making the initial decisions, I went back. You were not, oh, no, leave my kid as exposed as possible.

All four of them should get it. No, we were figuring it out in real time. It was weird in real time. But a lot of this is hindsight where I'm pro-freedom, not tyranny. You weren't saying that shit right in the beginning, Benny, because we didn't know any better. Well, absolutely, we were. was the way that I was living but no I went back and looked you were not a big detractor until later and that's okay there are plenty of things that we should still know that we don't know

wait a second well I know I'm married to a nurse and she informed me what a coronavirus was and that this was the flu and that we should actually not be locking down and living in fear and that's the way that I lived my life I was traveling through the whole thing I hated the mass mandates. I hated the lockdowns. Well, everybody hated them. Who didn't hate them? I moved my family and my business away from Washington, D.C., because of how horrific these lockdowns were and how antithetical they are to human flourishing.

I think you did all that once it became a cause. I would hazard a guess that your wife, who's a nurse, did not ignore the protocols for her place of work because they were really worried. because a lot of those first responders, you know, like your wife, were getting sick, really sick. And it's the flu. You find a flu other than the one in 1918 that matches the numbers of COVID-19. The answer is you won't.

It's not the flu. That's a nonsense statement. I don't think we want to talk about inflated, over-inflated numbers or why some of those numbers, especially in nursing homes, got so high. I don't think we want to go there. Well, why do you think they got high in nursing homes? You had old people there. There was no reason that they should be putting people that were sick with a respiratory virus in nursing homes.

Oh, where would you put them, Benny? Where would you put them? The single, well, you're really, it's question's not up to me. Oh, no, no, no. Benny, don't fuck around. Listen, hold on. You want to be a black-shirted guy. So where do you put them?

Oh, really, because you were going to build facilities during COVID for people. Didn't they build facilities in New York? They brought a tanker ship. So you wanted to put old people on a tanker ship when their home was the nursing home. The hospitals were told, you can't keep old people here. There's too much risk, which was true. You had to return them to where they went for residences. Where was that?

The nursing home, the families, if they could take them, would take them. If there was an alternative, it was there. That's why every state that was told to do this by the federal government did it the same way. You see, Benny, gotcha is a short-sighted strategy. Was it gotcha? C-tip, nursing homes. I get what you do, Benny. You come after me for BuzzFeed.

Who cares? I didn't come after you for BuzzFeed. I countered the Q-Tip with the BuzzFeed. It's funny. It's a funny thing. It was the single most retarded time. It was the dumbest time in human history. I'll tell you that, Chris.

I agree. A lot of people did a lot of stupid things. And there's probably plenty of people who, like, now looking back on it, like, wow, we were dumb. Yeah, you're one of them. That was stupid. You're one of them. Okay, so what is it? And I don't know that it was stupid then, Benny, because you had too many people who died.

You say that I regret what I did. Well, what was it? No, no, no. I'm not saying that you regret it. Benny, you've got to learn to listen. That shirt may be a little too tight around your neck, and it's squeezing your blood flow. What I'm saying is I say this mostly with good humor also. I don't get upset about intellectual pursuits and trying to figure things out.

It can be frustrating, but it's not something about animus. Otherwise, I wouldn't have ya on now at News Nation and here. I want to talk to you, Benny. So it's not about animosity. I promise you that. I'm only, like, I'm a good-spirited, like, I laugh. I love what you've done. What you've done with your career is very similar to Bill Maher, where to me it seems like an honest pursuit of.

Was he fired in? Was he fired and broke? Exploring the landscape. You know, I've been there too. It'd be easier to count the places that haven't fired me, actually, in the media landscape. That's actually why I had to start my own company. I only cut you off because I'll tell you what, I would like to agree with you, but I can't because I am much more impressed with Bill than I am with anything I've done. And I'll tell you why.

bill is intellectually honest okay i don't believe that he's had any kind of epiphany of any kind except maybe a little anti-partisan in general just like wow this whole system is terrible but it's not like he's moved one way or another i think the ground is shifted underneath him but what i think is really interesting is in a business where he is getting paid exclusively to entertain. He has consistently done things that could have gotten him kicked off. Yes. And I respect it because it's also really intellectually honest of him. I know Bill pretty well. And he is not making anything up because it works right now. That is 0% of his head and his heart. And that's really impressive to me and much more so than me just deciding I got to keep working you know but you

but people saw you give Trump an A a couple of weeks ago right like on on the uh that's something that you would have never done at CNN no of course I would have I don't blame CNN Benny in truth people impressed many people are impressed by that I never did anything yeah because that's you know what some people are impressed some people think I'm a devil going viral your clips are going viral now because it seems like you're engaging in this very good faith pursuit of the truth. I think that, Benny, here's my problem with it. There's nothing wrong with what you're suggesting. And I only push back because there is no shift.

And if anybody were going to shit talk CNN, Benny, it would be me, right? And I don't, for two reasons. One, the people I worked with didn't fire me, right? two guys did. So my beef and my litigation is with them. I miss. I wish I were, you know, I wish I didn't have to leave that way. I wish I had that kind of platform. But no one there ever made me say anything anyway or didn't, you know, didn't let me give Trump an A for something. Why? It just never came up. If anything, Zucker was getting bashed for having made Trump. The left was very mad. at Zucker about the advent of Trump.

So I don't see CNN the way you guys do, but I still believe that one of the reasons you and I need to talk to each other is not just the shirt and you being the junior version of my weightlifting ability, but that I think that there's probably a lot more, even though I'm not a MAGA guy, it doesn't resonate with me. I am sympathetic to a lot of the people in MAGA because their distress is real. But I bet you we are more in agreement about what matters in the world than we are in conflict. That is my supposition. Listen, I wasn't planning on talking about COVID, nor is I planning on rehashing, you know, funny viral moments, everything from my firing or your firing or whatever.

But the fact that you can do it and have a laugh is good for people. Oh, I agree. And they need to see more of it. And it's great. It's also healing. There's like a pressure release valve. that happens in the American public when you're able to have both sides and you're able to like sit back and have a laugh about these things and not take yourself too damn seriously.

I think the American public has had enough of pretentious people that take themselves too seriously and have no self-deprecation and can't look at the landscape and perhaps come to like a conclusion that we agree on probably a far more than we actually disagree on. And the people that are willing to have those conversations are doing great with their careers. There are individuals that are willing to have this wide range of conversations and do it in good faith and have a laugh and make fun of themselves. And there are some comedians like Tim Dillon, Joe Rogan, who have, of course, exploit the O'Von. They've blown up because of their ability to do this. There are some people like Bill Maher from the other side, right, who would be on the absolute centric other side, who's also found a brand new wider audience being able to do this.

And it's not saying that they're MAGA, they're not, they're not MAGA. They're just operating in good faith. They're searching out truth in good faith. And that's all that I think the internet wants. Yeah, I mean, the, I don't, I don't know, I don't have a better answer. I think that most of the platforms you just mentioned play to the right. And I think that that has always been the AM radio advantage and the cable advantage once Roger Ailes, you know, who was my first boss.

and television, identified the audience was that you have a majority of people in this country who are center right in their dispositions and their leanings. And often they weren't spoken to. And once he identified that, they were off to the races. I remember O'Reilly getting hash marks. I remember Bill O'Reilly, the ratings coming out and him getting a zero. Think about that. That's where Roger started and then where he took it. Support comes from American financing. What if you could delay your next two mortgage payments? Got your attention, right?

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889 4242. 866 889 4242. Or go to Americanfinancing.comnet slash Cuomo. Tell them I sent you. I do believe that you have touched on something that I think is fundamental. The problem is you can't really make money off at the same way, which is consensus. And I don't have any problem with the media finding avenues of opportunity, right? That's the problem with news business, right? Once it's monetized, then you've got to find your advantage. I don't like our political system doing it. It's one thing if, like, you decide to advance the MAG agenda.

