The Chris Cuomo Project - The Gen Z Activist Taking On Outrage Culture

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

Gen Z activist Manu Meel, co-founder and CEO of BridgeUSA, a student-led nonprofit that trains young people to hold civil, moderated discussions across political divides, joins Chris Cuomo to explain how his generation is fighting political polarization by turning outrage into conversation. Meel says young Americans—raised on algorithms and anger—are ready for something new, building more than 100 college chapters devoted to structured dialogue and civic engagement. Cuomo challenges whether bridge-building can survive in a social-media world that rewards rage, while Meel argues that exhaustion with constant conflict is creating an opening for empathy and debate to go viral. Together they explore how the next generation might reclaim discourse, one conversation at a time 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: http://kalshi.com/?utm_source=chriscuomo Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at https://trueclassic.com/CUOMO! #trueclassicpod Get firearm security redesigned and save 15% off @StopBoxUSA with code CUOMO at https://stopboxusa.com/CUOMO #stopboxpod If you’re ready to turn down the stress, and focus on the rest, head to https://drinkag1.com/CCP to get a FREE Frother with your first purchase of AGZ. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. We all know what's wrong, but I have somebody who has the solution to our political division. I'm Chris Cuomo.

Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. So we all know what's wrong. But how do you get people away from what is amplified by the algorithms, away from the rage bait? You know how? You don't. You're about to meet somebody named Manu Meal. And not only do I believe he is an instrument of hope for the young people that we're also worried about right now in this society, but he put together an organization, an effort, an initiative, a dynamic called Bridge USA, which doesn't negate outrage, but it uses it in a different way to hook people on something that is better than division. How? Why? Why is it growing so much? Why is there actually hope? Let's see.

Mono, thank you very much for making time for me. I told you we were going to work together. Chris, thanks for having me on. I don't think you'll regret it. Hopefully. We'll see. So educate me, handsome. What is the problem? So I think the problem is exactly what you and I were just talking. about, which is that we live in a world in which young people and people in general get their content in 15 seconds. And that's how we get our information. That's how we get our news. And that's what the algorithm's privilege. And so the question is, what sells in 15 seconds? And a fascinating mentor of mine recently said that you recruit people with anger and you keep them with joy. And I think the

problem is how do you actually recruit people into the work of bridge building, which is what I focus on in civic dialogue, through that lens, which seems counterintuitive, Because I don't think we have a problem keeping them. And people love the work of talking to people that are different than them and get engaged. But the recruitment with anger, I think, is the critical problem to solve for. And that's what we're trying to think about how to do. What do you think of the idea that social media has made younger people uniquely vulnerable to radicalization? I think it's true.

But I don't think it's just younger people. I think it's people in general. You know, one of the things that I've learned doing this work, and you've been doing it far longer than I have. is like building these bridge USA chapters. So we have college chapters all across the country. We've got 105 chapters right now. Public schools, elite schools, small vocational schools. It's that human beings are human beings across the board, whether they're in Georgia, whether in Russia, whether than in Germany, whether they're in UC Berkeley. And that is that we like to have our views reinforced and then we like to have fire fueled on those views.

Because who doesn't like to feel like, hey, I'm the person that's right and I live in an echo chamber. So I don't think it's just a young people problem. But I actually, also think there's a lot of opportunity in this moment, especially after the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk, who's someone that, you know, while I disagreed often on form and style with someone that I respected. I mean, it takes one to no one and you understand what they were working on. Since that moment, I've seen a tide turning. And the question is, how do you capitalize on people's desire to break out of this mess? And I actually think we have an opportunity to recruit with anger. And that's what I'm really interested in thinking through. Well, as a bridge,

or how do you recruit with anger? People are being exploited. You talk about this all the time. We have an outrage industrial complex that recognizes and understands that we're all pawns in a game. And the worst thing that you can tell a young person is you're being used.

Nobody likes being used, especially our kids, especially our college students. And I think for the last 20, 25 years, especially since 9-11, you know, I'm 26. I was born around 9-11, 1998. I graduated high school at the first Trump election. I graduated in 2020 from college,

which was the pandemic, the insurrection, the first Biden election. Now we're seeing students graduate into the second Trump election. The fact is that we've been primed to have our feelings and views exploited. And when we operate in a world in which people are being exploited,

the question becomes that bridge building and dialogue is actually the ejection button at the exploitation machine. It's a way for you to reclaim, as you say, your free agency. And when you meet a student on campus, for the last 20 years, the closed fist is what you feel like is the way you create change in the world. The open hand is what cowards do. And that equation is now different. The open hand is the way forward.

That's the way you create change at this moment. And here's the critical last thing I'll say on this, because you have a far-reaching audience of people that are on left on the right all across the place. Manu, is the open hand always the right thing to do? No, it's about the time and place you live in a democracy. In the 1960s, Martin Luther King had a different approach. But then he recognized that after he got his Overton window shifted, the open hand is how you build coalitions. And so we live in a moment where people fundamentally misunderstand each other's intentions.

If you're trying to create real change in the world, you should ask yourself, is it dialogue or discord? And I think the answer is pretty easy. I want you to be right, but I don't know that you are right. So let's test it. Okay. How do we test it? If you want to look at who is successful on social media right now, they are doing the opposite of what you're saying.

Even after Charlie Kirk's assassination, I watched Ilhan Omar, I think, this morning saying, yeah, I'm not going to say anything nice about a guy who sold hate every day. even though I believe that she pushes globalizing the Intifada and active jihadism on a regular basis, which she can only do because she has an oversampled population of uneducated Muslims in her district. Otherwise, I don't know how she would get elected. But that's also shifting because more and more it's rage baiting. That's what gets the following. I've watched Don Lemon go from being a hash mark to his rage bait interviews with, people on the street to make them feel that ice are the stormtroopers. And it doesn't matter if I

agree with him or not. The way he's doing it is making people angry, getting up in Congress members' faces and saying things that are never going to lead anywhere. But they make people angry and they stoke their anger. And that's what is growing because that's what the algorithms reward and amplify, which is outrage and provocativeness. So that everything you want, I don't see how there's an explain in your answer what the Overton's window theory is about because it seems like everything that is being rewarded is the opposite. I had a conversation with Don Lemon in April and I, and I really appreciated it because this was something that I was testing on this conversation, which is, yes, you recruit people through anger. That's how Ilan Omar recruits people.

Who follows Ilan Omar? Who's going to follow someone like Don Lemon? Who's going to follow someone like Don Lemon. Who's going to follow? Angry lefties who hate Trump and think he's a fascist, who is turning our democracy into an autocracy. That is who. Yes. The question is, how many of those people are actually out there? Millions.

Millions and millions. There's probably about 9 to 10 million of them out there. And there's probably 9 to 10 million on the other. other side. Now, the United States is 350 million in growing, and counting. So, and you know this better than I do. Nine million plus nine million is 18. Now, let's say 30% of that 350 million are kids, okay, under the age of 18. I don't even know. I'm just pulling that out of my ass. But let's say it's, let's say you got 200 million people left. That's our target market. Their target market is saturated and capped. And what the greatest social change makers of

the 20th century from Mahatma Gandhi in the Salt March in 45 to Martin Luther King, 60s, civil rights, to Nelson Mandela, the 90s in South Africa, to Barack Obama, to Donald Trump, is what they understand is how do you reach the silent majority? The 9 million people that follow Trump now to the core were not active until the Tea Party came online. So the question to me is, you're describing the status quo, and I think you and I are aligned on this. The question is, how do you actually execute against the opportunity. Charlie Kirk, Chris, here's what I deeply respected him for.

You show up on a college campus in 2012 and you ask a young person, tell me what a Republican is. They'll be quiet, they'll be shy. They'll say it's some country club, you know, bumpkin, you know, it's someone in a suit, very educated. Now you show up to a campus like UVA

where I am right now. There's great effort you got to check out by the called the Carson Institute of Democracy. They're doing some great work on this. You ask someone, what is a Republican? They'll say, they'll give you an image of a firebrand that is building something. So my response to that is we actually have to shift the conversation.

