The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Epstein, Moral Panic and Racism with Richard Hanania

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by Richard Hanania. Hanania writes a newsletter about American politics, ethics, international relations and culture. He is the author of Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy and The Origins of Woke. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, The Economist, and other publications. His book, Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster, is forthcoming.

This is live from the table, the official podcast of the World Famous Comedy Seller, wherever you get your podcasts, and on YouTube, which is the best way to consume the podcast. Dan Aderman here, along with Mr. Nome Tworman, Perry Al-Ashan, Brandon, joining us via Zoom or some such similar product. It's Zoom. It's Zoom, okay. We have a regular on the podcast, Richard Hananiah, the president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship an ideology is with us. How do you do, Richard? Welcome back. What about the books that he wrote? What about the... That's the intro that Periel sent me. You're writing a new book,

aren't you? Yeah, I'm writing a new book. I have a announcement that's forthcoming. So it's going to be it, I guess you'll be maybe the first people that I tell this to publicly. It's going to be out in the summer. And I'll announce it soon enough. All right. Steve, can you turn him up? Is it possible to make him a little bit louder? Any hint as to what the book is going to be about? You can look at my Twitter account and it's basically the stuff that I'm obsessed with. It's pretty much going to be that.

Hot chicks and my second most favorite. All right, Richard, before we get to, you know, I always say about what I think Richard is just like the most interesting guy out there and I'm always so flat and he's ready to do our show. Before we get to your recent column, which caught my eye, should Republicans be more explicitly racist, which obviously is a misdirect headline. What is your take on the Epstein thing? Is this going to be like Al Capone's vault

and there's going to be nothing in there or what's going to happen? Call it, Richard. I've been looking, I mean, the Epstein thing is kind of, it's really crazy. I mean, I've been talking to my friend Michael Tracy. Have you guys had Tracy? Yeah, yeah. And I know him a little bit, yeah. Okay. So yeah, we're pretty much of one mind on this. You know, it comes out. People were texting Epstein. People, Larry Summers was asking him for, you know, women advice. You know, this is like the most investigated man in the world. And, you know, he liked girls. He wasn't always checking their IDs. He was friends with a lot of influential and important people. And I just don't know what else is there. You know, I'm kind of in awe of how politically powerful this is. This is like

the one thing that gets Republicans to start attacking Trump and start positioning themselves for the post-Trump era. But, yeah, I don't think there's going to be anything there. There's going to be a lot of, it's going to be a lot of things that's really funny, like, you know, Epstein's, uh, Epstein's brother saying that, uh, Clinton and Trump had a sexual liaison, stuff like that. And we'll all laugh at that. It'll be some guy who got his student or whatever, coworker or whatever in the Larry

Summers case, uh, not expecting some big, uh, breakthroughs beyond that. But will that, will that be accepted by those who are convinced that there will be breakthrough? I mean, people will just say, well, they didn't really reveal everything that there was to reveal. It's hard to kind of understand, like, where this goes. It's like you keep thinking, some new stuff comes out. There's a new controversy, and then they're going to get tired of it at some point. But no, the Epstein legend, I mean, the further we get away from his death, it grows and it grows.

So there's always going to be something. You know, they're going to, I think Trump signed the bill or he's about to sign the bill where they're going to release everything. It has exceptions where it says for things that are under investigation or national security, people are going to debate what those exceptions are. Trump is going to want to, you know, he's got his control over the executive branch. He's going to try to limit it as much as possible. So there's always going to be these titillating tidbits.

You know, this stuff is, there's never going to be anything conclusive. So I don't know. Like this becomes maybe the Republican, this becomes the main Republican issue in 2028. I mean, I don't see why not. Well, let's ask you a question. I had trouble pitting Michael Tracy down on this. And I don't know if you've looked into it. But I still, and I have to confess,

I just have never, for some reason, had the interest to really dive into this. Like I once dove into Russia Gate. I don't know. But he copped a plea. Then he was arrested again. What do you think, back of a matchbook, what did this guy do? Where there's scores of 14-year-old girls? Was he trafficking?

What did Jeffrey Epstein do? Is your best guess? he seems to have liked young women whether he even had sex with him is kind of up in the air you can look at when they interviewed jolaine in prison uh she was basically saying she didn't know if he could have sex he seemed to like you know sexual acts but not necessarily sex uh so he got he got massages maybe he pleasureed himself with with young women maybe some of them were under age uh like the idea he trafficked to anyone there's no evidence that i can see there's the words of this woman Virginia Goufrey and other people who've come out, you know, and they've been basically discredited. I'm sorry, but if you ask Grock or Chad GPT, you say, was he with 14 year old girls? They'll say, yes, numerous 14 year old girls. The reports of numerous 14 year old girls with Jeffrey Epstein, not clear again, what you're right, whether it was sex or just a massage, happy ending massages. But where are these 14 year old girls today? They're rich. I mean,

there's a big slush fund that they're taking money out of. There's, Jeffrey Epstein estate. Even the banks he dealt with have put money aside to go to go to people who are alleged victims. Some of these victims claim to be underage. Some of them were, you know, 18 or 20 or 25 when they had dealings with Jeffrey Epstein. So yeah, there's a there's a financial incentive. I don't know if there's ever been proof. I mean, look, I don't think it's all came from nothing. There's probably something there. Even one of the girls, you know, the story is that she told other girls to lie about their ages. because Epstein, presumably Epstein was all else equal, did not want them to be under 18. So that makes me think it's probably not like this was like a fetish of like 14-year-olds or something. You know, again, probably wasn't checking IDs, probably wasn't looking at things that closely. But yeah, I don't know like if it goes much beyond that. Well, Prince Andrew, he kind of went down without a fight, which leaves me to believe that Virginia Joufrey was telling a truth about him. I mean, is that is that the indication or is that indication, or is that indication,

were kind of crazy and this is this is a moral panic where all the people canceled in 2020 over racism proof that they were they were all racist i don't know i mean it doesn't that virginia the gufre by the way when she allegedly was with prince andrew which he denies was above the age of uh age of consent in the u.k so it's a very very bizarre story i mean she said stuff about ala dershowitz he sued her as she went to court eventually admitted that she was lying in that particular case i don't know why we we take virginia gufrey seriously it's genuinely a history. I got two questions more about this. The first question is, and you're a lawyer, I'm very disturbed, and I don't know the process, I'm very disturbed that Larry Summers' most

private secrets, secrets bad enough to ruin his life and ruin his marriage, are displayed all over the newspapers today simply because he was emailing with Jeffrey Epstein, although he's not implicated in any way in the crimes. Why is he not protected from that? Yeah. It's there's this, it's kind of this, there are moral panics. There's like a setter like there's crimes and then there's like just the ick factor or just kind of the slime of being, you know, just being associated with that person.