That's your right, okay? Whether it's right or wrong is up to your audience. But if you were Congressman Benny Johnson with that flag over your shoulder and that haircut and those glasses, then I would say, Benny, you're only doing this because it's working for you right now. And shape-shifting may work for you and getting a Senate seat. But you're really scrambling a lot of people's eggs about this

and creating division for profit. That's what bothers me. That's what bothers me because now our real power players are doing it. You know what I mean? And then they've been elected by people to advance the best interests of them as a constituency as a component of a country. And they're not doing that. They're doing what happens in the media.

And that's what bothers me. That's what I'm against. So you're against it from a political landscape perspective. So you're against the divisiveness on a political landscape. I am, look, there's always going to be division when there's disagreement. But it's about the degree. It's all it is right now. My father, Benny, was a real one, okay?

This guy was not an immigrant. He was born here, but he was the child of immigrants. And he was an other. And he was otherized. You know, I'm a white guy all day long. My father was not, okay? He was considered, what do you mean by that? He was considered an ethnic.

If you go back and look at how Mario Cuomo was discussed, especially early on, it wasn't Mario Cuomo, white, you know what I mean? Or whatever. They don't usually identify us as white because it's obvious. But he was an ethnic. He was described as hot-blooded. He was immediately tied to the mafia. You know, he didn't get job.

because he was Italian, you know, it was a different generation. It was a different era. But that guy, even though he had all of that animosity, that anger driving his populism, he would do deals for the betterment of the state budget all the time. He would argue against Republicans all day long. He was one of Ronald Reagan's most famous or infamous foils. He never talked about him personally. Never. And when he was sick and it finally came out, he immediately reached out to Nancy Reagan. He immediately talked about it. Why? Because decency was never on the table for political expediency. Now it is. Now it's not enough that Benny and I disagree. If there's a piece of power at play, you know, Benny. Benny is a psycho, first of all. And it has to be that way.

And that's what I'm against, is that doing it that way works for them, but it's killing us. It's killing us. And that's why nothing gets done there that means anything, because there's no reason to compromise. It's seen as weakness. I see Trump, you know, I see Trump doing this a lot. You know, Trump's having this consensus moment with people who hate him. I could, Bill Maher's a good example, but he's just one of many examples of people who made a career over the last day. decade of saying that President Trump is an orange Hitler orangutang, and then Donald Trump invites

him to the White House and calls him in and, like, you know, does a trip with them. It was wild. When Trump went to Saudi Arabia, on that trip was Reid Hoffman. Right. Reid Hoffman funded all the lawfare against President Trump. Yep. And he gets invited to Saudi Arabia to presumably, it's very nice dinners and private conversations. Reid Hoffman was personally funding the destruction of Donald Trump. It's really magnanimous.

The people who are closest to Trump, and I don't claim to be one of them, but the people who are very close with Trump says that he is in a very magnanimous mode right now, where he's doing his best to bring as many pieces of the table together. I think it's genius move because if you're going to win a war, if you view it as a culture war, to win a war, you can't stagnate. You have to be able to take from your enemy. You have to be able to turn their weapons against them. You have to be able to seize ground.

And it seems like that's what President Trump is doing right now. And I think it's been very, very effective from a cultural standpoint. I think it would be. I don't know how concerted the effort is. I don't know his personal motivations well enough to give any sense of what mode he's in. But, look, if he wants to be remembered as a great president, MAGA's not forever, all right? There is no great leader in American history who was a divider. There is not one who made their name as a divider, okay?

He has to be seen at the end of the day who did something to bring the country together. And that's on him, and he has to figure that out if he wants to be considered that one. otherwise it doesn't matter what the economy is it doesn't matter what anything is he won't be remembered that way because greatness uh requires great acts my question to you is if he's in that mode why does he default to some of the other cleverness so often for instance with the epstein thing just tell them to put all the shit out if you get sued you get sued it's not your money anyway. They're going to sue the government. They're not going to sue you. So just put it all out. You surrounded yourself with people. You know, Trump did a little bit, but not as much as the

people around them who sold a lot of big ideas about Epstein. And now because kids and sexual abuse is involved, they're not going to stop caring about it. So just put it all out. I don't want to hear about Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton. I don't, I don't want you to just spread stink on other big names. I don't think Trump is why they haven't given us disclosure. I don't believe that idea. I've seen no proof of it. And I believe proof like that would have come out already. I don't think that this is what it is about. And I hate seeing the fake pictures of him with young girls from like a bar mitzvah and trying to pretend that this is proof that he's a pedophile. I think that's disgusting. And it's proof of my point, Benny.

said it doesn't matter you can nobody gives a fuck you go wherever you have to go to make the other side look worse it doesn't matter well yeah the AI photos obviously should be illegal they're fake but the documents inside of the Epstein file are not fake and you've got to assume that if you're going to run on something like releasing the Epstein file then do it talk about it you got to do it then do it but I don't like all these Comer subpoenas of everybody else except Trump. I'm not saying he should be subpoenaed. I'm not saying that at all. Again, I don't buy any of this, Benny. I don't. I don't think there's a client list. I don't think anybody murdered Epstein. I'll give you that he may have paid guys to let him kill himself. But I don't buy these things.

I don't think Elaine Maxwell knows anything. Because if she did, I'm telling you, as a lawyer, she would have offered it up before now. She hates where she is. She's going crazy. in there. And Epstein would have talked. And if you believe that he got murdered before he could talk, one, I don't accept that. He had plenty of time. He was freaking out. His lawyers say that. But even if he had been murdered to shut him up, why is Maxwell still alive? She knows all the same things. So I believe that there's a lot of BS here, and it's a distraction. But you promised. So you got to deliver. So just put out everything and let's move on. I agree. I just don't agree that the Clinton thing is a smoke screen or red herring. I think there's a lot of fire where that smoke comes

from. What fire? What fire, Benny? Okay, so the fire that he flew on the La Lady Express 27 times, that Jeffrey Epstein went to the White House while Bill Clinton was president 17 times that Bill Clinton had an oil painting of himself in a blue, presumably DNA stained dress hanging inside of Jeffrey Epstein's $56 million mansion on the Upper East side. The fact that in the deposition material. Bill Clinton was named as liking them young by Epstein victims and Kevin Spacey saying that he flew on Epstein's plane with Bill Clinton with little girls on it. These are all, I think, very important questions to ask Bill Clinton, and this is something that I can't square Chris, perhaps you could help me. Why hasn't Bill Clinton been asked about it? You know,

his wife's run for president. He's run for president. Because he's irrelevant. He's got, you know, Bill Clinton's done hundreds of thousands of hours. of interviews and press conferences and been live and live on TV and live on shows all over CNN and other networks. Why hasn't he ever been asked? And it's very strange. It's very... Two reasons. One, it's because... That's something's very odd to me. There are two reasons. It's not odd at all. I totally get it. And for instance, I've interviewed him. And I was at the Clinton Global Initiative and we were talking about very specific things. So obviously, I wouldn't have brought something like this up, but I wouldn't have done it anyway because the simplest way to put it is there's a big

difference between accusing someone of hanging out with a scumbag, which all these guys are guilty of, accusing them of hanging out with a guy they know is a scumbag, which is now getting a little difficult because it's hard for you to prove what I knew. But then to take five more steps and say that his association with this person requires a meaningful analysis about whether or not he's a pedophile to me is way, way too far. It's right up there with Obama's a, you know, Michelle Obama's a man, you know, this kind of stupidness just to kind of fuel disbelief. Bill Clinton has a very sorted past with women. That's well documented. But now with children. Yes, that's right. With women.

and women who worked for him, women who were quite young. I'm not trying to make the argument. I'm trying to say, all I'm asking here, Chris, is why hasn't there been a question asked? Because he's not relevant. If he were running for something or relevant. But I am saying that Monica Lewinsky was like 25 years younger than Bill Clinton. She worked for him. In the left-wing, iconoclast view of the world, that would be a power dynamic struggle, right?