And the data point I was just sharing with you when we hit record is Bridge USA till September 10th of 2025 had 7,500 followers, which is negligent. Now, we've been working our butts off. Our students have been hitting attendance records across the board, but no one's hearing about it. Since September 11th, 2025 to today, as we talk right now, we're growing at 100 followers an hour, which is, by the way, also drop in the bucket.

But we're now at 35,000 followers and counting. We might be at 35.1 by the end of this conversation. There are efforts across the board that are scaling. So my point is that young people are actually hungry for a new type of leadership and the Achilles heel of the people that we are, I wouldn't say fighting, but challenging, is that rocket fuel burns quickly. but there's not a lot of it. It's not a sustained burn. We have sustained burn.

We have love. We have joy. We just got to figure out how to beat that 15 second shot clock. Okay. Next step of bursting your optimism is your own analogy of Overton's window. What is Overton's window? If you look up the theory real easy, it's a sliding scale where extremes are on both ends, and you're looking for a sweet spot, which is where this is where it comes, from sweet spot as a euphemism comes from this idea of finding that not middle not middle but

that when you get inside of extreme unthinkable there is a range of popular and pragmatic where you'll find the most people but not in a social media ecosystem and that's the problem if you were thinking if manu came to me and said man i'm thinking of running man i'm running for a national office and I got to build a movement. We would be having the exact conversation you're having. That was Obama's whole thing. But in social media reality, which was a pivot point that began in Obama's first campaign, which he got ahead of the curve on, into Trump, it's all social media. It's all the flex points at the end of Overton's window, at the sill and at the top of the frame of the window of fringe fury. And that's how he wound up getting elected the first time for

sure. Second time was a little bit more complicated. So in that environment, when I go to visit my kid on college campus and there are people running around looking like Anwar Sadat and they're mostly white and privileged, some of them are even Jewish. And they're saying from the river to the and all these other extreme things, where do you see that as beckoning opportunity for reasonableness? I'll tell you, by the way, that my optimism has been burst many times over. I've been doing this work for nine years. I started off, Chris, as a pre-med student. I had no interest any of this stuff. My mom is still confused. She's like, what the hell is this guy doing? Where are your parents from? My parents are from India. They moved to the United States in 1997.

I was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I then lived. I lived in India for the first six years of my life with my grandparents alone on and off while my parents were out in the U.S. grinding to, you know, get their education and to become doctors and engineers. I then moved back, and I moved every two years for the rest of my life until high school. I then went to high school in Boston. Here's why I tell you that. Now, I ended up in Berkeley, of all places, because they were actually the only school that led me in. And I got off the wait list. And I ended up there.

So for the first 17 years of my life, that's when I went to college. At age 17, I was one of the young ones. My entire life was meeting new people and not having friendship sustained beyond two to three years. And my entire life was about figuring out how to adapt and create space for other people so that I could create friendships. It was that simple. The work I do now is not rocket science. It was literally what I did for the first 17 years in my life. And it's what most people do in their daily life.

When you start to see the work that way, right? It's not some thing that I'm serving you on a dish, right? It's not broccoli. It's dialogue is a survival tactic for humanity to actually create the greatest innovations in the history of the world. Humanities start off in tribes of eight, and now we're in eight billion. It was all because of the species' ability to communicate. You clip that, by the way, that does well. And here's why.

It's because people don't know how to sell this work effectively. There are a few of us, like you, out there doing it. I just don't think the volume exists. And I think this is a volume game. And the conservative movement figured this out. In 2012, 2013, people like Ben Shapiro were disparate. And what they did was they consolidated. And then what they did was they just took their message and they pushed it through at high volume frequency.

I tell you all this because my view on this is that for the longest time, I thought outrage was what sells. And I still believe that. But in the last month and a half, and especially after the Israel-Palestine protests after October 7th, I think what actually sells is what's disruptive and countercultural. I think counterculture sells actually more effectively. It's whatever cuts against the grain in that moment. Right now, you see another angry video on your clip. I guarantee you Instagram is seeing the swipe up on that be a lot faster.

That's why I think they're putting our stuff out there and other people's stuff. You think they're changing the algorithms? Because I believe that that is the linking mechanism to your theory and your practice. is the fact that these guys are making money doing the opposite. I agree. I think they are. With no responsibility. My favorite thing that was said at the town hall, which I'm sure is not resonating anywhere

because nobody wants to hear this who likes social media, is that Section 230 is way, way past its due date, which is, of course, the operative mechanism that insulates social media providers from litigation because they are not considered publishers, the way News Nation is, the New York Times is, et cetera. I believe that that is, you know, just absurd today because what they do is obviously curate content.

And they amplify what they decide to monetize. And when they decide to monetize is what's easiest to do so as any business would. And what is easiest to monetize? Outrage. Outrage. And that is why the Greeks gave us the word demagogue. And even educated guys like,

you and me do not know the positive opposite of that word from the Greek because... I did not know that, but that's how demagogue started. That's interesting. That's interesting. And it comes from the ability of using prejudice and anger to rally. And I don't know what the positive opposite is of that word. I don't know. We never use it because it's not as effective to rally people on positivity.

Like you say, your metaphor is better. It's jet fuel. It lights quickly. has a different flashpoint, but it burns quickly as well. Yes, but that's where we are, and that's what they're hyping all the time is constant hits of jet fuel. Don't you have to change that to have any real change? I think so. I think so.

But I have a different role to play in society. That's the battle space I'm operating. And the battle space I'm operating in is the assumption that the algorithm doesn't change. But what I think is critical to the algorithm is engagement. And this prediction might sound incredibly stupid. Great thing is I've got nothing to lose. Because I ended up doing this work, not because it was my vocation. It's because, you know, there were a bunch of protests on my campus.

I made some of my best friends doing it. I'll go, you know, try something else. But here's my prediction. My prediction is that the algorithms will not have to change, but joy and bridging will sell. It's not because it's good news bullshit. It's because it's different. Engagement, when someone sees something. right, you're going to hit somebody over the head a hundred times with crazy content and

they're going to keep looking at it. But I think what happens is in the middle of that hundredth clip, you get hit with something different. And I'll give you a story of this. Can I give you a story on this? Because I have a clear data point on this. Please. This is the beauty of the difference between having advertisers pay per block and having what really everybody's going to have to move towards and good because fuck the advertisers for how they've been running the game for so long, which is subscriptions. So here, we can talk as long as you want. Go ahead. Well, thank God for people like you building independent platforms, too, because that's what's fueling it, right?

And it takes courage to do that. And I think that's something that you should be commended for, and a lot of other people should be, too. So here's my view on this. Last October, we had a really courageous student at our Pittsburgh chapter, University of Pittsburgh, Bridge Pittsburgh, named Rachel. And she went to an event where Charlie Kirk and Vivek Ramoswamy showed up on campus and was one of those proved me wrong events. And she goes on camera and she says something like, Charlie, I'm really glad you're here, but I have to say I deeply disagree with everything you're going to say.

But I want you to know that I have some of my friends standing behind you who are in the Turning Point USA chapter. And I know that the right way to engage you is to have a civic disagreement. Sounds great. We post that clip. Nobody saw it. Nobody heard of it. Boom. It vanished.

September 13th, Chris. Our amazing man behind the social scenes, Adam Calder, pulls up that clip and posts that same clip. Same music, same cuts. 42,000 likes in 15 hours, 2,700 counting shares, got a 7,000 followers. Why? It's because after that tragic assassination, and I think this is the hope in the sad moment we live in, is that the American people are exhausted and they're now going to vote and act with their click

because they understand. I think they understand. So you're getting 100 pieces of bullshit and then suddenly you hit with hope. You'll hang on for that for an extra five seconds. And I think the algorithm is going to push that more and more. Now, of course you need real fixes. Of course you need real fixes.