So I think I don't know, I don't remember exactly what Summers was at the time. But he was, he might have been in some kind of supervisory role. It's probably against Harvard rules or something like. like that, I mean, depending on the institution. And it doesn't seem like he even did anything. It doesn't seem like he actually hit on this woman. It seemed to me from reading the Harvard Crimson article, it was kind of like an elaborate fantasy. Like, this girl looks really good. Oh, I don't know if I should respond. There's no indication that he ever actually acted on. No, I mean, no, my point is that, and maybe I'm just utterly naive here, you know, we have a

constitutional right, freedom of association. This is a very important right. What is it worth if, If someone else is being criminally investigated, the government then will just spill all your emails out there. Now, I understand it can come out in many ways and the press is not obligated, but here is the government of the United States. They're not making any attempt to redact, to protect him. This is not a fiduciary behavior. It's like, fuck Larry Summers. I'm outraged by this. Yeah, that's why we have a default where, you know, they don't just release anything that they find in the course of a criminal investigation.

If there's a crime, they charge people. And if there's no crime, they don't charge you. Yeah, this is kind of, this is part of the moral panic. When there's a moral panic, every kind of rule or standard of fairness. You know, innocent and don't prove it guilty. The idea that, you know, people's privacy matters, the idea that there's some proportionality. Like this person, you know, did something that's maybe a little bit kind of creepy. Okay, we treat them like a criminal.

We go all the way to that. This is all the classic sides that there's a moral panic going out here. So, yeah, I'm not surprised to this. But I think, yeah, on the principle, you're right. There's no reason. There's no reason we need to know this. I mean, he's never going to recover from that. Okay, the other thing is, and I know this, I know this is an issue of yours, too. Let's just stipulate.

I have a 13-year-old daughter. Just the notion that some creep might prey upon her when she's 14, you know, like I don't know what I might do in that situation. So I want to talk about this complex issue, but God forbid anybody thinks that in any way, I think it's in any way okay for an older man to prey upon a 14-year-old girl massages anything, anything, anything, anything. It just makes me sick even thinking about it. Having said that, I sent you something today, or yesterday, you looked at it. I'm going to put it up by the thing. For some reason, I took screenshots in 2017. Actually, I know the reason.

In 2017, my daughter was just getting old enough to read. and we had basic cable and I was astonished at the channel guide what was being promoted on the channel guide and I'll bring up the images one at a time but I'll bring up bring up the image one doesn't matter which order Stephen okay so this is the channel guide August 25th 2017 oh my god help help this is now this is like you'd have you'd have to pay for this It's like pay-per-view, but it's not hidden. Like any kid going through the channel guy would see this. Help, it's so black.

This is a movie. Barely legal, babe, gags and squeals over the giant rod that wrecks her tight, teen holes and pounds her senseless. Hold that thought in your head. And I put the next one up, Stephen. This one. Hairy teen beavers.

Barely legal babes rub their fuzzy beavers for the cameras. then suck a lucky guy until he plows his shaft into her juicy, wild-haired hole and busts all over her bush. Now, this was, now what this talk, you could take it off quick. So this is, and I actually tweeted about this in time, like you should boycott fires. But what this indicated to me, forensically, was that this must be a tremendously huge and lucrative market, the barely teen fetish, because obviously if they're promoting this in the middle of the day, is because they think.

think this is what you what you want to watch this is the tease that's going to sell the most paper views right so and i'm i know i just it's just perfunctory about i can say i don't have this i find it horrifying but there's no question that this is pervasive the notion of being attracted to barely legal i'm sure i don't know barely legal porn is through it's it's it's endemic it's everywhere and it was so endemic and everywhere that not that long ago Fios could just put it up on the channel guide uncontroversially. They just have it out there.

And now all of a sudden, we find out that Jeffrey Epstein was attracted to young girls and people, many of them must be hypocrites, many of them must be the type who would have... Well, but it's one thing to... The allegation was that he took advantage of these. No, yes, that's the whole other step.

But they're pretending that the attraction itself is sick, perverse, and not normal. And obviously that's belied, very powerfully, by Verizon's channel guide. So what he was? And now, Richard has alluded to this sort of thing in his post. So go ahead, Richard. Yeah, it's kind of, it's insane. I mean, you're talking about the channel guide from 2017.

You look at the premise of something like American Beauty from 1999. Yes. And the premise is that Kevin Spacey has a crush on the teen friend of his daughter. And she's like 17. And nobody at the time was like, you know, even the movie, was judgmental about him acting on it. We've always been kind of judgmental about that acting on it. But nobody was like, Kevin Spacey is sexually disordered.

Nobody said this is a movie about a pedophile. This was not the premise. And Woody Allen's movie, Woody Allen, Manhattan, he was Mariel Heming. No, no, no, Margo Hemingway. He was just carrying, you know, escorting around his 17-year-old girlfriend in the movie. And I don't remember being controversial. And then, you know. And there's states.

I mean, there's states where in European countries where 17, 16 is perfectly legal. Yeah, it's very weird. I mean, we've gotten this, the moral panic is so extreme that it's not enough to say, well, you shouldn't act on it, which was like the norm in the 1990s, right? They would say, like, you shouldn't act on it. That was kind of like the mainstream culture. We've gotten to a different place where, like, we can't even acknowledge that men would be attracted to women.

And it goes further than that. I mean, you see these people on Twitter. I don't know if I should just be judging people on Twitter, but you see it in, like, the press when like Leonardo DiCaprio has a girlfriend who's who's 20 you know you'll see this stuff like pedophilia I mean it's like it's like it's like a 20 year old if you know if the the boyfriend is 35 or 40 so it's just it's a very weird thing it's very recent you know this wasn't this didn't exist in 1999 probably didn't exist in 2009 where like we have kind of gone so far from reality that like we can't distinguish what morally we think people should do and what they are actually attracted to

in a biological sense. Yeah, I agree. And I think Richard, you and I are the same in this. It's, although many people are offended by even this kind of conversation, I'm just trying to understand the world as it actually is. I'm not endorsing it. I'm not, but I just want to, because people posture. Yeah, very all.

But I also think that at the same time, the industry is marketing to young girls, even younger than your daughter to make them look older, to make them look quote unquote sexy. Like if you go on TikTok and you go on Instagram, these girls are wearing makeup. They're wearing very, very, very short shorts. The Brooke Shields commercials in the...

Sure. Since the beginning of time, right? And so it's both things at once. It makes it even more hypocritical. Yeah. But let's just say again. But acting on it, absolutely. is horrific.

And, of course, you imagine that many of these girls are also troubled, which is the reason that at root is the reason they even find themselves in these situations to be preyed upon. Absolutely. I mean, I think. What happened for you? No, no, I was just going to say that I think that it's also important to sort of take into consideration that, you know, as young girls and even if you look at your daughter and

her friends, they are trying to look older. Like, I remember when I was 15 and we were going out into the city and lying about our age to get into nightclubs and lying to boys and, you know, who were in their 20s. So it's not just like a straight line forward, right? All right. Let's move past Epstein. Now, Richard, what did you mean by this column should Republicans be more explicitly racist? And when you explain this, because I want to let you know, I also have a, I have a pretty long clip between Nick Flentes and Tucker Carlson discussing some of this stuff. But go ahead, because I think you and I see eye to eye on this. Go ahead. Yeah. So Republican politics is kind of an interesting thing. I mean, politics is for either party.