Because she was working for him. He's the most powerful man in the world. Absolutely. right in that and that's a very that's a very unfair environment for her to be put into and pressured into right so there's major power dynamic play there absolutely and so we've seen that in bill clinton's nature and so then his relationship and the physical documentation about his relationship with geoffrey epstein i think is very fair game considering the fact that his names are on the logs and we know so very much about him yeah but look but that's exactly what the left says about trump with epstein He checks all the same boxes. The difference here, Chris, is that Donald Trump's fielded probably 200,000 questions about Epstein, and Bill Clinton's fielded zero. Look, that is absolutely true. I don't know if the number is zero, but I've certainly never heard Bill Clinton talk about this.

I agree with you 100%. I'm actually okay with that because I don't think there's anything there. And just because Trump gets asked about something a lot doesn't mean he's telling the truth. I mean, this is a guy who, after he was told, Cuomo has the recording of you talking to Michael Cohen about paying off the lady. Now, remember, Benny, and this is all easy for people to find. I don't give a shit that Donald Trump paid off his ex, whatever, to be quiet. I don't think it's illegal. I don't think it was, you know, a moral judgment for anyone to make but him and the people around them, okay?

I never covered it for that reason. I have never covered his sex life or the allegations from a perspective of his sexuality ever, okay? It's not my thing. Why? Because when you get into the moral judgment game in politics, you wind up running in the wrong direction all the time. And you focus on what you can do to advance people's interests and not moral arguments and culture wars and bullshit. It's all a distraction. Nobody's electing a high priest.

We know what these guys are. We know what we need them to do. But he knew I had the tape. He still, when asked, said, I never heard of this. So him answering questions doesn't mean we're getting the truth of it. I'm just trying to say that as a fair question. You can clearly agree with it. You got to agree.

It's a fair question to ask Bill Clinton. What answer do you think you're going to get? I mean, I'm not sure he's never been asked. No, but I'm saying like, what do you think? That's why conservatives, that's why conservatives are like, well, the media is horrifically biased. Now, Amy Roerbach of ABC News had a leaked tape after it was leaked by someone. And she just straight up admits. And I don't think she was lying.

There's no motivation that she would be lying there that ABC News killed the story. And she says in that tape, listen, I had Clinton. I had everyone. She had photos. She's talking about Virginia Roberts, now deceased. Virginia Roberts. Right. chief Epstein whistleblower.

Yeah, yeah. Who actually exposed the entire pederist network. And Virginia Roberts has been an excellent witness in many cases. And she never, but she never implicated, but she didn't implicate Clinton. And what I'm saying is that that's what Amy Morrod said. And I don't know her. I don't know her. I'm just saying that that's what people.

Well, I do know her. Why haven't they asked questions about, you know, powerful Democrats? I do know her. I don't think it's about avoiding powerful Democrats. It's that they killed her story. she was the good guy i don't know that i think that's the way it initially came out but i don't know that that is actually the case i think that this was a very half-baked idea and here's the difference between the bennie show and abc news okay meaningful litigation okay where they can take you down

and destroy your platform if you're wrong you don't have that you get all the protections of the first amendment very little of the responsibility or accountability ABC News gets sued for connecting Clinton to a pedophile on a single source where there's no documentation that benefits that angle of connection, right? Being on a plane is not the same thing as saying you were raping kids. So that's why they don't do the story. Why you can't ask about it? Of course you can ask about it. Why they haven't?

I think it's because of his irrelevance and the lack of proof. behind your question. Will he be asked? Of course. Looks like now they're going to be subpoenaed. I don't want to waste my time on those interviews. Put everything out. That's what you promised. Do it. This is a distraction. The country is not in a better place, your kids, my kids, because of any of this. Just like with Russia Gate, just like with the New York cases against Trump, just like the stuff about Hunter and Burisma, just like the stuff about Hillary Clinton and the pizzeria. these things are all cuckoo sauce. They don't help us make the country a more perfect union.

Am I wrong? Oh, I completely agree that they're often used as hoaxes and distractions and that there are real things affecting real people. And that's something that we need to focus on, which is why I want to know, can you break down? Why did you give President Trump an A? Well, which category did I give him an A in? The overall rating of his presidency, correct?

No. No. No way. No way I gave him an A. I gave him, I think a C overall. I did give him an A in some category. I don't know, maybe it was foreign policy or something like that. Here's the point, though. Here's the answer to your question. I'm a fair broker, Benny, okay?

Unlike you, I have specific personal reason to not like the president of the United States. And he knows what it is, and I know what it is. And we had discussed it. And it's personal, and he knows it. But I am still fair to the guy. Not fair enough for you. No way. Not fair enough for his supporters.

No way. That's fascinating. The left thinks that I have been red-pilled that I am a closet MAGA. When I'm not a closet A-PAC agent, I'm a closet MAGA agent. And meanwhile, you guys still hate me. This is the problem with not picking aside, Benny. We can wear the same shirt, but we don't wear the same jersey, and that makes all the difference in this business. I don't hate you.

I think what's happening right now in the media landscape is fascinating and one of the most exciting things I've seen in my lifetime. I think the loosing of control and the loosing of the corporate culture on media has been one of the best things to happen for the free flow of information dialogue in my lifetime. It's healing for the country. Is it healing? Is it healing? I look, no journalist is going to argue against.

more speech, okay? But, and again, look, I think there's a big difference between you and me. I mean, look, I can get away with whatever you can on my podcast. I'm held to a different standard than you are. But I also have an employer in News Nation. You know, you're not working for Newsmax or anybody else right now. So for me, I got to be careful because they'll be held accountable for what I say. So just because I'm going to say something super provocative and it goes viral and I get a few more commercials, I can't do that when there's accountability. So, yes, free speech all day long. Marketplace of ideas, let the best idea win. Censor nothing. Censor no image. Censor no words. Censor nothing. Let it all be out there. Let the best ideas win. However, people who pander and purvey bullshit for profit should be held to account. There is no mechanism. for that with Benny Johnson, other than don't watch his podcast.

But for ABC News or News Nation, or CNN, or Fox News, unless it's their prime time lineup, why, Benny? Because the Fox News primetime lineup is under the umbrella of entertainment, not Fox News. So they aren't held to the same standard. It's very entertaining. It's very entertaining. It can be to a certain persuasion. I have two beefs, two beefs that I wouldn't have had five years ago.

One, the truth does matter when it comes to debate about things that affect society. There has to be better accountability than we have right now, where anybody can say anything and be wrong and know that they're wrong, and it doesn't matter unless you work for a place that can get sued, right? Trump, maybe Joe Rogan, has got enough pocket where Spotify will freak out if you come after him for litigation. But the rest of you don't. That's why he sued CBS, one, because they matter more. But he sued them because there's an accountability there.

There's something that would matter in a court of law. So we have to work on that part. And I do think for our kids' sake, I'm ahead of you in the baby game by a lot. My kids are 22, 19, and 15. You know, I know you've got more kids, but you've got four kids, but they're younger. So the algorithms, I think there is a good faith argument to be made, Benny, that just because certain things would naturally, organically, get more traction, like what, porn, you know, provocative things, violent things, aggressive things, that that doesn't mean that the algorithm has to capture that and advance it. And I do think there is a good faith argument to be made with the precedent of the FCC, the seven words, right, that Carlin and Lenny Bruce and everybody played with and got censored

and all that stuff. We do have a precedent of a standard where you can't say certain things on over-air, broadcast. The cable doesn't have it, but it's kind of still collectively applied. There's certain cultural standards where, tonight on NewsName, you're not going to see nipples, okay? Good, bad, right, wrong, you know, you won't see it. Unless you're wearing the wrong shirt, Chris. That's exactly right.

There is an argument to be made that the algorithm should have some type of ethical or, dare I say, moral. Totally. Put in, just like at News Nation, you know, when you come on News Nation, you're not going to say, that guy's a fucking asshole. Why? Because you know we don't talk that way on that platform. It's not for that. Why? By agreement, I guess, we just agree. It's not like, you know, you're going to get fired. It's not like you're going to get sued. So why do we do it? Because there's a standard. I think we need one with the algorithm. You'd be fined, right? If you said out on News Nation, I think there's decency laws and I think you'd be fined. Probably fine. I'd probably be fired, though. I mean, the real barrier to me would not be the government. It would be that I have a boss.