And I think that's going to happen. But my job is someone who's out there organizing thousands of students to change the conversation is to recognize the battle space I operate in. And again, you know this better than I do the best people in this country that have created change. People like Charlie understood the tools they have at their disposal. They've got to execute.

So we've got a 15 second window to recruit. That's our challenge. We have a whiteboard. 15 seconds. You got to recruit somebody. 15 seconds. What are you going to say? What are you going to do?

And the biggest thing that we have on our side, they've got anger. We've got exploitation. And there's an example of this, actually. In the 90s, a whole group of tobacco company. people that were against cigarettes met in Florida, all right? Because for the last 20 years, they've been putting up all these ads of people with crazy lungs and stuff and it wasn't working, wasn't selling,

cigarette smoking wasn't going down. So they had an idea. They said, hey, forget all this. You know, forget the guy that's croaking with cancer on his throat on TV. What if we just said, your addiction is fueling the fat cats in New York City that run giant tobacco companies? And it worked.

People don't like to be exploited. The emperor has no clothes. And man, when you start to see pieces of that emperor, you're like, oh, I want more. Tell me more. And I think it'll work. Support comes from True Classic. And here's the part of the show that Greg loves most. All right.

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Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus at OnePeloton.ca. So I think here's what's being fair to you. What's being fair to you is that you are probably going to be right from a straight pendular, right? I don't think we're cyclical as much as we're pendular here because we're locked in a binary system with the two parties, which are, of course, the root cause of this, is that as uncomfortable as this is and is for them in moments.

It works best for them because the easiest way for Manu to beat Cuomo is to show that Cuomo is worse. Not that Manu is better. That's too hard. So that's why when you buy commercials with a consultant, the ratio is usually seven to one hit ads versus proof of concept, which is proof of concept is, hi, I'm Manu. And you should vote for me because I believe in this and this of this. and I'll do a good job. That's positive about you. Seven, for every one of that, is Cuomo hates dogs.

Cuomo kills puppies and Cuomo wants to eat your lunch. Why? Because that's what works. So, being fair to you, could it be that you will be right, but man, is it early to tell right now because you are still riding the wave of the rage bait culture? Yeah. I think it's a very fair point. I think it begs the question of what does success look like. Right. I think if I took your point farther, essentially what you're saying is, all right, the pendulum was here. Now the ball is a little bit closer down here. So maybe you're getting some likes. Maybe you're getting some content. Maybe it even lasts a couple of years. Maybe you'll sell some more merch, but then it'll swing back. Right. And I think this raises the question of what are we actually trying to build towards? And I think the critical thing when this ball is swinging to keep it there for a longer time is people have to win elections on this type of platform

and people have to see that their followings and their content gets more engagement when they post this type of content. It's simple. It's incentive space, right? And I think you have a very unique critical window. And that's why people like James Tala Rico, the guy down in Texas, is doing really well. Yes. Yes, I've had him on.

I've had him on here. And I've had him on News Nation. I think I saw that conversation, by the way. I think I saw that conversation. I said to him, you're going to have to run for higher office, you know. And he was like, well, you know, he gave me the typical, oh, I'm really focused on what him. Now, look what you know. He's in Senate.

He's going to run for Senate. And I think that it's a really interesting race for him. Now, he is being. How do you think he's going to do? So I think here's why you don't know. There has been no money put against him yet. What do I mean by that? Yes.

There's been no effort to make him undesirable yet. He's been doing the hard work of being seen as desirable. Now, does he run the risk of being limited out as another Buttigieg? Maybe. But he's a heavy Christian, Buttigieg. So is that better than Buttigieg? Yeah. In America, if you're pushing your faith, I'm not saying Pete Buttigieg isn't Christian, doesn't have faith.

I'm not saying that. But Tala Rico leads with it, okay? I think there's a saleability to that that is very attractive. He's young. He's single. Does that mean he's gay? How does that work? You know, he hasn't really broached that.

I wish he never had to, but that's not how American politics works. And so there's been no money put against him yet to otherize him. So I can't really tell you how he's going to do, but I will say this. He or she who sits down or stands on the same stage with that guy have better eaten their fucking weedies because he is a deaf, you know, a signature of your generation. You know, we've had you guys on camera since you popped out the shoot. So you are all telegenic. You know, you are all glib. You are all well spoken and conversant on camera.

Remember, in my generation, you had to learn that. You, you know, you'd be one guy in person, another guy on TV. Now, you guys are all the same, all the time. If anything, you're better when you're on TV. So he has that going for him. It is too soon to say, especially in Texas, which is definitely not in the part of the Overton window that you want it to be. They always say it is, but it isn't.

I don't know, but I do know this. He is proof of what you're selling. They will otherize him, and I think they will critique him. And by the way, there's great people on the right that are that are rising as well that are excellent in terms of their execution, their capacity. But here's my broader point, which is why I think we can actually still win, even if the pendulum swings back, the negative partisanship, which it will, by the way. That's like the history of this country, you know. I mean, the Constitution almost failed ratification, right? Like our birth was unruly, right?

Which is why when I ask what a success look like, I'm not imagining some Kumbaya Republic. I think you need disagreement. I just think we need to course correct a little bit on how that disagreement happens, and I think you'd agree with that. But here's where I think a negative partisanship world actually still helps us. I think if we can succeed in changing the terms of the debate, I think if we can succeed in creating a new divide in this country. And I think a lot of people are trying, that's not a unique concept, but my view is that the real divide in this country is not between left-right.

It's between people that are open-minded and closed-minded. It's what you talk about. It's between the Talarikos of the world and the MTGs of the world, right? It's between the rocanas of the world, right? And then someone like the AOCs of the world, right? I think we're in a battle between two theories of change. It's not actually about what that change is. I think what my generation is going to have to legislate is how do you create change?

Because everybody wants change. And frankly, there's actually a lot of unity around some of the problems. That's why our politics right now is a horseshoe. And so in the world of negative partisanship, the two theories of change that have to fight each other is one is conflict, outrage, turn out your base. That is how I win and build a better world. It's actually not going to be about health care because both candidates are going to say, I want more money in your pockets and lower premiums. I think everybody's going to say that today. But the second theory of change is what this country's built on.

It's this idea that talking to people that are fundamentally different than you is how you create plus one, e pluribus unum, out of many one. That is the alternative. And in that world, I'm ready for that fight. I actually hope that that fight happens because what that means is that's going to simplify the debate to very simply, not whether or not we should disagree, it's going to be about how. And I think that's really powerful. And I hope that someone like Tilarico, even if he goes down, succeeds in doing. And I think that'll be effective. Beto O'Rourke was supposed to be that.

Why do you think he went down a different route? Well, I don't know that he went down a different route. I think he lost and then he lost again. But he was the hope for this of kinder and gentler, although those virtues are now seeing his weaknesses in the society. Now, they're not in terms of what you teach your kid, right? That's the irony. They're not in what you expect from your employees.

They're not in terms of what you. you want from your partner in life. They're not in terms of what you expect from your friendships and relationships. But in politics, we have abdigated that agency to a different dynamic and value system where I don't really care if Tom Holman took 50 grand. I don't know why you're talking about this so much. He said he didn't do it. It's an anonymous report. When it comes out, it comes out. But how about all these killers on the street? Like, that's what I'm afraid of because all I'm primed for is my fears. Explain what you mean when you say politics is a hushu. I mean, very simply, the idea is that Bernie and Trump are actually a lot closer than

someone like Obama and, you know, Obama and Bernie. And some people might say, what are you saying? But when you go down their policy platforms and you go down the ways in which they're offering prescriptions, it's the populace versus the anti-populists, it's the establishment versus the anti-establishment. But that's sort of where I would see the horseshoe theory coming to play. But if I can just offer why I think people, especially the influencer world, jumping on this establishment anti-establishment thing, why I think it's actually a false, it's a flashbang in our politics, is that the deepest divides in this country have actually not been about

establishment anti-establishment. I think the deepest divides in this country have been about, how you actually engage and listen and coexist with someone that is sitting right next to you. And when you're talking to an American and they're sitting at their dinner table, they're not thinking about the established and the anti-establishment.