But there's, you know, I have a political science background. And most people who study political science, it's kind of, it's biased. It's left wing. But there's a general understanding that people don't vote. on economic issues and if they did vote on economic issues democrats would probably win every election uh because people love government redistribution they don't like taxes but you know they will go crazy if you ever try to cut government or you try to do something that's more free market like at health care or whatever um and so people vote republican generally for cultural issues now that could mean a lot of different things uh that's for some people that's religious belief for some people that's racism and for some people that's what you would call nativism

but this has been always kind of the core it's been a cultural appeal you You could have a sympathetic version of this. You can call them a bunch of racists, or you could say, well, the left is out of their mind. The left is anti-white. The left is anti-American. The left is anti-family. Whatever. But either way, the cultural issues are kind of what's driving this.

And I just find it fascinating how quickly kind of Republicans have switched in economic issues, because I'm a conservative, but I'm not like the Republican voter that I actually care about the underlying ideas that these people say they care about. So 15 years ago, it was all about the Tea Party. was all about Obama's giving us socialism. Maybe he wasn't born in America, but the problem is he believes in big government and wanted to socialize health care and will become like Cuba or something like that. You go 10 years later, now it's Trump.

Trump tells you, you know, I'm going to protect your social security and Medicare. He says, I'm going to use government to protect your jobs. You know, he, you know, when people try to defend the Trump tariffs, it's always along the lines of, oh, well, you know, things are more important than the economy. to be a nation, whatever, just like all that stuff about government, small government and like capitalism is just like kind of completely gone from Republican discourse. And so what happened in these, you know, 10, 15 years? What happened was, I think that the racial issues in America went from people thinking about black issues to thinking about immigration, right? And so the,

what it was about black issues, they saw the welfare state as something that redistributed wealth from white people disproportionately to black people. So there was a reaction to that. They did thought like Obamacare, especially because of what it represented from the person trying to get that bill passed. And then I think around 2012, 2015, 16, that range, immigration kind of became the main issue. And you couldn't use the same arguments for immigration because a lot of people just did not like immigration, even high-skilled immigration, which is by any measure and that benefit to the United States. And so it had to be kind of, they had to adopt some kind of economic collectivist ideas it's like they're taking our jobs there's a set number of jobs we need government

to protect us from from this foreign competition and basically this is like what politics should be about and so that's a long roundabout way of getting to the point of my article which is like we don't have to keep doing this forever like hopefully at one point like we could just admit like what is going on here and then maybe we don't have to like you know real policy or real discussions about issues doesn't have to become an afterthought if people can just say they dislike immigration because they dislike immigration. But you've also attached this to now they're bringing the Jews in, like now they're finally turning on the Jews the way they've been turning on all the other ethnic groups or something

like that? Well, I mean, it is kind of, it's hard to have a, you know, an ethnic, an ethno-nationalist movement that is philosophic. I mean, that's like kind of not a historical, you know, that would be a historical anomaly. So, yeah, I mean, the Republicans. Like, a lot of these guys, there was this guy that Randy Fine. Do you know this guy? I know the, oh, yeah, that's the guy who says that the Uber Jew who wants to blow up Gaza.

Yeah, he thought himself a Hebrew hammer. Oh, God. Because he's a rotund. Yeah, man, he's a congressman from Florida. You know, he's getting up there, and he's talking about Nick Fuait, and his anti-Semitism and how we can't have that in the Republican Party. And then the same speech, he's saying, we got to deport Zoran, I'm going. Yeah.

So it's like this idea that, like, you disagree with this guy. He needs to be deported. That's the kind of politics you're selling. And then you're going to say, well, you know, we can't like discriminate against Jews based on their race or religion. These guys blame the Jews for for immigration. They think it's a Jewish plot to dilute white people and to divide and conquer. Certainly people like Fuentes and anybody in that group.

But to the extent that Jews are implicated in this discussion, it's often in that context. Yeah, right. there is this old idea, which has some basis in truth and that the Jews were disproportionately socially economically successful and disproportionately contributing and being involved in left-wing causes. But yeah, this is kind of the grand narrative. Like, how did this happen to white people? It couldn't have been just some policy mistake.

Some evil group did this to us. Well, what is the right answer? By the way, Steve, where's the control when we play the video for me to stop it and start it? I couldn't get it going in time for the Zoom and the clips. I'll get it a... Oh, okay, we'll have to figure that. Okay. Anyway, so, I mean, I've always struggled with this.

First of all, as an employer, I will have to say that, yes, low-wage immigrants do bring down wages. I don't know if they bring down wages in the long term as everything ripples through and blah, blah, blah, but when we've had periods where it was tough to find immigrants for whatever reason, there was upward pressure on wages and vice versa. and, you know, we live in the short term. So I have to say that that's true. I understand that people are comfortable among their own. When black people lament that Harlem was becoming less of a black neighborhood, I never found that offensive. They were delighted and comfortable

in their own neighborhoods. I would say that, you know, I was trying to think of a good example, like it depends on the immigrants. Ironically, one million Swedes introduced into Tel Aviv will be less disruptive than one million Hasid, you know. So I certainly understand that, you know, if you don't want more and more Hasidic people coming into your country, completely changing the character of your country, that is not anti-Semitism. And yet, all these transits, all these true things can then become excuses for what is real bigotry. And so, you know, the best analogy is, you know, you add ingredients slowly and stir and hope for assimilation.

That's, I think, what has worked and what we all hope for. But yes, at a point where immigration becomes so fast and furious and nobody has actually voted for it, it breeds a lot of resentment that doesn't offend me. And I'll say one other thing. me how to make sense of it all. When I was a kid, when America was like 85% white Christian and I was a Jew, my father would say, it's a Christian country. And he was very comfortable with that, you know? And he had, because we knew our place and our place, meaning like, this country was beautiful and allowed us to come in and we were successful here and they were kind

to us. And it was a dynamic that worked because everybody understood the rules as opposed to being 10% this, 10% that, 10% that, 10% that, 10% that, where everybody's kind of pitted against each other. And it just adds, aside for the other, all practical complications. How many holidays can you have? What do you celebrate in the schools? What about Christmas carols? What about the, you know, it's so there are legitimate sides, in my opinion, to all the

ugly arguments that people like Nick Fuentes makes. That's what makes them so difficult. That's what makes this such fertile ground for demagogues. So what you say about everything I've said? So on the wages thing, yeah, I don't think the evidence for that is that good. Yes, they compete for wages. At the same time, they increase demand. They create jobs.

You know, they consume things. So this is something we have to be kind of open to empirically. I think people go to that because they don't like immigration. And so then they start to imagine that whatever economic problem they have is caused by immigration. On the assimilation question, you know, I live here in L.A. County. I once lived in a town that was like, you know, 60% Asian and like 30% Hispanic or something like that. And, you know, I wrote an article on this a while back called, we don't have Balkanization. I mean, the simulation is working. I mean, there's a World War I Memorial. They didn't tear it down during the summer of George Floyd by where I live. You know, there's a Fourth of July parade. They speak English for the most part. You know, like some people, like, even that is like too much for them just because maybe they, you know, the people from India wear funny clothes or people that, you know, there are people who on Twitter on Matt, Matt, because there was this video, which like this graphic that showed the mosques opening up in Texas. And just some people, to them, the mosque itself is just something that's offensive. And so these are like ideas people have.