And the boss is going to say, I want us perceived a certain way. You just fucked that up. I compare it. So, yes, I'm the father of four young children, four children under four. So we've had a child every single year since moving to Florida. It's great down here. Sunshine. You should think about it.

You should maybe think about getting out of New York. Come on down to Florida. Benny, you couldn't have children before you moved to Florida. Is that where you're trying to tell me? I had one child in D.C. And then because D.C. defunded their police, there was a gang war on my block. My house got shot up. Somebody got killed in my front yard.

I still have it on my ring camera. And then in the drug war, they burned down the house next to mine, which was a row house. So the flames went into my child's crib into their room. The entire nursery was black from smoke and soot. and firefighters had to break down my door and save my newborn baby. So it was the worst day of my life, actually. Worst day of your life, but it also made you realize how fortunate you are because you survived. It made me say, I got to get the hell out of here.

Yeah, I got to get to a place that won't defund their police and their services for the taxpayers. I got to get a place that has sanity that is pro, you know, that have family flourishing policies. And the best way to tell that, actually, Chris, is it's very simple. I learned this because I went to a couple different places to figure out where I was going to move after leaving D.C. And Tennessee was high on the list, Texas potentially, is the city park rule. You go to a city park and you look around the city park and you can see one of two things. You won't see them both. You'll see one of two things. It'll either be a place for bums, sleeping and pissing on themselves, stabbing each other with needles,

or it will be a place for mothers and children and family flourishing. It can't be both. They're incompatible. And so I use this, actually, as a rule to measure which cities should I move my families to, because the parks will either be for the moms and the children. And what that indicates is that there's a police force there that will enforce standards, the kind of standards you're talking about, the algorithm. Yeah.

That we want to live in a place that is for family flourishing. We don't want to live in a place that allows for the degeneracy and crime and open vagrancy and for the destruction, quite frankly, of the family unit. because one of those bombs is eventually going to attack a child or attack a mother. Now, listen, I'm with you. I'm with you. That's what I use to measure.

That's in New York City, actually, fails that test. New York City right now fails that test. New York City proper in certain areas would fail that test. Yes, I agree. And so, like, you don't want to take your kids. You would never, you're still technically a young father, right? You have teenagers.

And so you don't want to take your kids around. Did you know, I don't? I don't. But hold on, hold on, hold on, Benny. Let's take the next step. I agree with you. I agree with you. Just to your point, just to just very quick, let me wrap this up.

To your point about the algorithm, I don't want to take my kids also to like a place that has open pornography. Right. You know, let's say there was a town square that had porn up on the buildings. Right. Or that had like drugs being sold. Right. Or that had, I don't know, violent, you know, horrible open violence. Right.

I want the algorithm to also reflect that, right? It's the public square for a reason. And I don't want that in the public square. bring my children to physically, and I don't want it digitally either. I mean, it's slippery slope, slippery slope, but I agree with you fundamentally. I mean, I'm not afraid, you know, it's all about what your boogeyman is. I can teach my kids nudity, sexuality, choice structure, all those things. My problem is the culture of persuasion, and it's not just that it's aggressive and

provocative. You're either putting, you know, character qualities and characteristics in your kid or you're not. But it's like, you know, the sports betting, it's the propaganda, it's the misinformation and the disinformation and all the stupid shit that my kids, you know, wind up almost believing because of what's allowed because that's what does well. And then you have, of course, all the messaging that does mess with their sense of self. And all of this stuff is done for profit. And that's my point, is that we've always hemmed it in everywhere else.

And now there's this idea that you don't have to do any of that. in this new digital sphere. And I think we're seeing that there's a very discernible plus minus to that. Now, the interesting part of the dynamic, Benny, is what you're saying about the parks, it's fine. But if you stop there, if you stop there, you get a phony bifurcation of either your pro-bum or pro-family, right? And then you start fighting. And now the pro-bum people have to make the pro-family people.

seem bad in another way so that there can be competition. Whereas what it really would be, if it weren't just a binary zero-sum battle to the bottom of these two parties, would be who has the best ways to help the bums so that they don't have to live in the park so our kids and their moms and their dads

and their whewers can flourish. That's the fight. The fight is, here's what Benny wants to do, here's what Chris wants to do, here's what other wants to do, who's got the best ideas? Because we all agree, we want a park that's for kids and flourishing, and you want those people who otherwise would be in there to be taking care of and have other avenues of opportunity and dignity. But we don't have that conversation.

Forgive me, I don't mean to interrupt you, but if you're done with your thought, The crazy part about this, Chris, is that you're not living in reality if you think that. Because if you go to San Francisco right now, I can show you city block upon city block upon city block where the degenerate, homeless, violent drug abuser trumps the mother with the kid in the store. Oh, yeah, you're right. And I can show you that in L.A. I can show you that in Philadelphia. I can show you that in Kensington. You're right.

I can show you that in Boston. I can show you that in Chicago. You'll show me in any major population center. You'll show me that. Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that it doesn't exist. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm saying, what do we do about it? What do we do about it?

Because they're not rats. You can't just poison them all and have them take it back to the litter. And they're all gone. They're human beings that are often, you know, that are often in need of help. There are plenty of cities that are, that have been preserved for the family structure and unit to flourish. And they're not poisoning. No, I know. I'm being facetious.

I'm saying you need to take care of. these people. You have to have another way of dealing with them. You can't just chase them away like vermin. That's my point, Benny. I think a lot of it is a spiritual question. I believe in demonic possession. I believe that a lot of it has to do with real deep-seated spiritual problems in our nation and that a lot of people succumb to abuse, drug abuse or alcohol abuse because of that, because of something much deeper and darker. But also the closure of mental institutions, the closure of mental institutions. But you don't think addiction and mental illness are a big part of this and that you need treatment and not just an exorcism? Absolutely. I think that it's all that

I think that it's, we are, you know, we're spiritual beings having a physical experience right now in these bodies. That's what I believe is a Christian. And I believe that there, that you should take into account some of that when you're treating this, right? Not every case is the same. I think you should take it. I think you should take it completely into account. And Jesus, would not discuss it the way you did. What do you mean by that? Jesus would... Jesus did plenty of demonic exercise.

No, no, no. Benny, his selective listening is not listening. Every verse of the New Testament, he exercised a demon. No, Jesus, when it came to describing the social condition that you were, wouldn't say you have children and moms, and then these drug-addled pissing on themselves, needle-stabbing, violent. That is not how Jesus would talk about that same population. He would say, you have people who are diseased of spirit, diseased of mind and of body, who need help, and how can any society exist that doesn't exist foremost for them, as he did,

as he did in treating lepers to make a point that he knew it was contagious. He knew it was frightening. He knew it was easy. to see the people who are suffering as less than, and he embraced them. I do not hear that in Benny the Christian. I see you making them a boogeyman. Well, but they were boogeymen. You know, if you look at some of the people

that were demonically possessed in the Bible, they act exactly like some of the people who act are in Kensington. You don't have to be demonically possessed to be homeless. And you'll see the same thing. Or addicted. I'm not a pastor. nor do I claim to be some theologian. I'm just saying I'm a simple Christian who reads my Bible,

and I read that one of the more famous demonically possessed men lived in the tombs. He kept cutting himself and abusing himself. He was so dangerous. They couldn't even chain him. He would hurt people and that he was cast out of the town for that exact reason. He lived among the dead in the caves. And I think that when you look at some of the structures of how demonic possession is described in the Bible, I think that there's a big spiritual component to some of the people you see bent over wandering the streets today in so many cities.

And what are you supposed to do about it, Benny? You're supposed to put them in the tombs? Again, I said that there's probably a huge critical error in closing down many of the mental institutions in our country. So many mental institutions were shuttered. And the moment that they shuttered, and I wish I had the graphic in front of me, I'll be happy to send it to you. The moment that the mental institution population. collapsed, and that happened through the 70s and 80s. No, you know who did it?