They're thinking, my neighbor down the street has a Trump sign. Is that going to threaten my kids when they're going on a bike ride? Or my neighbor down the street has got a giant LGBTQ flag. Is my kid going to get indoctrinated on the way on the street? That, by the way, has been the conversation on American dinner table since the start, which is why I think we are actually in the side of, while it's not rocket fuel, we've got more sustainable fuel.

And I think that's really powerful right now. Are you asking people to do what's hard when what we're looking for is easy? Oh, yeah. It's like trying to convince people to go to the gym. I mean, if everyone went to the gym, they'd look like you. and which is why, by the way, I don't think I would ever want to say Manu fights Chris.

You would literally do a side-by-side comparison of us standing with our shirts off and I think it would be pretty quick. I am picking up some techniques. Well, let me tell you something. This is a digression. Maybe you can educate me. I will take technique over strength

any day of the week. I could train you for about 15 minutes and 80% of the time would be concentrated on getting your mind around the idea of making violent choices. You know that expression, choosing violence? I have been training, learning, and teaching self-defense for decades, okay? I abandoned martial arts, boxing, all fighting. I don't do any fighting because self-defense isn't about fighting. Fighting is rules.

Fighting is style. Fighting is dynamics of competition. Self-defense is you taking your glasses off and sticking them in my eye. And you'll be like, ooh, that's terrible. But, well, what are we talking about? Are we talking about guys who get us on campus when you and I do an event together? And they're like, you guys are fucking pinkos. And you're not going home tonight because we're going to take care of this right now.

And you want to like talk to them. And I'm like, yeah, great, great. You'll talk to them, you know, after I. and knock them both on fucking conscious. Because, you know, you have to do what you have to do. Technique wins all the time. I can't tell you how many big fellows I have seen balled up because a female had footstomp them, hit them in the throat, and now had them on the ground.

Technique wins. So never be... That's actually, this is actually the funniest tangent because it actually links very strongly to basically you posing this idea of us being David and there's a giant Goliath out there, right? Like, not to stretch the metaphor, but yes, you've got 9 to 10 million people that are incredibly loud, but we've got a scalpel, and that scalpel is made of joy, and it's made of happiness, it's made of excitement and interest.

And the question is, how do you manipulate the tools of the moment and have good technique in executing a mission that frankly has always been the underdog in this country. And my favorite part about the David and Glad story, the idea of technique, the idea of me potentially beating you, which would be, by the way, I think that would sell. I think that would... Anything bad happening to me would be good for you, by the way. Indian, Indian, Indian nerd fights. Are you Italian?

I am. Okay, Indian, Indian nerd fights Italian. My grandpa would be rolling over at his grave. But I think, like, the reason why that story is so interesting is because America loves underdog. Yes. And you're, you've been on PBD's podcast, right? And like, I think about this a lot when he's talking. America bets on countercultures.

America bets on people that are climbing a mountain. And it's why people bet on Trump. It's why people bet on Obama. It's why people bet on Reagan. It's why people bet on Nixon. It's why they bet on FTA. It's why they bet on Lincoln. That's the story of this country, man.

And so it's why they bet on the colonists. That's why the French bet on the colonists. It's underdogs, taking down Goliath. And so when you cast it like that, I didn't even say bridging. I didn't even say dialogue. But now the person listening is like, oh, at least he's the underdog. I know that. Right.

What does he got to sell me? And that's why everybody wants to sell themselves of somehow victimized now. You know, it used to be that you didn't want to own. being victimized. One of our big problems with mental health in this country is that people don't want to admit they have a problem because they get written off as weak and crazy and nobody wants to deal with them anymore. So there's all this stigma attached because everybody had to be seen as hard. Now what does everybody have to have to have to make a foray into politics? They need a hard luck story. I came up from nothing. My father was this. My mother was that. You know what I mean? I barely made it. Everybody's got to have that. Otherwise, they get written off as privileged, even though we live in a country where what's the ultimate American dream. Wealth. But all of a sudden, the people who have wealth, and I was raised by one of those, by the way, Manu. My father, first generation, right, was a real one anti-elitist. I just finished his biography, by the way, in prep for this conversation, Mario. Yeah, he was, I'm so-so with that book, but it's better than nothing. He was seen as an ethnic, like you, not as a white guy. I am white. He was not. He was not. He was not. He was an ethnic. He had to share being valedictorian in college and law school with Irish guys because he was an Italian and they were kind of, he couldn't get a job on Wall Street as a lawyer, even though he was a fucking genius. So he wound up in Brooklyn. And he was constantly seen as a mafiosi. And that's why my father hated all mafia things, the Sopranos, Godfather. He wouldn't watch him because he was like, you know, this has done nothing. but destroy us. What's my point? My point is he was a real underdog. He was a real one.

When I got into an Ivy League school, he was upset and did not want me to go. When, you know, anything went and I made a choice to like go to a big law firm so I could pay off my, you know, debt, he was like, oh, why. Which is funny. We're back to that now. Yes. But for the opposite reasons that he was. He was against it because they had held him down on purpose and for bad reason. So he wanted to show them. He always wanted to show those people. Now it's, I believe it's being used as an artifice. I think it's a boogeyman. Everybody has to be victimized. Everything has to be unfair. Everything has to be some kind of instrument of us versus them because that's what is selling. So this is the right point of

the conversation to go to what you've come up with as a solution, which now, after Charlie Kirk's assassination, people now know Turning Point USA in a way that they probably didn't before. And there are, they're growing leaps and bounds. Last night, their guy told me that they've had 130,000 new inquiries for chapters. And you have Bridge USA, which is why I fell for you in the first place, that Manu is one of the most impressive guys in the space of we can do better than this, and I'm going with the hardest group, which is young people, in the place where we've seen the most extremism, which is on campus, and I'm going to get people to talk to each other.

And how does it work and why does it work? So I'm really glad, actually, that you brought up your story about your father, because it's a story that's interesting in that it had a lot of resonance and lost residence and has resonance again. And it has that resonance because he was someone that showed up as an ethnic and he built a legacy in this country, right? And I bring that up because the common threat I've seen between a lot of interesting Americans that are first generation, you know, someone like me as well, is it's like you

oftentimes end up doing something that you never wanted to or were interested in doing. So I'll actually tell you really quickly about how we started. The reason is because I think that people are going to understand why this thing is taking off now. And part of that is because I have no issue toiling away in obscurity. And the reason for that is because I fundamentally love what I do. And that is, how do you convince people that we radically overestimate how divided we are and we radically underestimate the power of a dialogue? How did I come to that? So, Chris, I told you earlier, I came to UC Berkeley after getting off the wait list. See, even you have a hard luck story.

Keep going. Keep going. I know. And so I ended up in the Republic of Berkeley where I really cut my teeth, you know. So here's what happened, right? So February 2nd, 2017, I'm walking back from my math seminar, and I hear helicopters overhead, and I hear protesting in the distance. Now, none of this is, this is all part for the course. This is Berkeley. What was different was I was walking past, this cafe, and you'll relate to this here, our past colleagues, and there's a window that was broken and it was shattered by a protester. And inside, it's at CNN, UC Berkeley students protest bright bar editor's speech. Now, I didn't know what any of that meant, but the television

crew that was filming that segment was led by a woman named Kyeongla, who was standing right next to me, and they were filming that. And that was sort of the breaking of the fourth wall. That was where I went from I'm going to try to be a doctor, and I've always had interests in politics, but this thing is for, you know, as my grandpa always said, those goody-to-shoe people that wear those suits, right? And now I'm suddenly a part of this, whether I wanted it or not. And so I walk into the middle of campus, and there's a giant tree on fire in MLK Student Union. I remember like it was yesterday. Walk past the Amazon store, which is broken in. By the way, that fact, everyone in the protest united around that at least the Amazon store got popped. So I walk into the center, and there are

hundreds of students. There's Antifa, which, by the way, was a word that got popularized because of that protest. There's a guy named Milo Yanopolis who'd shown up the campus. He got popular because of that protest. And the next day, I walk on campus and we just start picking up all this shit. I mean, our campus had been vandalized by outside people, by inside people, and students were just hurting. And I just didn't remember I walk into the center of plaza, and I walk into a circle of students that are standing there. And one of them raised their hand. And he's like, yo, I think we got to host a discussion. Like, let's just have a conversation on campus.