And, you know, they want to be, they don't want mosques. They want, they don't want Hindu temples. Like some people just, it comes down to basically that for them. And, you know, in that case, I don't, like, I just want it not to infect every other policy discussion. Like, you do not have, like, I think that you could actually make a self-interested case to the racist. If you take something like H-1B visas, I mean, the American kind of technological dynamism is just overwhelmingly the result of immigrants coming to the country. You look at, like, the top companies, you know, the Fortune 500 companies, the ones that have a billion dollars, that are the ones of the unicorns with the highest valuation. they are basically, you know, like 50% have like an immigrant founder.

I mean, it's absolutely, it's absolutely remarkable. And immigrants are, you know, 12, 15% of the population or something like that. So even if you're racist, you can be the most racist person in the world, you are adding, like, the H1B says, my God, it's like 70,000 workers a year. So much has come with that. And so it's like, you could hate these people, but like you should hate, like, having diseases that we don't have cure for even more than that. And so I think like just acknowledging this, instead of like reinventing some new kind of economic

theory as to like tech workers coming in from India are the reason that you can't get a job. Like I think that's particularly harmful because it just infects every other discussion that we want to have. Well, let me say, I'm sorry. So two things. First of all, I think we do have some empirical and empirical anecdotal data about wages. Simply after COVID, when labor was so short, wages were shooting up, you know, and as the waves of immigration, if the border is shut down, this is going to.

going to be a similar case for certain, for certain industries. It continued after COVID. I mean, COVID a lot was going on. I mean, there was, they were paying people not to. Right, but it was, it was taking workers out of the workforce. In the same way closing the border, we'll, well, but we, you know, but that's why I said short term, because I agree, it works its way out. And then maybe at that point, it reaches equilibrium or even benefits, I don't know. But the short term shocks are real. So let's, Steve, play this ban in Trump MP4. You got that one? So this is, from 2015, this is Steve Bannon debating Donald Trump a year before the election.

So this is long before Trump was a shoe in, but I don't believe Trump was a shoe in at this time, when people were still assuming that he wouldn't win. And this, I think, is the real Donald Trump speaking. And it brings out a debate which these guys are still having today. and I'll say already, spoiler alert, I think Trump has the better of the argument and I think Trump really believes this. I think Trump is in favor of having the best people for the job.

So go ahead. Play it, Steve. Can you bring it up on the screen too? Yeah. Okay, so that's just, I don't think it's that long. I don't know if you've ever heard this, Richard, but go. I'm going to talk about this HP1 visas. What do you think about this situation where you have American companies,

particularly technology companies that are letting go, highly trained American IT workers, blown them out, having them train their replacements in hiring foreign workers. Just generally what you're sense of that. It's no good. I mean, we have to do something about it. And, you know, people are coming in and they're taking jobs and they're getting paid less money. And, you know, a lot of things are happening.

A lot of bad things, you know, having – and a lot of it has to do with borders. A lot of it has to do with those. One of the things I did say, though, and I feel strongly about this, when somebody's going to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Stanford, all the great, and they graduate, and not only graduate, but do great, and we throw them out of the country, and they can't get back in. I think that's terrible. We've got to keep, we've got to be able to keep great people in the country. We've got to create, you know, job creators. One man went to, I think it was Harvard. There was a story a month ago, went to Harvard, did well, good student, wanted to stay in the country, wasn't allowed to, went back to his home in India, started up a company. Now it's a very, very successful company with thousands of people. He wanted to do that here. we have to be careful of that Steve you know we have to keep our talented people in this country um i think you agree with that do you agree well i i got a tougher you know when two thirds or three

quarters of the CEOs in silicon valley are from south asia from asia i think i did on on on my point is that a country's more like sessions a country's more than an economy we're a civic society i want to see in any event you have to keep them legally i mean yes yes when people come in They have to come in legally. I want people to come into the country, Steve. Okay, that's it. Yeah. So, yeah, this is, I mean, this is an incredible clip.

Trump has said this stuff a lot. I mean, there was just recently a Laura Ingram interview where she says, you know, we have talented people in America. What about the H-WNV visas? And Trump goes, no, we don't. No, we don't. And so he says this stuff. I mean, that abandoned clip, though, is, yeah, I think this is what Trump believes.

I think the right-wing kind of media sphere, you see DeSantis getting to the right of Trump on this issue and talking about H-1B visas, which he has new control over as governor of Florida. Yeah, I mean, it's a very strange clip. Trump goes, you know, Bannon brings up the point that a lot of tech CEOs, I'm not going to

vouch for statistics, but he says two-thirds are from South Asia. And to him, that's a problem where a pro-immigrant person would be like, oh my God, like the people are that productive, like the South Asians have done that much for America. And then Bannon, you know, Trump says we need talented people. And Bannon goes, yeah, but we're

you know we're more than an economy we're a nation which i like i don't know what that like it means right so it's like it's like okay we're not an economy okay we're people we're americans we weigh flags and we we have loyalty to the constitution and we uh you know we care about each other and we eat hot dogs and we have fourth of july parades and so i'm like okay um what what does it mean though in this context that we become less of a nation uh because the silicon valley CEOs are from South Asia. Like what in your Americanness is actually harmed? Like what would justify taking the economic hit of getting rid of all these productive people? And they never explain it. It's always, you know, we're a nation. We're not an economy. That's it. You know, one point settled. What else do you

need to know? I'm very pleased with Trump on this issue. And by the way, it's a perfect horseshoe because it's the same exact, I don't know what you want, same exact bigotry that allowed liberal people to want to limit Asians in the Ivy League. It's like, yeah, we want them as immigrants. Well, how dare you say we shouldn't have immigrants? But as soon as they get here, we don't want too many Asians at Harvard. I mean, they would make the same argument, right?

Why can't you have 60% of the graduating class at Harvard be Asian? I'd be proud of my country, if that were the case. I think you would be too. Yeah, so you probably know that, I mean, the holistic admissions thing started because the Ivy League had too many Jews. basically they were they were if you had a meritocratic system they were the ones yeah but the jews are a bit

much but the asians are wonderful people yeah there's almost a kind of there's you know this personality thing that you know i don't think it's kind of that that crazy but yeah i mean it is like you know they they have you have to do the cost better you have to say okay what are we getting out of this we're getting a lot we're getting like america is leaving europe behind i mean the most productive part of our uh economy is the tech sector that's a reason why america has got blown by Europe. It's why the average American earned something like 75,000 a year instead of 50,000 a year, which is closer to the European norm. And like, okay, you can try to give that up and give up the tech industry and basically, you know, productive people who are doing things throughout the economy.