The rate of homelessness on the streets. It ballooned. It was a perfect inversion, actually. Of course, of course there was. And this was done. There are some people that, and again, I'm not a doctor, and nor am I trying to be a theologian, but there are some people that just have decided to not comport and that they will not be adhering to societal standards or any level of.

Among the homeless population, those people exist. To let them just walk amongst our kids, I think, is a huge mistake. Benny, of course. But, again, to the boogeyman effect, unfortunately, I understand this issue way too well because my family has been bathed in it my entire life. Yes, these people exist who you're talking about within this overall population of those who have needs, right? But they are the very small minority. And when Reagan opened up all the institutions, didn't want to fund them anymore, the idea was let families take care of these people, let communities take care of them.

And let's not have another Willowbrook and let's not warehouse all these people like they were others and let's find a better way. And it was a disaster. And my father was very, very much against it. My brother wound up starting a transitional housing company that this is what they do is try to give people services because that's what they. need. My point is, Benny, yeah, opening the institutions is certainly an aspect of this that we got to think about. And we don't have the conversation, though, because it ends with how do you want to talk about the people littering San Francisco? And that's all we'll do is Tucker Carlson will show a video of like a pile of poop and say, this is what San Francisco has become.

And if you defend it, you're there pro them and then you have no heart and I have no head. And and we go back and forth, and nobody solves the problem. And time and again, in our society, that's where we are. Is we fight about the problem, weaponize the problem, do nothing about the problem. Yeah, I didn't know that your family had that background. And if your father was on that side of the issue of keeping some of these mental institutions open, I think that's actually the single most humane thing for many of the individuals. And the data, the data proves it.

And if you've got to have treatment, but a lot of them are just, A lot of them are just broke, Benny. There are a lot of people who are homeless. You know what happens is, depending on how long you're in that condition, okay, you start to have new problems. Okay, so it was, you got fired by a jerk, and you can't get rehired, and then this medical bill, and then this, and then all of a sudden, you're out, you're done. And if you're not blessed with family or friends or a social network that picks you up, you're on the street. Now, you're there long enough, you're going to have all kinds of problems just to cope with that level of desperation. But there are a lot of people in this country who are on the street, not by choice, and a couple of checks away from having a very different existence.

I just want to have that conversation among our leaders. Of course. I wish I covered that every night. I wish I was covering the impact of the big, beautiful bill every day. Who's it benefiting? Who isn't? What's working? What isn't?

But if you look at the top five items, and they'll all go viral for you guys and they'll do well and you'll monetize them. But they are nothing that matters to the majority of this country, unless the majority gets convinced for a moment to give a shit about something that isn't to its advantage. I can show you right now hard numbers and data of what the majority of people in this country care about. It actually has to do with exactly what we're talking about, which is street violence and the horrible condition of the inner city. in this nation. There's a woman named Holly who got savagely beat in the face by a man who was half her age and she was left for dead on the sidewalks of Cincinnati. After hitting her head on the sidewalk being knocked unconscious, anyone will tell you that's how you get a brain hemorrhage. That's how you die. The police officers who showed up didn't even help Holly. They just dispersed

the crowd. Holly had to take an Uber to the hospital in Cincinnati because there was no ambulances available. We've set up a give send go for Holly. And And at time of recording right now, we just passed $500,000 raised for Holly. And that's the American people standing up and speaking to the point that I'm trying to make here, which is that we want safe streets. It is our birthright as Americans to be able to walk down the street and enjoy a birthday party like Holly was doing. Or just bring your kid to a concert or bring your kid to the city park. Yeah, but who doesn't want that?

Nobody doesn't want that. Nobody wants to be unsafe. It's about what policies win elections and what level of accountability there is for those policies. I mean, it's easy to say, I want to be safe when I walk down the street. Okay, how? If the street is unsafe, how do you make it safe? Well, you don't defund your police. That nearly led to the death of my daughter in my own house.

They defunded the police. Defunding the police is. three of the stupidest words ever said by Democrats in history. That was stupid. They know it was stupid. You will not find, you know, anybody wanting to defend that idea. They will immediately rationalize it and run away. So, fine.

You win the argument. Defund the police was stupid. They painted it on the street outside of the White House. Oh, yeah. They painted defund the police right down the red in yellow. They meant it until they realized they would never win a street. another election. Okay? So, and then you pivot away, because that's what the parties do, is that they only discuss things in terms where they seem like a better alternative than

the other side, because the other side is worse. I use the wrong word. It's never better. It's that you're worse. I don't even talk about why I'm good anymore. I just say, Benny Johnson, that guy wants to kill homeless people. Benny Johnson, that guy wants to force you to be a Christian. That's all I do. Is, make Benny a bad choice and how are we supposed to get anything that's better in an environment that's constantly reductive. That's my problem with the level of dialogue. Well, here's you and I having this conversation. And so we've started at square one, which is we all want to be safe. Yes. And then the next question is what policies get safety for our children and the mothers in

our community and anyone or person. So defunding the police, that's stupid. And that was the dumbest thing that everyone's ever said. It was done. There's your viral clip. You saying that's the three dumbest words ever said. That'll go viral. Look, we probably have several in here, Benny, but is going viral getting us to a better place?

How about bail? Well, yes, actually, good faith consensus arguments are excellent for society. How often do those go viral? Well, this is what we're going to have a conversation about. Because the reason why Holly, who's just a single mother of a special needs child in Ohio who got clocked while trying to simply celebrate a birthday party in downtown Cincinnati, $500,000, half a million dollars has been raised for Holly because people are so affected by this story and they're so angry about it.

When you put it to the American people, they stand up 10 times out of 10. In every disaster I've ever covered for 25 years, the country, the majority, who we are everywhere once you get outside elected politics, okay? Yeah. We do the right thing in this country. We do the right thing. And most of us in this country do not want any credit. You will never know.

They are just the neighbors. They are the parishioners. They are the local members of businesses. And they just do things for one another. They do it because they can. And we lose sight of that in our partisan politics. And that's why I hate the two-party system. That's the only reason it bothers me when you guys say, oh, for a Democrat, if your name's

not Cuomo, I have never registered as a Democrat to vote in my life. Talk about people who don't get asked questions. My brother's a Democrat. I don't know why, but he is. My father was a Democrat. I know exactly why he was, but his party doesn't exist anymore. And while I had disagreements with my father about different issues. I knew what principles were guiding him.

And now I look at the parties, and I don't even, I never bought the Uniparty, because anything conspiratorial kind of spooks me as unintelligent. You know, basic skepticism is the lowest form of intelligence. But the Uniparty thing starts to resonate when you realize that they just shape shift. The Republican Party for so many years was all. all about this surface-level character analysis, character counts. And they just threw that out the window for political expedience. The Democrats were about the working man and woman.

Whatever was going on in their world, that's what they were about. They fought the big people for the little people. That's what they did. And now they deal with the big people who want to put their ideas on the little people. That's what they do now. So I don't know what these parties are. They're just shapeshifters. And I wish that we had five instead of two.

And I wish that we had ranked choice voting. And I wish that there were term limits, but you need a constitutional amendment. And I wish that states, while they're not redistricting to benefit one side or the other, they could get the parties out of the primary process. I wish all these things could happen, but none will. I'm Chris Hadfield. I'm an astronaut, an author, a citizen of planet Earth. Join me for a six-part journey into the systems that power the world. Real conversations with real people who are shaping the future of energy.

No politics, no empty talk, just solutions-focused conversations on the challenges we must overcome and the possibilities that lie ahead. This is on energy. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Can you unpack something for me that you just. I said that I found fascinating. You said that my father's Democrat Party and your father ran for president as a Democrat. This is correct. And he led the state of New York as governor.

Yes, three terms. He was a, you know, he was Mr. Democrat. Yes. And he was an iconoclast for them. He was an iconoclast for the Democrat Party. You can't go anywhere in New York without finding Cuomo on the name of a bridge or a road. And so you say that his party doesn't exist anymore. Unpack that for me.