That's it. Nothing, no admin, nothing. Let's just have a conversation. And I thought that was a great idea. Now, that was incredibly naive because anyone listening to this right now says, so you're telling me and you throw out all the critiques, you're going to get the largest protest in Berkeley's history since the 60s, since MLK came to campus.

And you're going to get the protests and the protest to sit in a room. Go back to being a doctor. And honestly, my mom would agree. And so I decide. with my friend and a couple other people, and we're going to host this conversation. We called it Bridge Berkeley. First discussion, we bring each other everyone.

70 people show up, which is a big deal for me, 30, them leave immediately because they thought it was a civic architecture frat, because they thought we were literally building real bridges because the logo was a Golden Gate Bridge. So now we're getting the vibe of why it's so hard to burst my optimism, because we started from rock bottom. So we have a second discussion, and this discussion, Chris, changed the trajectory of my life.

And here's the point I'll get to. So we're sitting there and all these students are showing up. Some of them invited Milo, some of them protested Milo. Some of the admin are there. A faculty member of the back is there who then became the chair of our board. And everyone is tight. Everyone is nervous. It's like that Thanksgiving dinner table conversation or it's like watching the YouTube comments.

Everyone is clenched. And my friend Ross, who's now the co-founder and chief operating officer at Bridge USA, had this brilliant idea. He said, let's forget policy. Let's lead with vulnerability. Let's talk about people's moms. Let's talk about people's dads. What is your background?

Where'd you come from? And, man, the next 75 minutes, it literally transformed and came to this point that we radically underestimate the power of human connection. So then the question becomes, how do you scale this thing? How do you grow this thing? Because you got that one conversation. What's the impact? So this spread to campuses, there were already two chapters at Notre Dame and at Colorado Boulder.

It grew in 2020. It took this thing full time. From 2020 to 2024, I call the years of the scale. Why? Because we wanted to know three things. One is how do you actually sell this thing in 15 seconds? Two is how do you get young people to show up to a conversation and feel like they're the courageous ones? Because young people will follow anything that is courageous and different. And three is how do you turn this? And, you know, this is where I had a deep respect for someone like Charlie into, frankly, a turning point for where young people are now energized. And so I'll

wrap with this, which is bridge USA's job is fundamentally to empower young people to have these constructive conversations, but to build an identity. And when you build an identity, that is powerful. And that's what the greatest social change makers of our time have done. That's what you're doing with the concept of being a free agent. That's what someone like President Trump did with MAGA. And it's what we're doing. And the final piece of this is this is not about giving people a skills of bridging. Everyone has these skills. I firmly believe that because they're fundamentally human. My job is to win the norms battle. How do you make dialogue the norm of the moment? It's not always the norm, but it's the norm of the moment. And that's what we're doing.

What is the 15 second cell? The 15 second cell is very simple and it's twofold. First, is you're being exploited. You're being turned against your mom, your dad, and your sister. Second, why? It's because they want your vote and they want your like. They don't care about you. They care about their pockets. That's it. Now, now you ask, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? I'm being turning against my mom? Wait, I just had that conversation with my mom last week at Thanksgiving dinner table. And we haven't talked in a week. Oh, I get it. Tell me more. So you have the event. You and I show up. You are a MAGA guy. I'm a have a kaffia on and I believe that we both believe on one way or another that the country has to

burn because of what it is done to us or so we are told and now we're going to debate health care okay and what's happening with the shutdown how does bridge USA make it different than uh you're a fucking liar and that's all you guys do is lie what it what what what what what do what what How does it work? How do you make it work? Human beings are social creatures, and you'd be shocked at how quickly we abandoned the algorithm when we're in person. So I'm going to give you a great example. In 2019, one of the biggest problems at Berkeley was student homelessness.

Student homelessness. Berkeley didn't have enough housing for all these kids that are coming up. Housing got too expensive, and all these kids are not homeless. Now, Berkeley also has a resident homeless population. So we partner with this organization called the College Debates and Discourse Lines. They work with another organization called Braver Angels, ACTA, you may have heard some of these folks, and they modeled this concept of a Braver Angels debate. So we decide, like the freaking tactical geniuses that we aren't, that we're going to invite the people that are at People's Park in Berkeley that are actually homeless to this conversation, we're going to invite the kids that are homeless to the conversation, the folks that represent their population. We're going to invite some of the students that want more housing.

And then we're going to invite the people that are just curious, you know. And the person that was at People's Park shows up to this dialogue. And he starts getting angry. And he says, like, I'm going to protest this thing. I'm going to protest this thing, exactly what you'd expect. And it wasn't me. It was actually the director of this debate, I think it was, told this person, give us five minutes. Give us five minutes.

He said, what do you mean five minutes? He said, give us five minutes. Okay. Okay. I'm going to sit here. I'm going to listen. By the end of that debate, Chris, this guy logged the most speaking minutes of anyone in this audience. Why? It's because we do three things. The first is every conversation. And this was at Brave Angels debate with the college debates and discourse lines. We also have separate events that we do across our chapters. But at every event, we do three things. One, you lead with the norms. There's four norms to every bridge event. You listen to listen, not to respond. You don't interrupt their. have side conversations, you debate the argument, not the person, and everyone represents themselves, not broad social groups. Nothing about that is brand new, but you institute the norms at the front of the conversation. Suddenly, there's now a social disadvantage to being an asshole. That's essentially what that does. How do you police it? Well, that's the second piece.

So we train moderators. We train students. They start learning these techniques. There's great literature and research out there from people like Jonathan Haidt that we take from. We've built a moderation training. These students are now engaged. They understand their jobs. And importantly, now they feel like they actually have some real social currency behind what they're doing. And their job is to facilitate a dialogue where people start to see that this is actually not about blunting my convictions. Like, I can actually show up and have the disagreement because that's oftentimes a misconception that this is a bunch of squishy, you know, white bread moderates. But this is about not hating the person at the end of the conversation. And then here's the third thing.

And this is the most important thing is it's what I asked you when you asked, when you asked me about the pendulum question. What does success look like? Success in this conversation is not the win. Success in this conversation is to understand why the person that's sitting across from you believes what they believe. Because that will equip you to be a better change maker. That will equip them to be able to listen to you. And that builds trust. And man, I'm telling you, the critical part of this that we've solved is it's all about scale. I'm confident that when we're 800 college campuses in four years, you're going to see a shift because people love this. The problem with bridging, Chris, is not that people don't like it, is that they don't think

it's possible. That's the thing. They don't think it's possible. They've given up on it. And I think the American people are ready. They're ready. I'm already giddy thinking about it. Support comes from Stopbox, okay?

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Corma and Mini for a better quality price, on c or in I guess I hope you're right. I mean, look, obviously I hope you're right, right? When we first met...

Well, I got nothing to lose, so it's okay. Well, I think that we have a lot to lose. First of all, I mean, look... No, we do. You are young and you don't have, you know, dependents that are making you second-guess every judgment, you know, and you're able to balance a vocation and an avocation, which is great. And if this scales the way you want it to, you know, You'll probably merge those, and that is absolutely what success should look like for you. But the reason I felt for it is I'm desperate for better. And I know what's wrong. I don't know how to put it right. And I believe that you're on to something. But there's no but.

