The Eric Metaxas Show - #179 - Andrew Kolvet / John Zmirak

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric and John Zmirak react to Tucker Carlson’s surprising interview with Hunter Biden and discuss what they believe it reveals about Carlson’s political evolution, his relationship with Donald Trump, and his increasingly hostile posture toward Israel. Later, Turning Point USA’s Andrew Kolvet joins Eric to examine the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America, the “lower elite” driving radical politics, the viral $20 burrito debate, inflation, affordability, and why economic frustration can fuel revolutionary movements.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/0:00 Eric Opens The Show4:04 John Zmirak Joins5:01 Tucker Carlson Interviews Hunter Biden6:15 What Happened To Tucker Carlson?11:34 Tucker, Hunter Biden, And Israel15:36 Andrew Kolvet Joins17:02 The Rise Of The Democratic Socialists18:07 America’s Angry “Lower Elites”29:31 Gratitude Vs. Revolutionary Politics33:13 The Viral $20 Burrito Debate37:05 Why Inflation Fuels Radicalism40:36 Trump, The Economy, And Iran- -LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE:    / @ericmetaxas  #EricMetaxas #TheEricMetaxasShow #News #PoliticsChapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.

Hey, the folks, welcome to the program. This is the Eric Metaxis show. In a few minutes, we're going to be talking to my friend, the wonderful Andrew Colvette. He's a major figure at TPUSA, a very, very dear friend of Charlie's. He's currently the host of the Charlie Kirk show. And I want to talk to him in a few minutes about the Democratic Socialists of America. Before that, I want to talk with John Zmirak. And before that, I want to mention with Chris Himes, who's sitting here, my producer, we are doing, many of you know, Socrates in the city has just taken off like a rocket.

We were in Oxford, England recently. We did a retreat. We'll be airing a lot of those interviews. We have a cruise coming up next summer. A lot of people said, I can't come. It's like, no, no, no, it's not this August. Today's August 12th. It's not this August.

It's a year from now. We're doing a cruise in Sardinia and Corsica. We will stop at Elba as well. And we're going to visit the tomb of the Kandahar giant from Afghanistan. We can't talk about that right now. We'll get to that next week. But also, but so last night, we had a book club here in New York City. Now, there are book clubs all across the country.

If you go to SocratesandCity.com and look it up. the people are starting Socrates book clubs all around the country. And you can start one. It is free. In fact, it's better than free. We have a grant. We will ship you the books for free. Last night I read from my book on the American Revolution.

And I'm not joking. I was so captivated by this story. I wanted to keep going. I had to stop because we had like 35 minutes. I had to stop. But I was like, I want to keep going. Even though I wrote the book and know how it turns out, I just feel like these stories are, I don't know,

that I was really just thrilled to be reading it. And, you know, maybe I'm just in love with my own writing. I guess that's possible. But I don't think it's probable. Believe me, because I, I'm not. Exactly because they're popping up all over the country. I was talking gray suit, which you less. I didn't realize how many there were already.

They're all over the country. People are starting them all around the country. Well, there's way more that are beginning. And if you want to start one, you just go to Socrates and the city.com and you'll see the website. You can make inquiries. But what they are, they are, they're called just show up book clubs. You do not have homework.

You just show up and the reading is done there. Usually I'm not in the room to read. But if I am, if I'm visiting your town or whatever, I will do that. But it is, it's just wonderful. Then people go around and make comments and then you have like free food. and drinks and fellowship. It's just fantastic. Socrates in the city.

Yeah. And we showed up to, we just showed up to just show up. Yeah. Yes. And you never know when Eric might just show up to. I might just show up. That's,

you never know. So, but anyway, go to Soxicon city.com. And, and this is a, this is a big luxury cruise. This is like only 100 people.

It's a, it's the C cloud. One of the C cloud ships, the largest one. And so I think it may, maybe takes 100. 130 people or 120 or something like that. And it's already selling out quick.

They have certain cabin classes that have already sold out. So if you're interested in it and then the depressed price gets undepressed on October 1st. So if you want to join, you save 10% if you do it before October 1st. But I'm so excited about it. And we'll be talking more about that. But just tell your friends. So I guess this is. my opportunity to bring in our friend,

John Zmirak, for a few minutes. John Zmirak, thanks for coming on. Eric. Always a pleasure to talk to you. Well, people don't know that, you know, when I go for a run in Central Park, you're my go-to guy. I call you up, and usually I get

to reach you. You're one of these wonderful people that picks up his phone, and I get to have wonderful conversations about everything. You and I were talking about, I'm reading a book by Stefan Zweig. I guess it's his last book called The World of Yesterday. And you and I were talking about the origins of World War I. And I want to have that conversation with you another time.

We don't need to talk about that today. But I just wanted to say how wonderful it is to talk to you about all these subjects. But I do want to talk to you, John, since we don't have a ton of time before we get to Andrew Colvet. I want to talk to you about this is so bizarre. This is like something that you or I would make up that Tucker Carlson, has as his guest on his show, Hunter Biden. Now, my take of it, take on it, is this is as desperate a plea for ratings and relevance as I've ever seen.

This is Candace Owens level desperation. Please love me. Please look at my show. Who could we get? How about Hunter Biden? Can we get him? Yeah, we can get him. I mean, it is so bizarre.

It's like having Charlie Sheen on, you know, five years ago. We really want to talk to Hunter Biden. So the simple fact that Tucker Carlson would stoop to that for ratings is, tells me, you know, more than I need to know about Tucker Carlson. It's almost unbelievable. But some of the things that were said on that program, it's breathtaking. It's just breathtaking that he would have somebody that I would have thought a few years ago he would think of as the enemy. that Biden and company are destroying the nation. Now he's bringing him on.