So my father's battle was against trickle-down economics and Reagan republicanism, okay? The Democratic Party that he fought for and the Republican Party that he fought against, neither exists anymore. My father's party was, take care of the little guy, take care of the little guy, take care of the little guy, stay out of our bedroom, stay out of my heart, okay? just do all the government we need, but only the government we need. And we're a secular society. Don't put anything else on me.

That's who they were. Republicans at that time were teaching to the top, for the top, about the top. Everybody should see the world through the eyes of the top, and everything else is great because the top has it great. That was the conflict. Now it's the left. arguing for a cultural elite. This is how you will talk about people, Benny.

This is how you will raise your kids. This is what you will tell them is okay. This is what, you know, you will say and not say. And the Republicans are, this system sucks. All the little people are getting squashed. These elites are killing us. Anti-everything. They flipped in terms of their operative animus

and their constituencies out of convenience and time. So my father's party is no more. Socialism. He believed that the opportunity to be part of a free market was exactly why his parents, illiterate, okay, unsophisticated, untrained, except with a heart, you know, three sizes too big, filled with ambition and dreams, to come to be able to compete, you know,

without some feudal system on your head in rural Italy, where they were telling you who you could be and how you could be, was worth everything, the idea of going to socialism. Not socialistic, yes, public education, yes, entitlements. Yes, there are socialistic aspects to our constitutional republic within a capitalistic model that work. They work for the collective. That's what we do.

But it's a capitalistic society. No Democrat ever argued for anything else. No Democrat would have argued for open borders. You know, none of this. My father would have done none of this. And why? Because those were the ideals of the party. Now it's different.

What would your father have said about defund the police? It would have been laughable. It would have been laughable. But people didn't say things like that, Benny. They didn't say wildly outrageous. Like my father would have picked up the phone and called Donald right away. and called the president right away and said to him, your father would never want to hear you say that again.

He used to put all kinds of people into his buildings. Yeah, you guys got jammed up. He learned a lesson from that. He believed in having as big a pool of people as possible. When the president then running said, Islam hates us, my father would have called him up and put him in check. And said, we don't talk like that about an entire group of people. Not where we come from.

Not where we come from in Queens, where we were all otherized. You know, them for being Germans, the Trumps, you know, everybody had their little bucket for a while until they assimilated. And today, it's all provocative bullshit all the time, no responsibility, no accountability. You just move on to the next. And it gets us views, it gets us clicks, but it's not getting us to a better place. And that's why, you know, I'm sure your audience is going to say, what the fuck did you talk to that guy for? right and people in my life are going to say what the fuck you talk to benny johnson for i believe conversation is the cure and i know that if we went down a list of things like what matters in

terms of beliefs okay we're going to wind up checking so many boxes do you believe in a higher power obviously yes you said you're a you're a christian so do i so do seven out of ten of us okay um do you believe that um people who make more should uh pay more in taxes yeah of course that's the way system works. But do you believe there should be responsibility for how that money is spent and that they shouldn't take more of it if they're not spending it well as we decide through elections? Yeah, we both agree, right? Even culture war issues, okay? We're going to disagree on reproductive rights because you're going to say as a Christian, I'm pro-life. That's okay, fine, and you can vote for people who are that way. I was also raised Christian, Catholic. I was also raised Christian. I

I study religion almost obsessively, certainly constantly. I believe I live in a secular society, so I respect what the law is. And I have no problem with people trying to influence that law with their own doxologies. But the law was Roe v. Wade and is now Dobbs, which means you do it state by state. That's the law. Do I agree with it? No. Do I have to accept it?

Yes, unless it can be changed. I don't think these things are offensive, you know? Are you pro-death penalty? No, but I don't care if we have it. Why? No one I care about is going to get killed. But if you're poor and you're in a minority group, you've got a better chance of being killed, but it doesn't lower crime. And a lot of the families who even believe that seeking that kind of justice will give them some kind of closure, it rarely does. So I don't know why you'd have it, but if you want that to be your social instruction, I'm okay with it. We live in America, which is the most violent society I've ever covered in my life. It's not even close. wait a minute. What about Afghanistan? You can't confuse extreme instances of Sharia law, which is with how they live in general. You're in Afghanistan. You can be in some crazy-ass place like Mirwala, Pakistan where crazy shits going on. They'll have an argument. The idea of them touching each other never happened. Because if you put your hands on me, you better kill me in that

culture. So they argue all the time. Nobody says, I'm going to kick your ass, Benny, if you say that again. That's uniquely American. Okay. Having weapons, sure, that's an aggravator to anger and hostility. But wanting to be angry and hostile is what we got to deal with. I'm a gun owner. Yeah, we can do better with who gets them and how. Sure, especially when it comes to yellow and red flag laws. Absolutely. And the types of weapons. Sure. Why do we use them the way we do? Why do we shoot each other so easily? Why do we kill each other so easily? The biggest danger to American society is fundamentalism. This is our big enemy. Fundamentalism. That's what we're seeing. All the violence, all the terrorism, Benny, they're all Americans now. They're all Americans. Why? Because

we're becoming extremist. That's why. Why are you a gun owner? Because I believe in it as a tool to protect my house. And I believe in it as a tool, which I would understand if people came at me for it and wanted to regulate it differently. I get it. But my son and I like to shoot. I do not like that I haven't beaten them in two and a half years, but I do like to shoot off our backyard. And we have a lot of fun doing it. And I've liked teaching him about caring for things that can hurt and that matter and that the responsibility matters, knowing how to use it matters. And, you know, not because of you specifically, Benny, or at least not that I can remember, but our crazy politics have given people and a rational belief that they can come and seek an audience and seek conflict in a way that

is very dangerous and makes me worry about the safety of my family. Now, I have trained for almost 30 years to do nothing but put down a threat, but I can't put down everything and I can't really deal with more than one at a time. So God forbid, God forbid, God forbid. I want something that can put a hole in somebody if they threaten my kids do i understand that their regulations was it a pain in the ass for me to get the shotguns yeah yeah it's pain in the ass i get it i'm okay with it i've i've watched enough bodies get sprayed all over the place to understand that you got to have checks and the idea that there's no check on the right is silly um but i'm not your enemy on it i'm a gun owner and i believe that's true on every fucking issue i really do i think the division is or i'll give you name any issue

your demonic thing, because I'm not with you on that. But name any issue where you think I'll disagree with you 100%. 100%, an issue, not a person. Well, why aren't you with me on the demonic thing? I think that's interesting. I don't believe that's... I'm not saying that I'm, listen, to be able to declare that, I'm not claiming that I have any type of authority to do that.

I'm a simple Christian. I just read my Bible. That's it. And I assume you were raised Catholic, or are you still a Catholic? Yeah. You still practicing Catholic? Yeah. I'm a failed Catholic.

Well, everyone's a failed Christian. I know. Right? That's the point of Christianity. Yes. It'd be nice if we extended that rule to how we deal with one another, though, in society, which we don't. I love that you brought up. I love that you brought up your son when it came to firearm ownership.