I think you're on to something, period. However, comma, when I look at turning point, what's the difference between the two? So what turning point does is, and there are others who do this also. But, you know, bring in Patrick Bet David, and he's like, you know, my proposition is that capitalism is all based off incentives. And now it's how can he, how many people can he beat on this point, right? And you'll see like a trained debater, like a Medi Hassan, okay, does exactly the same thing. He calls his company now Ziteo, which means it's a Greek derived term for profound curiosity. And I find that very ironic because I find that what he has done is gone to the clever

and not real cogency, not depth. So he's all gotcha all the time, which makes him perfect for social media, as all these guys are. And it's just a gotcha contest. And it's always, yeah, but, yeah, but oh, you say that, but you said this. And you say you want this, but what about that? And you think you're right about this. But what about when you did that? And that's what's working right now.

They just happen to be playing with five. fire. So Medi Hassan doing that about taxation is one thing. You say it's a middle class tax cut. Oh, yeah? Well, then what about this? What about that? What about this? That's one thing. When you're doing it with whether Israel should exist and whether Hamas or terrorists, that's why I get into it with Medi. I think he's very clever and good. It's just like, you know, this is not what you should be playing with. These are real life things. And you're playing. And he'll say, no, I'm not. Yeah, you are. You're fucking playing because you know what Hamas is. And that's why I am playing right now. Absolutely. I'm guilty. I am messing with free Palestine. I'm saying, where's free? I'm free Palestine right now. I'm free Palestine. Hamas is killing people in streets. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Why aren't they saying it now? So if it's not the Jews, you don't care? They don't like the game. They're accusing me of playing the game because I'm disrupting. their game, which is another kinetic kind of connection for me to what you're trying to do. The problem is that what is selling right now is winning and gotchas and owning.

That's why, why did Tucker shift? Why did Candace shift? Why, you know, why is Tucker all of sudden talking about things that were usually the great evil for him? He's into disruption also. Candace is into disruption, right? She got a little. little kicked, you know, she got a little kicked in the stomach when she left Shapiro because he didn't like what she said. So she decided to go all in down the road of Israel is the enemy. Why? Why not? It works. Controversy. Provocative. Outrage. Demagoguery. Very powerful. Trump. Why is he? Look, I had one of the smartest guys I know sit on a state and say, James Comey is the worst

what he did on the Russia probe and then I heard a senator echo it and then I heard whatever Jordan's title is on the right the whip, the leader, whatever he is say yeah I mean Colmy was terrible with the dossier and all of them were using that as a rationale

for why it was okay to prosecute him for something that they don't have proof of and that's where we are And I don't know how to bridge that because the only way I know how to deal with it is say, that's wrong. That's wrong what you're doing. It's not justice. That's unsatisfying to people. I agree.

And that's actually exactly why I think they have a potential win. Because the people hold a lot more power in this equation than they think they do. The reason why MTE, the reason why MTG, the reason why people from across the political spectrum play that game is because ultimately the consumer is what's rewarding them tomorrow if the consumer shifted the customer left i mean pbd would understand this capitalism is all about incentives tomorrow the consumer shifts pbd shifts meddy shifts i'm not saying they're all in the same category but everybody shifts because they follow the customer and that's why my job and i spend much more energy thinking about that 300 million person target market from 15 to 75 that doesn't understand that they're a sleeping giant

And when you realize that you have more power than you thought you did in the exploitation of the moment, things start to switch. The real problem, I think, and I spend 90% of my time thinking about why this won't work, Chris, because I should rephrase, it's not that I don't have much to lose. I have everything to lose. I love this country. I mean, I'm glib about it, primarily because it's, I find a lot of refuge and humor. But I would not be doing this work if I didn't think that this is the greatest experiment of all time. I think we need to do everything we can to make sure that it lasts for the next generation. That said, the question then becomes, how do you activate?

The real critique is, can I actually activate those people? Can I get them excited? Can I get them excited about pragmatism, which is really hard? You know, that's what my father called himself. My father hated labels because he saw them as self-limiting, right? You're a liberal, you're a conservative. He thought that they were all too simple. and done so by design to limit and exaggerate and reduce the need for comprehensive understanding and

application. So he would call himself a progressive pragmatist. Now, what he still call himself that today, I don't know because progressive has been tainted as a term to mean like kind of farther to the left, but that's how he defined himself. The problem with it, I can help you with this, is we are trained to battle who is wrong and what is worse. We are dealing in flavors of shit all the time, right? It's like piss soup versus shit sandwich. You know, it's like, oh, the Democrats are piss soup on this.

They want to give health care to illegals, which is like one of my least. favorite words in our political vernacular? And then what is the response? It's not, no, we're not piss soup. Here's why it's actually good and it's actually lentil soup or whatever the fuck soup like you like. It's, yeah, yeah, but you're a shit sandwich because you want to steal health care from 50,000 people in your own district. You're even worse. I'd rather drink the piss. That's what's being sold as a commodity. What is the trouble for a pragmatic person in that? You're not touching either of those things. You're not touching them. You will wait. You will starve. And that fights the natural appetites and inclinations. And that's where we are

right now. That's the problem with yeah but, which again, you don't apply anywhere else in your life. We both overlapped in terms of private equity. I did mezzanine finance, chase capital partners. I was a lawyer, but I was in that space. Never in my life did I show someone like you, right, because you'd be on the deal side, the term sheet that you asked me for, and you're like, half these covenants don't work. Yeah, but Manu, I could have given you one where none work. And you'd be like, uh, fair point. I'll you. Never, never, never happen. You know, you've never been in a relationship with anyone where they're like, you're 15 minutes, late.

I could have been half an hour late. Yeah, but. Right? And if you do that, it's like, it doesn't work anywhere else but in our politics. Imagine if you came home to your heartbroken mom because you should be a doctor, you lose her. And you had said to her, mom, I got a 78. and she was like, 78, whoa. That happened more times than you think it happened, by the way.

Mom, I know a guy who got a 60. Oh, I had no idea. I had no idea. Tell me more. Here's a cookie. It doesn't work anywhere else, except in our politics, why the expectations and the framing. That's why you're right to condition the norms up top. The problem is that you're fighting the norms everywhere else.

That's the problem. So, like, when I have had a macleron, to talk about his huge viral moment when, for whatever reason, Andrew Colvette decided to not immediately condemn people who are talking about Hitler as a good guy in some stupid Republican leader chat. I don't know why he didn't jump the no on that. Like, as soon as you hear the word Nazi and any kind of question about preference, you usually default to no real fast.

No reason to finish the question. I don't know why he didn't. He'll have to explain that. But so Mocklers live in large right now. Where does that get you? Exactly. What's the best case scenario? So now your people feel convinced that turning point USA is a bunch of Nazis, right?

I mean, that's the only reason to go down that road. So what does that get you? You know, you can't really believe it's true, but you're being rewarded for it exponentially. And that's why you did it for the reward, not the righteousness of it. Now, he'll resist that, but I believe it's demonstrably false. I can't find you ever defending that they're not Nazis. Why? Nobody gives his shit about that. Nobody gives his shit about that. Nobody's given his shit about it since the last time it was rewarded, which was when? The only time John McCain had a fighting chance against Obama

before, may he rest in peace, he blew it up himself by saying, I'm not an economy guy. I will keep you safe. And then all of a sudden, we had Bush's, you know, what wound up being the 2008 unwind, and, you know, McCain killed himself on that. And there were a lot of other factors to the shine and charisma of Obama. But the moment where the woman says, oh, Senator McCain, I'm so happy to vote for you because this Barack Hussein Obama, he scares me because he's a Muslim. And McCain stops her and says, no, no, no, hold on, hold on. He is a good man. Okay, we disagree. But he's a good Christian man. Why do you think people remember that video? I believe he did something, even at the time, which was you never stop someone from insulting your competition.