And what are you, like, what are you getting exactly? You feel, some people feel better if more Americans are white Christians. Like that's just kind of the key to it. And like, I guess if they were honest about this, we could actually have that debate and do a cost-benefit of like whether their feelings of what kind of people they want to see in the country is actually worth the economic damage they'd be doing. You, in your article, you kind of, you alluded to the fact that we could have our kegan needed too. We could have, like the Gulf states do.

They allow everybody to come, but they just don't give them the same rights as the native born. Yeah, I mean, the Gulf states are amazing. I mean, they let these people in. Basically, I read it in UAE, if you make $100,000. a year, they basically have open borders. Anyone in the world who makes $100,000 a year could just go live in the United Arab Emirates right now. And they have a lot of low-skilled immigration, too, who, you know, who work as, you know, nannies and drivers and gardeners and so on. And they don't

vote. They don't get, they're not given citizenship. Now, that's an extreme case in the U.S. That's going to be obviously a lot of burdens of doing that. But still, I mean, we could be thinking in term, like there's a visa program, for example, that lets you basically have a live-in nanny. for something like Ruben Bored and like 40,000 a year, which just makes a lot of sense for a lot of professional people. So like you can have, you can have a policy that looks out for your own people and you can do the humanitarian thing and the economically logical thing. It's not going to work though if you're lying and you think, well, if someone's around here, they're going to take my job and I'm going to be poor as long as someone's working. If people are a problem when they're

working and their problem when they're not working, I mean, it's obviously not economics that's driving you. It's obviously something else. in the UAE last week. I just got back a couple of days ago. I went to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. And it is a remarkable fucking place. Now, I know it's artificial in some way. And it's a combination of like Epcot Center in Las Vegas. But you go to the Dubai Mall, the biggest mall in the world, right next to Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, twice the size of the Empire State building. And in that mall, you see like Lawrence of Arabia Arabs with the girls covered with their eyes, with other Arabic women, you know, showing their cleavage

and some Orthodox Jews and some Israelis, bickering, and American people, and all in an Arab country. And whether, to whatever extent it's artificial and contrived, it doesn't really matter to me because it shows some glimpse of a possible future to me. I mean, America naively thought we're going to go into Iraq and we're going to transform the Middle East and they're going to embrace democracy and freedom. That was quixotic. However, in the UAE, that is actually what seems to be happening. And if it can happen there, it can happen elsewhere.

And this is a huge event for civilization if it were to happen. I'm telling you, I had such a good time there. I couldn't recommend it more. Have you ever been to Dubai, Richard? No, I haven't. I've got too many little kids. There's so many places I want to travel and golf. Arab states are kind of the top of that list.

But no, I just heard amazing things. Yeah, yeah, it was really good. Okay, Stephen, so let's talk about, let's spend some time listening to Nick Flentes and Tucker Carlson, and this is Nick Flentes, someone who is quite honest about the fact that he wants America to be a white Christian country. But Stephen, I'm a little, I lament that we don't have our high-tech thing to stop it. So how are we going to signal you when we want to stop it? Just wave your hand.

I'll keep an eye on you. It won't happen again. And Richard, you can wave your hand too soon. So this issue of rising anti-Semitism on the right, I try not to panic about it. Actually, I become a little bit optimistic about it because it's become so absurd between the demon maulings and the underwater satanic creatures and the trap doors. of Charlie Kirk and the magic bullets and and the Jews killing Christian babies at Passover. Like this seems to, and the chem trails, this seems to, if these are the leaders of this movement, it seems to me it will have to collapse on its own weight, despite what Twitter appears,

the illusion that Twitter appears to throw up, because these people are insane, it seems. Like, I actually think they're mentally ill. But I want to go through this six or seven minute clip of Nix. Flentis, I think this is the heart of the matter where he talks about the Jews being unassimilable, which is very painful as a Jewish person because growing up Jewish, I didn't know anybody more patriotic than the Jews. We love this country. We adore this country. You know, when I play baseball, like, I mean, the notion that we were unassimilable is just so foreign to me because my father was an immigrant and he would literally cry at a patriotic movie. I've said it's more of like young

Mr. Lincoln or whatever. He felt himself a descendant of George Washington. And I didn't even question that until as much older. Like, isn't that interesting that this Israeli-born guy would talk about the founding fathers without any caveats? Like, these are my founding fathers, right? But now, now that it's, there's a spotlight on it, it's, I realize, I, I, I, I, I took that for granted, but it's actually a very interesting sociological thing. But anyway, Nick Fuentes is not having it. So let's say, you want to preface it with any comments about this, or should we get into the clip?

You can go ahead. Okay, go ahead. And Richard, you wave. If you want to comment on something, you wave. Stephen will see you. Go ahead. So I'm going to just shut up and you tell me what you actually believe. I mean, as far as the Jews are concerned, I think that, like I said, you cannot actually

divorce Israel and the neocons and all of those things that you talk about from Jewishness, ethnicity, religion, identity. And let me give you like a perfect example. So you say on your show that we need to treat Israel like any other country. And I sort of understand that in principle because Israel is another foreign country. Yeah. But Israel is unlike every other country in the sense that because the Jewish people are in a diaspora all over the world, they're significant numbers of Jews in Europe, but also in the United States. And because of their unique heritage and story, which is that they're a stateless people, they're unassimilable, they resist assimilation for thousands of years.

And I think that's a good thing. And now they have this territory in Israel. There's a deep religious affection for the state. It's bound up in their identity, the story of the exodus from Egypt, the promise of the land, all these things. So let's say in the United States, for example, somebody like a Sheldon Aedelson, he's not Israeli. Is he an ideological neocon? Does he believe in the promise of democratic globalism? I don't think necessarily his heart is in Israel.

And it's because he is a proud Jewish person. And I guess what I'm saying is that if you are a Jewish person in America, you're sort of, And again, it's not because they're born, but it's sort of a rational self-interest politically to say, I'm a minority. I'm a religious ethnic minority. This is not really my home. My ancestral home is in Israel. There's like a natural affinity that Jews have for Israel. And I would say on top of that for the international Jewish community. They're extremely organized. And many of them are critical of Israel or Israel's current government or the project of Israel. real. But I guess what they have in common, unlike, let's say, like Singapore, for example, is that they have this international community across borders, extremely organized, that is putting the interests of themselves before the interests of their home country. And there's like... Okay, let's stop there. Let's stop there. You have anything you want to say about that? Because I do. Go ahead.