Because the sexist. The girls, if they wanted to shoot the weapon, I would work with them. I'm not going to force it on them. I didn't do that with water skiing. I'm not going to do it with a fucking shotgun. But you're the protector. You're the head of your household. You're the man.

want it. No, I taught my girls. I'm a girl dad too, though. And my girls will fucking put it to you. You come at one of my daughters, the 22-year-old or the 15-year-old, and you are rude and you try to be physically aggressive with them. You better have your fucking hands up. Both of them know what to do. I have no doubt you raise them, Chris. Both of them know how all Cuomo can put down a threat. I promise you that. And if they wanted to learn, I would. I don't mean to be chauvinistic about it. But my son wanted to learn. And I wanted to make sure that. he knew when you point this as somebody you better be ready to kill them you better be ready to take a life otherwise here's how we hold them but and he got it your instinct chris was so raw and so primal and so bread in the bone so deep into the DNA of every man who's ever lived certainly every man you know in your lineage and in mine that says i will protect my family

and i'm going to take the means necessary to ensure that if somebody if evil is visited upon my home that it is met with equal or greater force to protect my children. And that is what most men want. That is what all good men want. I think that's what most, I think that's what most women want. Everybody wants to be safe. Absolutely. And you should train yourself. But all I'm saying is this, Benny. And I think we should be continuing these conversations. When you want, I'll come on your show. You can come on my show. You know, it doesn't matter to me. honor. Christ says, to protect these little children, one of the, one of the harshest, one of the harshest orders Christ ever gave to his disciples and those who were learning from him

was, don't harm a hair on this child. Don't hurt this child. It'd be better for you to have a big old stone tied around your neck and be thrown into the bottom of the ocean than for you to harm a hair on this, on this kid. And that's what he's saying to a degenerate who's wandering a park who's out of his mind, who wants to potentially harm a child. That's what he's saying to anybody who may have been engaging with what Epstein was engaging in. And that's what he's saying to anybody who may want to visit your home to do harm to you. And so it's upon, it rests upon us as fathers to ensure that our children are safe and to ensure that they are being raised in places for human flourishing. I agree. But I'll tell you what, but there are more, there are more

lessons and I think that that's an easy one okay it's not always easy to achieve it right you know evil is real hate is real violence is real um derangement is real but there are other lessons that especially if you want to hold yourself out as an ethical human let alone someone who is religious um but you don't have to believe in anything bigger than goodness to know that I want my son to see that I can put down a threat. And if he trains, he can put down a threat. I also want him to see that I go up to the person who's on the side of the road. And if there's a homeless person, I give them money or I try to get him help.

And that I see nobody as beneath me in any way other than opportunity. And that's just as important to me. I am very careful with how I deal with what I say and with certainly what I do to people who are in need. And I don't want people who are unstable to be around kids, duh. But I care about those people as much as I care about the kids. And I want to help them get to a better place as much as I want them to be safe as much as I want my kids safe. I'm simply pointing out, like, the hypocrisy of some individuals on some political spectrum saying there should be no guns who live inside of a building surrounded by guns and walk with private security. And I don't like that argument, Benny.

I don't like impossible arguments. And I don't like impossible arguments. You know, it's like it's like Nancy Pelosi doesn't live in the tenderloin in San Francisco, right? She lives out in Napa. Right. And she lives in, behind a massive wall. I've seen it. I've been there. I've looked at it. It was like one of the biggest walls I've ever seen.

And Nancy Pelosi's vineyard that she has, that's private in Napa, as far away as you can possibly get from the human suffering of downtown San Francisco, which she represents. That's what people say like, people are like, what the hell's wrong? You know, what's wrong with you? I don't need Nancy Pelosi to live in the suck to appreciate that there is suck and that there's supposed to be something done about it. And look, she doesn't run San Francisco. It may be in her constituency. But, you know, this is the city. The city went the wrong way. They had a new set of elections. They got a new person in, and the new mayor is doing it a different way.

And the people spoke, and that's how a constitutional republic works. But I'm just saying that the more we get into solutions, because we all know what the problems are. I mean, look, even immigration, I don't know if I give them an A or an A minus. I don't know what the fuck I gave them. But whatever grade I gave them, there's such an opportunity there. Instead of the big beautiful bill, of course you've got to get your budget bill. But it's a no-brainer that he should have used the numbers to force an immigration bill. You know, we keep saying we care about the men and women who protects us on that border.

They have been begging for the same things, Benny, since you were five inches shorter. And they have never gotten them. And not just more us. They have been asking for very specific rule changes and our resources. The rule changes are about asylum and who comes in and how and what happens with certain kinds of overstays so that they're not all treated the same way. They've been asking for that. They've been asking for more ability to adjudicate, resources to adjudicate, forums to adjudicate, places to put people, modes of transportation. They've been asking for it.

And only Congress can give it to them. And they've never done it because the problem works better for them than the solution. than fixing. And that's what I want to do with my work. I want to get us focused at like, hey, they're doing it to you again. They're getting you to worry about Epstein. Put all the shit out. I don't want to talk about it anymore.

You know, you want the DOJ to look at it? Fine. Let's do it. You know, but whether it's Russiagate, whether it's Burisma, whether it's Clinton's emails, whether it's Trump's two sets of books, let the people decide. Let it come out, have an election. Lawfare doesn't work for me. I don't want politicians prosecuting their opponents. I don't want it. I don't want congressional hearings. You guys can't figure anything out. It's not going to happen. I don't want it where you're now in

power so you investigate the other side. You have distracted. Our debt and deficit are where they are because nothing has been done about it because we get distracted by other things. It's interesting that you brought that up. Do you, do you, do you, disavow and criticize the Democrat Party for what they did to President Trump? I mean, do you think that that was justified? I don't, there's, I have nothing to disavow. I am not a Democrat. Yeah.

So, I mean, you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't, I don't give a shit about the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. Do you think that was a critical error? The Trump mugshot going after him? The mugshot is, the mugshot's not what matters. There's no question. And look, my frustration with the president on this issue is, and then I'll let you. you go because I don't want to take too much of your time. But all this stuff with Russia Gate,

he's just continuing the cycle. And it always seems justified when you're coming from the position of the aggrieved. I would absolutely love an investigation into the people who fired me, but it wouldn't make CNN any better. It wouldn't make my life any better. So I don't want to see him continue the cycle. Should they have gone after him the way they did? Absolutely not. Russia Gate wasn't started by the dossier. It was started by that guy who came forward with information. Should it have gotten as big as it did? Absolutely not.

It was politicized. It was politicized. And we were sold a bill of goods about the dossier. We were sold a bill of goods about Mueller. And then we saw him testify and realized he was an old man who was way past prime. So all of our faith that he must be doing it right. This guy's a Republican. And he was the head of the FBI.

And everybody respects him. Yeah, they did. 35 years ago. It's like, you know, you're not putting me on your starting five right now, Benny. If you think I'm going to dunk a basketball, it's not going to happen. I can't even dunk a donut and coffee. So I regret a lot of those things. And the harsh part is we didn't learn.

There's nothing wrong with being wrong. There's nothing wrong with getting it wrong. There's nothing wrong with me. Say, no, Benny, it was 2016. And you're like, I'm telling you, I was there. It was 2012. No, Benny, it's 2016. And this is why people don't like you.

And then it turns out it's 2012, and I never apologize. Guys. Benny was right. I was wrong. I shouldn't have made it a point like that. I'm sorry. And we move on. Now, all you'll hear is my apology for 10 years. Everybody will insist they're right even when they're wrong. And the Democrats will never say anything but Trump is a Nazi. Trump is Hitler. Trump is the worst. And you can never normalize anything that he does because you will be normalizing. Hitler. And that is not a very easy position to get anywhere else from. And it created reciprocal tension. So now MAGA, the president was right. That cat could go on Fifth Avenue, shoot somebody in the head and get away with it. Why? Because what else are they going to do? Nobody else has their back as far as they're concerned. So you've put them in a desperate situation. And my main experience was people saying to me, how dare you judge me for voting for Trump? What choice did you give me? What choice did you give me? You gave me no choice. You gave me no process.

You gave me an old man who said he'd be a one-termer and he lied. And then you brought me someone who was so unqualified. She's so over her head. Fuck you. You made me do that. I've had that said to me a hundred times and I had no interest in the Democratic Party. And I had no interest in making anybody do anything. I called Trump's victory at News Nation first in the media. I'm a fair broker. I don't like how he's talked about me and my family. He has hurt my kids. He knows that. He made his choices he made. I'm still fair. Oh, because you've been red-pilled. Red-fucking-pilled? Really? I'm Mario Cuomo's son. I'm Andrew Cuomo's brother. I can't say something nice about Trump without being a MAGA guy.

So this is where we are, Benny. And sometimes I get frustrated because I see cats like you or, you know, anybody who's successful on the right. And you get the convenience of having a side. And it's lonely when you have no side, but that's the job. People loved seeing Charlie Kirk on Bill Marcia. They loved seeing you talk with Tucker Carlson. Yes.