Because that's how you win is by them being seen as worse. And John did it. Because, and it was countercultural. Yes. It was no one expected it. Yes. And that's, I mean, that's how I think we sell this thing. is how do you show,

I call it outrageous bridge building. How do you show bridging in moments where no one expects it and then capture the content? The real challenge, Chris, is actually not getting those moments to happen, it's capturing it. Because the thing with when you have a debate

is people are ready, right? They're ready, they want to fight, they're engaged, they're active, they're ready to be recorded. When someone's having a life-changing conversation, they're not thinking about being recorded. And in fact, the cameras squelch that. So if you're actually curious, like, Manu, what keeps you up at night?

One of those things is it's very hard to capture life-changing moments on camera on a campus. The second challenge is scaling this where you have enough quality across these chapters. And the third challenge is that, I mean, I question all the time if I'm right. I mean, the amount of times that I've been called a fascist, right, by both the left and the right, It's like, I don't have enough fingers left, right? And I know that was when I was 17. I'm like the spitting opposite image of what a fascist looks like. I mean, you could have called me computer nerd a hundred times, and that would have worked, right?

The reason why is because, I mean, I do ask, again, I'm glib about it, but people should know, like, lives are on the line. I get it. World boundaries are on the line. Borders are on the line. This American experiment is on the line. Thomas Payne called America Humanity's Last Best Hope and I believe that to my core

That's why I spend Whenever I need to go cry I'll go to Monticello down the street And go think about what Thomas Jefferson Be thinking at this time You know But I say all of that Because it's about finding disruptive moments

Capturing them, putting them in a bottle And shooting them out And the only reason why people remember that McCain thing was because no one expected it in that moment And that shit happens all the time in our lives.

And it's like if Steve Jobs could figure out how to turn everybody into a photographer, including my mom, you know, with the phone, we can figure out how to turn everybody into observant beings that can capture life-changing moments and put them online. So it's not good news crap, it's none of that,

and it's what you're saying. And the last thing I'll say is that the United States next year is going to be 250 years young. And one of the most inspiring things if I can share with you, like when students, if you're wondering, like, how do you solve this apathy problem?

Because that's another big challenge, right? The reason why people are apathetic in my generation other than the fact that they grew up in one of the most tumultuous times in American history is you think 250 years is a very long time. And that we're being given a pile of garbage when it's the exact opposite. The Roman Empire, Chris, lasts for 1,500 years. Chinese dynasty lasts for 18,000. hundred years, Athenian democracy has for 400 years. The United States is not at the end of

its story. It's in chapter one or two. And so when you're a student, when you're a young person, and you've got that fire to build, but then you turn to destroying because you think it's all gone to shit. We're just in the start. We're just in the start. And so when I say I've got nothing to lose, the reason I got nothing to lose is because it's only up from here. And not for me personally from a financial standpoint. I mean that from the standpoint of where this country's headed. So I'm so proud of people like you because I mean I watched you when I was a kid I watched you a couple years ago

of course you don't disagree on everything I could find all the critiques but that's irrelevant because you're someone that gave me courage to go do what I'm doing and there's a lot of people like them the right and left trust me someone's going to clip that and say this guy's a Cuomo hack screw him and I'm going to say great well I'm going to find you the clip where I said that to Don Lemon and I'm going to find you the clip where I said

that Tucker Carlson and I'm going to find you the clip where I to Charlie, three years ago, it takes one and no one and the American people are ready. And the civic activism in this country, you can't rob it, can't rob it. It's human. And no matter how fucked up the algorithms are, the fact is that McCain's clip goes viral every time we post it and we post it 10 times, it's because people weren't expecting it, man. Everyone expects someone to shout in the street. No one expects someone to lift up a child because they're poor and they're starving. That's why that shit goes viral.

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your team comes to you or when students say, yeah, but this is just so wrong, we got to jump on this. And here's our disruptive moment, Manu. I mean, is that we got to stand against this right now or we got to be with this or they've gone too far. I mean, we got to just, how do you resist when that's what it's all about right now? I am on a side. I'm absolutely on a side. I'm on the side of conversation over conflict, over dialogue, over discord, over humanization instead of dehumanization. I am on a side. And my argument is that the real political divide in this country, the real prerequisite issue to prevent another, let's say someone says genocide, to prevent, let's say someone says unjust imprisonment, to prevent, let's say censorship, to prevent an illegal

border crossing, to prevent the pile of bullshit that our politicians cook up every day, is to resolve the underlying incentives that drive problem solving. And so I am absolutely on a side. And I think that's actually what you have to flip is that when someone joins a Bridge USA chapter, they are filled with ideological conviction. If you ever come to our summit,

I mean, you've got a standing invitation. Next July, we do a summit everywhere we bring together all versions from across the country that are incredibly engaged and powerful. You show up to this thing, they all are on sides, but they're on a side that is bigger than all those. And that's the side of how do you create change

in this country? I am absolutely on a side and I'm on the side of deliberative democracy and unruly republicanism because that's what this country is built on and you know what I said this once and it did not clip well Chris

but I'll say it again because I believe it if you were someone on Mars and you observed the American experiment in the context of human history thousands of years where it's not self-defense it's killing everybody around you right you would bet against this thing every time and that's what gets me up in the morning because we are all underdogs this is normal it's sadly it's normal the constitution you might know this better than i do passed by three votes in new york 30 to 27 it was the last colony the last big one to ratify it

It almost didn't pass. So when people realize that we're not hanging on by a thread, because we've always been on a thread, we're playing with House money. And wouldn't it be awesome to be on the side of the people that are trying to pull off the greatest experiment in the history of humanity? Count me in. Mockler, I'll debate you every day. Because while you got your viral moment right now, we've got House Money, baby. There's nothing wrong with that. I look, I love it and I'm with you.

And I think it really should be around the midterms. What I would like to do is get News Nation to allow me to commit to do a series of them with you in the states where the races are going to matter more than others and get kids in those areas to discuss what it is that's going to change that election where they're actually at. Okay. So let's say it's, you know, at some branch campus of Ohio because that seat can actually go either way. You know what I mean? Sure. And I'll get them to allow me to do like five or six of them in different states across the country, different races that'll matter, that lines up with your membership. And what we can do, Chris, is if we do that well in advance, we can actually target those campuses and build up chapters where we might not have them. Right. So we have chapters in most battleground states, but if you're like, hey, this campus could be really interesting. Our team is amazing and these students are really hardworking.

So we could set up something and you would have the most hope-filled show in the most shit-filled time. And it would be led by young people. And that's new. Yeah, I think that's cool. The only thing I would want to flip, and again, you know, subject to your paradigm. Oh, please, push back. But like when the Jubilee people, you know, what they're doing, they're a debate. syndicate also.

I'm fine with competitive banter-ish. I'm not that fine with it. I can do it. I actually wish I were not as I didn't have the facility in that area that I do, but I do. But I would like to reverse it. And I'm not going to sit down and show you that I have, that you're wrong and we disagree and I'm on, I'm better at it than you. I want to flip it and sit down with.

someone who thinks we disagree and guarantee that we agree about more than we disagree. And I don't care where you're coming from unless you're so fucking crazy, right, that you don't make any sense. You come from no constituency, okay? Yeah. You will, even if you are a defund the policer, okay? I will guarantee you that I can sit across from you and we agree about more things when it comes to policing, unless you're an anarchist, okay? I'm saying if you believe fundamentally in

society, all right? If you don't, if you're a state of nature person, okay, then I get it. I believe in the collective. I would like to flip that dynamic. So I'm not going to sit here and tell you why you're wrong. I'm going to tell you why you're wrong that we can't both be right and that we don't both want the same things. That is something that I think mechanically would be good. It's actually, that's like the McCain thing. It's actually like you're finding agreement in uncommon places. That's really interesting. Right. So that's what I'd like to do, but I'm open to anything and I'm here to help because I know you're part of the solution. I know conversation is the cure, not just because it's illiterative, because it's literally all we have. And even back then,

you know, the reason we have the Bill of Rights is because the only way they could get the document to the states is with the addenda. So when they said, yeah, we approved it, but we want these. So they had a list of all these things that you had to include. And they didn't have the time. So they just added them all on at the end and called them amendments. You know, in any other contract, you'd be like, well, no, hold on. Most of these are material terms. You know, they're not just going to be in some appendix.