Yeah. So when he talks like this, I mean, he's, first, he's getting at some things that are, I think, true. it. I think people take that and they, you know, that's part of the appeal. The idea that Jews in America care more about Israel than people who are not Jews in America. I think that's, I think that's obviously true. I mean, I don't think that that's something you should necessarily deny. I mean, I think that's something that's true, right? You know, and America, a lot of Americans care a lot of these people, these white nationalists and a lot of conservatives too, care more about Europe than they do a lot of other countries, too. There is this kind of natural affinity. And that's like, that's, that's fine. I think that the problem is these people radically

exaggerate, like, what that means for the place of Jews in America. You could have somebody who disagrees, you know, you can have a disagreement on Israel. You could say, uh, Mark Levin or whatever, or Sheldon Adelson, uh, has opinions that you disagree with. You might think it's not an America's interest or you might think that, uh, you might have a humanitarian concern for the Palestinians or, or whatever it happens to be, right? There's no, like fundamental kind of difference here that means we are a separate people, the Jews and the non-Jews in America, and we need to be at each other's throat and like one having power as a group is the problem. You can debate Israel. I mean, there's a lot of Jews who write for the New York

Times and elite publications who do not like the war in Gaza, who do not like Denyahu as Nick himself as Nick himself mentions in the clip. So like there's a truth there, but then there is taking that truth to a point that just like kind of distorts your entire understanding of politics. Well, okay. I agree with everything you said. So what it seems to me is that what he says kind of presupposes that it's true and that we know it's true, that what's good for Israel is actually at the expense of American interests. And this deserves to be examined. So just the first things that come to mind, there are many people who are high. concerned with the preservation of Taiwan.

There's many people that are hyper concerned with the preservation of Ukraine. We were hyper concerned with the preservation of Kuwait. Actually, when I was in Dubai, I had this thought that if Dubai were threatened, if this budding of freedom and fulfillment were to be squashed out, this would be very much in America's interest to step in and prevent it. Because, in my opinion, things are always trending in one direction or another. And we do not want to preside over a world which begins to trend in the opposite direction, a direction of against freedom. And I mean, going on and on, but like Churchill saw

these dangers and the importance of standing up against certain things without any Jewish question. So only Israel is somehow singled out as this case where people are advocating to stand up against, you know, the tyrannies and the dictatorships. But this is being done for the Jewish people. If it wasn't for Jewish people, nobody would see it this way. But that's, as I said, belied by the fact that no, the same people see it that way in Taiwan. And we spent $180 billion or something defending Ukraine in two years, which is more than we spent defending Israel in 20 years, right? So, I mean, this is just very sloppy reasoning here, no? Yeah, I agree. And that, that is a good point. America is an interventionist power. That's,

That started well before, you know, Jews were highly represented in American government. We've had basically the leader of the world in the post-World War II era. And so, yeah, I mean, we care about small countries that are democratic and are fighting authoritarian enemies. There's a Christian Zionist component. And so, yes, you think, like, I'm sure that, you know, people from, like, you know, I think Fuentes, what he would say is, there aren't a lot of Kuwaitis in American journalism. There aren't a Kuwait, there are a lot of billionaire Kuwaitis who are major donors to the two major political parties in this country, which is, you know, true enough, the Jews do have disproportionate power and influence over American policy. But it's like, so what?

You could argue with them. You can, you can, you can make a critical case against Israel. I mean, we're having that debate right now. So the idea that like we have, like, there's like some kind of, I'm going to say, let me just put it this way. Sure. Let's say Ukraine were Israel and Israel were Ukraine. and we did everything that we've done now for Ukraine, except it was the Jewish state.

It would be impossible to convince people that the reason this was happening was not because of the disproportionate Jewish influence and all the things you said. And yet, here we are with a country like Ukraine, and we're going to the limit on it, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a, you know, differences here, obviously.

You know, Russia is kind of... I think part of the reason people sympathize with the Palestinians is because they're not Russia. You know, they're not the big power. It's being the smaller power. They are, you know, the people who seem the weaker position. And so people kind of have a sympathy there. So there's that, too, that kind of makes it different from Ukraine.

But, yeah, you're basically, you're right. I mean, there's a lot of foreign policy stuff that America does. And some of it makes sense. And some of it doesn't make sense. And we, you know, we lost tens of thousands of men in Vietnam, of course. And we're talking about $4 billion, much of it spent in America. $4 billion. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, that's another thing. like if you're talking about financial benefit that's the other thing i think is a good point to make like taiwan defending taiwan puts us at a risk of nuclear war with china defending ukraine puts us a risk of nuclear war with russia right um israel doesn't have any such danger right israel is a country and i think that you know if we you know we defend israel we're not we're not you know at the throat of another uh great power so you're right like the the the gird the

the the kernel of truth here is that there's a lot of jews in america who have a lot of media and power. A lot of them do care about Israel. That's the kernel of truth here. The idea that like this is America, this is the key to understanding American foreign policy or the idea that like you're, you know, the budget's going away and like, you know, we don't have like money to take care of our own people. You'll hear this with Ukraine too. Like, oh, we have homeless people and we send money to Ukraine. The idea like this is like driving the budget or it's like the number one issue you would care about if you cared about the, you know, cutting off into Israel, if you cared about the well-being, the future generations of Americans.

It's just crazy. And that's what you, that's like how you need to challenge this. It's just like it completely, it's a grade of truth, but just distorted it to something completely wrong. All right. It gets worse. Continue, Steve. By the way, in 10 minutes, you got to go on the stairs and get Elon.

Go ahead. Let's play, Steve. There's no other country that has a similar arrangement like that. No other country has a strong identity like that. This religious blood and soil conviction, this history of being in the diaspora, stateless, wandering, persecuted. And in particular, the historic animosity between the Jewish people and the Europeans. They hate the Romans because the Romans destroyed the temple. That's why Eric Weinstein.

I've never heard of the Romans. No Jew I know, the Jews I know, don't even know the history of how Israel lost the West Bank or how Israel occupied the West Bank. They don't have a goddamn thing about hating the Romans. Go ahead, Stephen. Continue. So stupid. Continue.

Maybe Eric Weinstein is mad at the Romans. Yeah, Eric Weinstein, he knows a lot of stuff. Go ahead. That guy is an incredible source of... We don't think like that as Americans and white people. We don't think about the Roman Empire in 2,000 years ago. They do. Yes, we do.

And so I guess that's really... And I don't think that's me saying the Jews, the Jews, the Jews. I don't think that's me being hateful. I don't think that's me being collectivist. I think that's understanding that identity politics, whether you love it or hate it, whatever you feel about it, it's a reality that we live in a world of Jews and Christians, of whites and blacks. These identities mean something to us, and they mean things to each other, and we can't sort of wish them away. And it feels like white people and Christians.

So this is the other thing. This is another kernel of truth. We have whites and blacks. We have identity politics. We have Christians. Yeah, like all of that is true. But there's like this wide range of black countries where all they think about is the racial identity and they're killing each other over it and there's countries where you know it's a slight thing we fight over bilingual education in school or something right and so like the idea that like identity politics is a real thing therefore we have to go to white identity politics is just a fallacy right it's just again taking something with a grade of truth in it and then just distorting it into something that like swallows your entire worldview when there's a completely different way to look at these

questions okay yep agreed continue stephen the only ones to do that there's no question about that, your last point, for sure. One of the reasons they do that is because they've been talked to hate themselves, of course, since the Second World War. Another reason is, however, the reality of a multi-ethnic country requires you to sort of set aside community or group interests in favor of corporate interests, universal interests, national interests. And you have to do that or else it doesn't work. And so, you know, I agree those attitudes. I mean, certainly in other parts of the world, people think this way.