But I got a lot of shit for it. I got a lot of shit for it, Benny. watched. I know they did, but I got a lot of shit. I'll get shit for this. I get shit for Patrick Bed David, who's a friend of mine, who I really have a ton of respect for. Stephen A. Smith. I mean, it's like anybody who's not considered in the club one way or another. And then I'll get your red hat brothers and sisters who look at me like I kicked their dog every once in a while. They'll be like you hate the country. Why do you hate the country? But do you realize what you just did, Chris, by talking about Russiagate in what are simply honest in good faith terms and describing what we all were able to witness with Robert Mueller and what we all were able to witness with the steel dossier and how that was a seditious document and it was fake and it was written by Russian spies paid for by a sanctioned Russian oligarch? Like you just being able to admit that and say that was a mistake is refreshing for people. I don't know. I mean, look, they'll hold it over my head, but it's just the truth. I mean, we did.

We saw CNN cover it, and I'm not, again, I'm not trying to relitigate the past. We just, we saw CNN cover Russiagate with such veracity and such almost like, hey, by the way, though, Benny, you got to go back, you got to go back and compare clips, though, okay? Yes, you're right. I'm not disagreeing with your premise. I'm just saying Fox was doing the same shit. They just cut the curve. Yeah, they just cut the curve. faster. When there were new disclosures, it was driving Trump crazy that they would keep bringing

stuff up and they'd say, well, we got to report it. You know, you just had a congressional committee say that this guy did that. I mean, we got to cover it. You know, it was driving them crazy. Now, degree and duration, fine. That's your, that's your opinion. You can argue degree and duration. But it's the same thing with the pandemic. It's the same thing with all of these things is everybody kind of starts out in the same place. And then it's where do you take it? You know, like people who say to me, hey, you knew COVID was a scam.

Hey, man, I couldn't get up, okay? I was so sick for so long. Long COVID has taken so much vitality out of me. I can barely out bench press you. I used to be able to bench press twice what you can bench press. But I've really been diminished. buy it. So trust me, I wasn't faking a fucking thing. And I wasn't advancing anybody's agenda. I was just desperate to get better. And I still am. And when they sent me ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine,

people were sending me all kinds of shit. I would just go to my doctors and I'd say, should I take this? No, you don't want to take hydroxychloroquine because you don't have that degree of lung infiltrate. Okay, so I won't take it. It wasn't that hydroxychloroquine bad because Trump said it. It was they don't use it for this. They use remdesivir for it. Oh, okay. Ivermectin. Well, I was too far along.

And as an initial antiviral, Ivermectin's been around forever. Yeah, but you called it horse paste. No, I didn't. People were buying horse paste because they couldn't get ivermectin. And that was stupid. And Rogan should have been more careful about it.

That's what I was saying then. And now I get confused with everybody else. Just like the point you made the other day on my show. You said protests aren't supposed to be peaceful. Of course I didn't fucking say protests aren't supposed to be peaceful. I was making a point that when people were pissed off at what was being said by protesters after George Floyd, how dare they talk to cops like that? How dare I get that you're offended, but they have the right to be offended also, and you have no right not to be offended. Nobody ever said protests are just supposed to be peaceful.

I meant what they're saying, not what they're doing. but you get beaten over the head with it because that's our politics. Oh, gotcha all the time. Last word to you. I mean, I guess if this is the last word, I'll simply stay. No, we're going to keep talking, Benny. We'll do this again. We'll simply say that it's been refreshing.

We've covered a lot of ground here. And we've talked about a lot of, I think possibly the biggest third rail. Like every third rail you could possibly touch, we've touched on in this very civilized, honest conversation about the landscape that we're living in. And Chris, perhaps I'm wrong. I know you're a little bit older than me, but I'm pushing 40. I'm 55. I am the ghost of Christmas future.

I used to look like you, Benny, you young bastard. This is what happens. I don't. I grew up in a media ecosystem where it really was truly balkanized. And there was CNN and MSNBC and there was Fox. And then there were all these little blogs and everyone was like trying to slit each other's throat. The idea of a Charlie Kirk going on a Bill Maher podcast and Bill Maher smoking a spliff and hitting what Hennessy or whatever he's

drinking, right? Tequila, I don't know. I don't know what the guy drinks. But and then Charlie sitting there and them having an honest conversation is a wonderful thing. Bernie Sanders was in Trump's chair just a few weeks after Trump on Joe Rogan's podcast.

And I think that's a really good thing. I don't have, I think, I think you're 100% right. Man, you and Tucker were like, you and Tucker were like the kaiju, you know, like fighting each other. It was like King Kong and Godzilla. right? And it was you and Tucker and you were ripping each other's throats out every, every freaking night. And then

the first thing that happens is two of you guys go on each other's podcast, which I, which like I just, you seem a little nihilist on this and I'm going to be there to like hopefully be the silver lining in the dark cloud and say that it's actually a really good thing that's happening right now. And it's better than it's ever been, in fact, when it comes to people having these kind of conversations. So I'm honored to have had this conversation.

Well, look, here's the good news, okay? We should absolutely disagree, and we will. We'll disagree about what you think is true, what I think is true, what should be done, what shouldn't be done. But the idea that unless you are, it is made personal, it's not about insulting you. It's about who's got better ideas, not Benny's a jerk. Well, you're not allowed to do it at trial. You're not allowed to do it at the floor of the House of Representatives. You're not allowed to do it in bracketed debate, debate with rules.

Why? Because it's cheap. And we can be better than that. And maybe it's not as profitable. Maybe it's not as popular. But it's better. And the more I can do it, the more I will. Benny, I got to let you go.

But any time you want me on the show, it's there. I'm curious about the epic battle, the blood feud between you and Trump. What is that? What is the mystery issue? It's not a blood feud. I respect the president. According to him, I was the only member

of the major media that called him after he got shot. And I called him, you know, just out of respect to say, I was sorry about what happened.

I wish his family well and how amazed I was at how he handled it. And it's not that I, you know, like him, don't like him, is it's not what the job is. But that guy

wouldn't get my name out of his fucking mouth with the Fredo and everything else. And I kept saying to him, look, I don't talk about your kids, okay? I do not talk about you that way.

You are causing me trouble. I can handle it, but I don't want my kids to have to defend your mouth at school because you're causing them trouble that you don't need to do. You don't need to come at me that way and say that I'm an enemy of the fucking state, okay? But, you know, I don't know how well you know the president, but that, you know, that's how it fucking is. You know, if you're nice, he's super nice. If you're not nice, he's super mean. You know, and he doesn't give his shit.

He just moves on to the next. And that's fine for him. He is truly the Teflon Don, but it wasn't true for my kids. And I said to him, I don't talk about your kids even though they're all adults. I don't talk about them. I get their allegiance to you. I get it. They should be worried about their father.

They should have his back all the time, every time. I get it. I was raised like that. But you're doing this to me. with this enemy of the state and the Fredo shit. And I'm going to wind up knocking the fuck out of somebody. And my kids are getting in trouble. And this is on you.

This is for what you're saying. This was term one, though. This hasn't happened in term two. No. No. No. This is term two. So that's ancient history.

The only, the only, he called into a town hall with Bill O'Reilly and me. And I called him when he got shot. Yeah. And you're going to sit down with an interview with him, right? When's that going to be? I think he has zero interest. in sitting down for an interview with me. Really?

Yeah. It would be like sitting on like a bunch of tacks for him, I think. Anyway, Benny, anytime you want me, I got your text. Do you want me on the show or you want to come on whenever you want? Take care. My man. Thank you. Be well.

Best of your family. Same. Same. Godspeed, man. Now, is this going to be sliced by a ginsundice. sue 50 different ways to make it look like I hate Democrats and I'm Maga and I'm this and I'm that, all this other bullshit. Yeah, and that's the problem. Because if you watch it all, it's not going to be fair. Because I am a fair broker because that's what you need me to be.

And that's why I'm doing this. That's why I'm at News Nation. So thank you for subscribing and following me. Checking me out at 8 p and 11P Eastern every weekday night on News Nation, the substack, the TikTok. I'm trying to find ways to connect so that we can stay connected and get to a better place. Let's get after it.