You know, like this is a big thing. And people think the order was the order of importance. It's not that at all. With very few exceptions, it was just in the order that they could get them adopted and voted on that second time. more quickly. That's all. The Second Amendment wasn't supposed to be second. It was a throwaway request of Washington who was so pissed off that he could never have a standing militia because people didn't have weapons, didn't know how to use them, and weren't coming trained in discipline. He wanted a standing army, and they didn't want to give him a standing army then. So they were like, we'll give you the

Second Amendment so that everybody knows, you got to be able to keep, you got to have a rifle, you got to know how to use it, and you got to come with it and be ready to go when we call you. That's what it was. That's why the jurisprudence of their never having been an individual right read into it until Scalia did in his now infamous or famous case, depending on where you are on the issue, that's why. So it's not about the history, as Cornell West always says to me. It's not about the history, brother. It's about the mystery. It's about what we'll do with it going forward.

And I'm here for that. And even though I live the frustration that you have also, which is, man, I know I could be so much more successful than I am right now if I decided to just pick a side and do what these guys are doing. But I just, I know it's the wrong thing. We've got conscience on those times. Yeah. And look, not that I'm any kind of, because it's a function of my flaws, nothing other than that. I know it's wrong because I've been wrong so often. But Manu, I believe you're on the right side and I'm here to help.

So thank you for joining me for the conversation. Thank you, Chris, and thanks for everybody listening. Look, now you know why I'm such a fan, not just of this guy, but of what he's trying to do with Bridge USA, and why it has to be the antidote to the poison that we are being forced to take minute by minute in our politics today. Will it work? I kind of think it has to, right?

I think it feels right, it is right, and we have to make it right. That's where I'm feeling about it. Now, we talked in the interview about James Talarico, and I understand that may be a little in the weeds for you guys. James Tala Rico is a state legislator in Texas, and he is now running for Senate. Now, I saw this guy on Instagram and I said, uh-oh, this guy's a change agent. He's a disruptor, not by being a dick, but by exposing that most

people in the game are dicks and that he's actually a Christian. And as a Democrat and a Christian, he believes that the religion isn't about saying who's less holy than he is, but about loving mercy. And he's so cogent. He's like Pete Buttigieg, right, in terms of kind of like that bookish. There's a sweetness to him, an integrity to him, a very deft debater, okay, very strong in confrontation, but with consideration, all right? So I compare him to Buttigieg, but Buttigieg doesn't lead. I would argue he leads with his intelligence, but also the card that he likes to flash is what, military, right? Tala Rico is that he's a real Christian. He's a preacher. He studied divinity, and he believes that people who are saying their Christian are not

really leading with their faith. So, as expected, by early noticers of him like me, he's now running for higher office, Senate. Let's look at what the markets are saying on Kalshi. Why them? Well, because they're the largest U.S. prediction market. And I believe that when people put money where their mouth is, it's worth looking at, okay? Because it's not just some preference poll now, right? They are trading on what they think will happen, all right? And you know what's interesting about it? You know there's no insider trading on this? I wonder if my brother's on there talking about his own race. But I'll leave him alone for now. Money is on the line is a better way, I believe, to gauge sentiment than just some random preference poll. So if we look at where the markets are on the Senate race in Texas,

that Tala Rico is getting into, we have to look at it right now on the primary side, which is, again, another gift from Kalsi, because usually they're just measuring kind of metrics of general elections. But here, we're looking at the primary. Here's what I don't like. It's hard to see when people are competing against one another to be in one of these two poison parties, totally against our two-party system, as you know by now, when really any of them would be better than what may come on the other side. So that's what this Democratic primary is shaping up for right now. And I wonder how much trouble this is going to be for Tala Rico because he's against two guys who check a lot of boxes.

Okay. Now, the guy he's got to look for is actually in second place. Tala RICO right now, the smart money's on him. Why? Exposure. Exposure. People, I think, have a tendency in an attention economy and an attention political economy to overvalue being known.

with being wanted, but we are where we are and the money is where it is. He's at 62%. I think this concern is number two, not number three. Why? Based on my theory, Beto O'Rourke should be the main guy. Why is he the last guy? He's been weighed and measured and found lacking more than once. He also doesn't show as well as the other two guys. I'm not anti-Betto O'Rourke. I've interviewed him plenty. I've been around him. Seems like a genuine guy and a real one in terms of a believer in what his political positions are. But I think that he's got a problem. And I think the markets agree with me, which is why he's starting to tick up a little bit, but, you know, he's still not good money in this race. Colin Allred is a problem for Tala Rica. Why? He's tested, and he has won, okay?

He actually took out Pete Sessions. And he is a member of Congress. committee assignments, former NFL player, a formidable guy, checks diversity boxes, presents well, talks the talk well, and he's going to look at Tala Rico and says, you know, you haven't done this job at this level, and I have. I know what it's like in the federal level, and it's very different than the state level, and now is no time to learn on the job. That's going to be his argument. What's he up against? Tala RICO oozes author. authenticity of someone who seems to be different. And I think that's a word that you have to start introducing into your working lexicon,

your toolbox of political analysis, different. Like I believe I am different. What I'm doing with this podcast and on News Nation is different. And within that, there is a disruption. And there will be an antagonism toward it. And you have to figure out how to make your, what makes you different and what may be, in fact, disruptive is not dangerous and it's not something to be looked away from. So Tala Rico has that, I believe, going on his side. I think being

a Democrat Christian, not that that's a thing, is a label, but I'm saying in Texas, I think that that is a big reason other than just the attention why the markets have him up now bigly. Do I think it stays this way? No, not unless they get out, not unless the party can chase them out. And in order for the party to chase them out, the best reason that they'll succeed is that All Red is already in a seat. So he doesn't have to have it this time. Getting Beto out, I don't know.

I don't know what his relationship is with the party. But if Tala Rikos can raise the money, they're both raising money right now, All Red and Tala Rico. Beto O'Rourke is struggling a little bit because why? because everybody threw money at him against Ted Cruz. You remember that? And it didn't work out. So, again, he's been weighed and measured and was found lacking.

So, you know, that can be a problem. And you see, I tell you what I like about Tala Rico's money best. It's not just what you see at the 62. It's the no of 43. People aren't putting money on him no the way they are Beto O'Rourke. And really, even Colin Allred. Why? Well, I think that that is something that, as I developed my understanding of these betting markets within this space, within Kalshi, I believe that that is proof that I may wait and see, but I don't think he's going to lose. So I'm not betting no, but I'll wait to bet yes. Even though there's risk with that. Why? Because you can get in now and wind up trading on your bet before it even comes to end. And if you're in the money, you can make money. So it's about what you're your betting strategy is, which I think is what's so interesting about what Calci is doing is that

it's kind of a melding of poker and politics, which is kind of cool. So right now, Tala Rico is the one to watch in this race. But it is also a race to watch if you are a Democrat, especially because it's happening in Texas. That's a very interesting laboratory for Democrats to see what they do in their own primary and what that means about the midterms in general. So I'm watching, and I think you should be as well. Thank you very much for subscribing and following here at the Chris Cuomo Project. I believe conversation is the cure. I think disagreement is what we're all about, but how we disagree has to become what we're about.

That's the part we're getting wrong. Got no problem disagreeing with you. I got no problem with you disagreeing with me. But how we do it has to be geared to getting to a better place, right? It can't just be about which of us sucks worse. it's got to be about which of us can actually make something better, don't you think? I'll see you on News Nation, 8P and 11P, Eastern every weekday night, and the free agent gear is coming. You've got to get away from the parties.

You've got to let people know you're an independent. You're different. Okay, you're not a lemming. You're different. You're a free agent. You're a critical thinker. You're an independent. I dig that.

So let's get after me. Thank you.