But you can't have that here. And so it's just important to remind everybody that, yeah, you know, things may be generally true. But like, again. Pause right there. This is what this, this went by everybody. Just leave it there, Stephen. Just leave it there. This went by everybody.

He says, yes, this may be generally true. Meaning that everything that, as I took it to me and everything in the, everything in Nick Flintes said, yes, this may all be generally true about the Jews, which I think includes the unassimitable and all of it. And then he's going to go on to say, why, well, just, but nevertheless, not all Jews. And, you know, they're not born that way. But what Tucker did there to my ear was say, yes, this is generally true. And now maybe he would say he just meant the last part with general truth. Yeah, yeah, that's what I thought. I thought that he was saying last part. You know, Tucker says enough crazy things.

We can give them. I mean, why are we giving Tucker Carlson the benefit of the doubt here? There's enough to get them on this. You know, I don't think we have to argue about this stuff. Well, yeah, no, but it is interesting because he doesn't, he doesn't push back on any of these. No, that's true. That's point. He does that push back.

Like Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz comes up there and he says, what is the exact population of Iran? And, you know, what is the GDP per capita, right? He can ask tough questions what he wants to. He doesn't do it in this case. Right. That's what people are. Go back and look how he once interviewed Max Boot, where Max Boot barely could get a sentence out, you know. So go ahead, continue.

So Tucker's almost finish here. But go ahead. Go ahead. They're not always true. And there are people who just strongly disagree. And by the way, in the specific case of Israel, there are a ton of Orthodox who I know who are opposed to the state of Israel. They're just Jewish than Dave Rubin, a lot more.

And yet they oppose it. Jeff Sachs. like the most... All right. Pause there. Yeah, that's why I think he's when he says generally true. You see, that's what he was referring to the stuff about the Jews. But let me just say, Tucker Carlson does not know a ton of Orthodox who are opposed to the state of Israel.

That's a fucking lie. First of all, the only Orthodox Jews that are opposed to the state of Israel are the Netarekarta, and they are a very small and extremely, extremely, like, sect. like a minuscule culture sect. There are other, I was reading about it today to try to understand. There are some other orthodox. There's some other Orthodox. There's some other Orthodox vision, but they do not oppose, they have a religious disagreement

with the idea that, I mean, it's not very clear, with the, that God is supposed to create the actual Jewish state. But they participate in Israeli politics. They don't, they don't want to see Israel dismantled. They, you know, they benefit for. They benefit from national health care. They're not out there as activists against Israel. Netari Kharta is, but they're basically a cult.

They're like... No, I'm talking about who dancer. Yeah, so there are these little splinter groups that have various shades of religious takes on Israel, which all amounts to the same thing in the end, that God was supposed to create Israel, not man, some want to... Like the most tiny and extreme actually are against Israel,

at all. And then the rest of them are more like, yes, we'll live with Israel, but in the state, but, you know, if you put a magnifying glass on this stuff, it doesn't actually all hold together. But Tucker Carlson does not know a ton of them. A hundred percent. I will cut off my arm. We don't know. And of course, it's, listen, I know a ton of Amish. And Amish don't believe in the United States of America. So therefore, who are you to say that being anti-American is is anything. I mean, I know Amish people. They're Americans.

They don't believe in the United States. This is such a thin read. And then he talks about Jeffrey Sachs. There's obviously an anti-Western mental patient. Go ahead. Continue this to you. It's almost over. Well, man, the most art is Jewish,

most articulate, kind of critic of the state of Israel that I'm aware of. So, like, I don't know. That's just meaningful. You can't, if it's, if everything is inherited, then there's no hope. for the continuation of America. Does that, do you see that? Yeah, I don't, and I don't think it's genetically inherited. And what you're saying is putting aside the tribal interest for the corporate interest,

that's absolutely the case. And that's the only way the country is going to stay together. Exactly. That's my concern. And I absolutely agree with you. I would say, though, that the main challenge to that, a big challenge to that is organized Jewry in America. I don't think so.

So how would you like this all to be resolved? What I would like is for the U.S. government to not be influenced by these kinds of foreign allegiances, not with money that comes from, you know, American citizens like Sheldon Aedelson, not from foreign lobbyists. So, I mean, in terms of tangible things, I don't think we disagree on any of it, like registering APAC and FARA, banning dual citizenship. Like, I'm basically an agreement. I think 80% of the public agrees with those things. Yeah. So that's kind of what gets me a little bit annoyed. like, these are, like America first, the concept.

This is basically enough. You can stop the two. So, you know, banning dual citizenship, there is a, you can take it off. There's a minuscule number of dual citizen Jews in this country, minuscule. There's a lot of dual citizen Mexicans, by the way. But that's because there's probably a great deal of dual citizens in Israel, I would imagine. People who have left America. People have left America.

Yeah, that's fine. You know, they're emigrated. But they're creating these issues. out of nothing. And again, the whole the whole subtext is this assumption that, yes, America's interests are at odds with Israel's interest and Jews support Israel's interests knowingly at the expense of America's interest. Richard Hernandez, your comment. Yeah, I mean, it's a kind of funny thing that they're doing here. And when you listen to Tucker and Fuentes, I mean, they're agreeing with each, they're agreeing with each other on policy.

And they're kind of presenting themselves as like the liberals. They're like, we're just the guys who don't believe in caring about the past. We think every American should, you know, look out for the interest of the country. We can't be divided. Like, these guys are the two, you know, the two people who, you know, the Kumbaya guys who are bringing everyone in America together. It's kind of, it's a weird thing. I do think that, like the distance, and I've written this too, the distance between

Buentes and a lot of the Republican Party of J.D. Vance, for example, I don't think is as, aside from Israel, I don't think is as why. as people think like a lot of the republican party today talks about where a nation not an economy it boils down to they are uncomfortable with the changing demographics of the country they're isolationists uh this i'm talking about mainstream like jd vans republicans more populist republicans they don't like foreigners coming in uh they don't want foreign interventions uh they want more economic left wing ideas they want economic populism uh when you hear fuentes describe his like policy preferences the other stuff he'll say when he says i love Hitler and all that. He'll say, I'm trolling. You know, he says, I say stuff about slabs and I say stuff

about women and I say stuff about everyone. And that's just like, you know, that's just something I do. When he actually explains his policy, he's not that far apart kind of to where the Republican party is going. And I think that's what a lot of people miss about this. Well, do you think this group of people actually could win a presidential election in the United States of America? You know, I don't know. Like, I would have thought that the Republican Party, like by 2024 was a bit too much of a freak show to win you know when you said earlier uh you know it's all going to collapse because it's so crazy like you know i would have said that a few years ago you know when trump started saying you know he won all 50 states people thought he was too crazy

and he was done as a politician now every republican no republican will admit that trump lost the election in in 2020 when they started with the anti-back stuff i thought well this is kind of crazy it ended up taking over the republican party um so i don't know we're we're in we're in like kind of we're We're having this radical experimentation here where there's education, polarization, and there's one side that's just, like, tuned out the media and, like, mainstream newspapers and, like, you know, scientific research and, you know, elites, they have all these problems. They've done all these things wrong. But one side is just completely tune them out and they're just listening to, you know,

white nationalists and conspiracy theorists all day. And so where this goes, like, for the Republican Party, whether this could actually win, like, I don't know. Like, I'm not going to say that it can't because I would have thought the modern Republican Party is too crazy to win, and it seems to be doing fine. Yeah, I don't think it can win because I think Trump is singularly. Maybe that's a theory. Yes, maybe.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, no, no, that's one theory. It's a Trump theory of everything when Trump has not been on the ballot, like in the recent elections. He's in the midterms in 2022. These midterms will be an amazing test.

So the idea is without Trump, you get the freak show, but without the one charismatic guy who can get these people to the polls. Yeah, it's an argument. I mean, otherwise, I mean, who knows? like Vance, you know, like people kind of like nationalism and socialism. You know, they like conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are kind of popular and unrepresented. They like to be entertained.

So who knows? Like maybe it does work. But I wouldn't predict this thing, you know, a couple of years from a presidential election. As a guy who agrees with, oh, agreed to do on VAC stuff and basically all these things, I've always found, I mean, of course, it was very offensive January 6th and lies, whatever it is. but I always regarded him I always felt like well if he could do everything that he wants to do

if he could wage a magic wand I think I'd basically agree with most things that he wants to do for instance at H-1B visas like he understands he's a businessman he's feeding red meat to some people but he understands that businesses need these people JD Vance was a humorless

weird guy who answers questions weirdly I don't know if you saw him on Joe Rogan where he says when Trump was it when the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler Pennsylvania Vance who was not even the nominee at the time got his rifle ran home and stood like a century by his door like what are you talking about why would you think you're next on the list and if you think you are next on the list why would you go home go to a hotel like like he's just weird he's a weird guy he's got a few things going for him And that he's very smart and he's got this communion-like feature.

This is how he comes out of nowhere and becomes Trump's vice president. He befriends all these Silicon Valley guys. He befriends Donald Trump Jr. Donald Trump Jr. goes to his dad and says, you know, you have to make it this guy. And so he does that. And what he does in a general election could be completely different. So, yeah, I get it. He's kind of weird and he's got his issues.

But he's also smart and he's also adaptive. So I wouldn't underestimate him. And what about this, Richard? This is going to sound corny. but I actually said this to someone else in an interview who I think interviewed me because they wanted me to be pessimistic and they wanted me to say

it's all over for the Jews and all this stuff. And my attitude is, listen, we need to be fighting like hell against this stuff because it's very dangerous stuff. But in my heart, I still love America and I still feel America is a decent place and I do not see America getting behind a truly ugly movement

that wears its ugliness on its sleeve without camouflage. I don't, I just don't see America doing that. I don't know if that's naive. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's weird. Like, it's kind of weird because if you just look at the discourse and kind of like how politicians are acting, like mainly Trump, but like, you know, other people too and kind

of what the discourse is like in the media and on social media in particular, you would think we were like, you know, ripping each other apart. You would think this is a civil war with, you know, hundreds of thousands of deaths. But like political violence is extremely low. People, you know, get offended when you say that after. or Charlie Kirk, but like, you know, people, we aren't killing each other in politics and large numbers. There's very few people who are, you know, actually going to the streets, committing violence. It seems to be just like we're all kind of larping and we're all kind of entertaining

ourselves. So, you know, I think in five, ten years, Jews will still be in America. I don't think there's going to be programs or anything like that. You know, whether how they're doing is probably going to depend on how this country is doing financially and economically. So, yeah, I mean, I think you can tune the, I think you could basically tune the stuff up. Maybe you shouldn't if you have good policy views and you care about the future of the country, you don't fight for the future of the country. But like if I was a Jewish person and like I thought that, you know, if I didn't pay attention to politics in five, 10 years, like I'm going to be targeted violently. Like I think that's, that's going to the far greater concern, at least according

to hundreds of videos on YouTube, are the robots that are coming not only to replace us, but to kill us. Yes. I think that's what you were. You should worry about the things everyone else is worried about. You should make your own judgment on AI, economic issues and then and then go from there. I mean, I'll tell you, then we'll let you go. As, you know, sometimes I get caught up in this stuff and I worry always about, you know, the limits of human nature because tribalism is real. Like, even I wonder, like, okay, I was able to think of the Jefferson and Adams and Madison as my founding fathers. But what if I was Indian and my skin was dark? Like, would that make it harder for me? And although I could be

wrong. I feel like, yeah, I think that would make it harder for me because I can look at a Porsche of George Washington and I can kind of see a dude like myself. If I'm Indian, can I look at George Washington? I just feel like it would be different. But anyway, having said all that and always wanting to be realistic, I sit in the olive tree, the restaurant above the comedy cellar sometimes. And you'll see Indian people and Mexican people and black people and Chinese people all sitting there together and not individually in their groups, but sometimes in mixed tables and socializing and and loving each other and and it's and it's quite beautiful and it's real and it's real now I don't know if that would survive scarcity I don't know what kind

of divisions would arise during another depression you know I don't know how how deep the bonds are faced with horrible situations but without that America is actually working I have to say, you do see it, at least in New York, and it is quite astounding and it's beautiful. I take great pride in it. And these people who would pretend that it's not true and want to ruin it, I don't believe they will prevail. But we still have to fight them. We still have to fight them. Yeah, I agree.

I mean, the perspective from Southern California is similar. I mean, there's these high schools that are, you know, half Asia and half Hispanic and part white. I mean, there's every combination. you can imagine. And it works. I mean, the people are getting along. They have businesses. I mean, there's a, these cities around here. It's fascinating. The Asian, Asian, uh, there you see Chinese writing and all these like, uh, ACT SAT prep centers. And then you see like these Hispanic businesses that are like auto mechanics. And it's like, they're all doing different things, but it all kind of works. Yeah. And you're right. It's just kind of like, human nature. People think human nature is like, we're all kind of racist. Like, no, human nature is like also like you want to get wealthy. You want to find partners. You want to. You want to find partners. You want. You want. on people who have similar interests and kind of the same sense, kind of sense of sense of humor and people you could relate to. So all that stuff is also human nature. And I think the promise of America is we, we amplify the good parts of human nature.

We de-amplify the bad parts. I see people like Tucker and Fuentes as trying to amplify the wrong things. And that's why this is a battle that's worth fighting. That's precisely right. They're trying to bring out the worst parts of human nature rather than play to the best. That's exactly right. All right, Richard Hernania, we're going to wrap it up because we have another podcast to do right after you. But we so appreciate you coming to do the show.

And I'm still waiting to meet you in person. At some point, you've got to get to New York. It's got to happen sooner or later. There'll be a book tour at one point, and it'll bring me to New York for sure. It won't be too much longer. Check out Richard on Twitter. Check out his substack. Check out his, he had a book on how wokeness developed.

And he's got another book coming out on some subject to be named later. on you. Thank you very much. Good night. Thank you, Dom.