It's like, let's hear your side of the story. So what do you have to say, John's Merak? I think it's more sinister than that. I think Tucker Carlson wants to destroy President Trump. He wants the Democrats to win. He is so angry that he couldn't gain control over Trump, that he couldn't exert influence, that Trump stopped listening to him.

Remember, let's do a little history. Thanks to the Dominion lawsuit, we were shown the text that Tucker Carlson wrote right after the election was stolen in 2020. His text, he said, basically he was saying he was glad Trump lost. He's always loathed the man. That was his reaction. Now, can you imagine having that reaction to the election of Joe Biden to being relieved that Donald Trump was ruined, it was out of the public square. That was Tucker Carlson's immediate response.

Well, my question, though, is how is it that we were all fooled into thinking that he was a, you know, a MAGA hero, that Tucker Carlson was not, that he was kicked off of Fox because he was too much of a, you know, truth speaker. I want to remind you also that Tucker Carlson was one of the people to call Sidney Powell a liar and a crack. On his show, he went after Sidney Powell and he was part of the effort to demonize and discredit Sidney Powell, who was a hero and was proven right, vindicated in her claims about the 2020 election.

Tucker Carlson, we have to remember, was old friends with Hunter Biden. In 2015, he asked Hunter Biden to write a letter of recommendation for his son Buckley to get into Georgetown. They were pals. He was pals. Wait a minute. He couldn't find another crackhead. That's right. He had to go to Hunter.

Not another one whose dad was currently vice president. No, but seriously, that's a big deal. That's a big deal. And I remember, and leave it to you, because you always remember this stuff. I remember when Tucker had our friend Sidney Powell on his program and how harsh he was with her. and I remember at the time thinking, this is weird because I thought Tucker was a good guy. Obviously, a few years later now, we realize,

oh, maybe not so much. Yeah. So on the one hand, I think we should just see Tucker Carlson as a showman. He is reinventing himself over and over again. He was a standard, invade the world, invite the world, neocon back when he wore the bow tie back in the 90s and early 2000. then he basically, I think if you're relieved that Joe Biden won,

it means I think that you voted for him. I think he voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Tucker Carlson was the person who flew to meet with President Trump in 2020 to convince him to impose the national COVID lockdowns. Tucker Carlson was one of the earliest proponents of the massive COVID lockdowns because he was panicking about the virus. Tucker Carlson then when Fox fired him, we were building up to the 2024 election, one of the most decisive elections in our country's history.

Tucker could have gone and done another show somewhere else, but he would have lost $20 million from Fox. Fox paid him. Their contract was that he had to do non-compete. He couldn't do another show until after the 2024 election. rather than do the patriotic thing and walk away from the money and go do a show and try to help beat

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Tucker obeyed the contract in order to collect the money and then when that expired and he got his $20 million then he started his weird podcast from his cabin in May and when was this again roughly

what year? 2020 after the election 2024 is when he had He didn't start doing a political show. He didn't do a political show until after the 2024 election. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this.

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Canadian new vehicle total registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. A political show. I mean, I was on his show in 2022, I think. I mean, he was already off of Fox by then, I thought. Or no, maybe he was still on Fox, but it was because I went to. He wasn't fired from Fox until, I think, like eight months before the election. And then he was quiet for those eight months.

Okay. Then he has this spiritual experience where he says he was attacked by a demon. I believe it. I believe that there's something preternatural, something dark happened. Instead of... But it says we just have a couple of minutes left. The fact that he had a conversation with Hunter Biden, I mean, we didn't talk about this, maybe another time. But I'm just fascinated that he is talking to, not just talking to Hunter Biden, not just having him on as his guest, but hearing

Hunter Biden's side of the story, which is insanity that the laptop was, was, you know, the Israelis were the ones pushing the idea. I mean, this is actually what they said. Right. So this was an Israeli conspiracy to elect Donald Trump so that Donald Trump would fight wars for Israel. That's Tucker, that's Hunter Biden's story and Tucker Carlson's story. So according to them, the laptop was fake, the deep state was protecting us, not from Russian disinformation, but from Israeli disinformation. So this feeds into the paranoid anti-Semitism that Tucker Carlson has adopted as his entire worldview.

Virtually every show is about how wicked Israel is and how dark Jewish influences. Tucker Carlson is the new Father Coglum, the new anti-Semitic demagogue. and he's forming a new political movement with Crank Thomas Massey and Marjorie Grifter Green. It, Tucker is...

Her actual name is Marjorie Taylor Grifter. Okay, there you go. So he has... I think his spiritual experience was real, and I think he's under demonic influence. Demonic influence is connected closely to anti-Semitism. The early Nazis, some of the most influential people were involved in the occult.

There's a great book, Salvation is from the Jews, and it has a whole chapter on the occult origins of Nazism. And it's not a surprise that if you want to persecute God's people, you're probably working with spirits that hate God, and hate his people, and hate the church, and hate the Bible. So I think there's something incredibly sinister going on with Tucker Carlson, The fact that he would, remember, this is the guy who had Tony Bobbolinsky, Hunter Biden's business partner on the show to talk about how corrupt Hunter Biden is.

Now he's broadcasting that all that stuff about Hunter Biden was just Israeli propaganda. Think how conspiratorial at it. The Israeli government was trying to elect Donald Trump. Why? Well, Tucker strongly suggests that Trump is now Israel's puppet. This is really dark, conspiratorial anti-Semitism. the kind that gets synagogues burned and Jewish people beaten up on the street. Yeah.

It's despicable. And I was, I'm, I'm afraid for America because you've got Muslim money, Arab money, pouring in, supporting far left pro-Sheria candidates and Tucker calls them on their side. We're at a time, John. Thank you. We'll have you back next week. Folks, I'm going to go now to my conversation with T.P. USA's Andrew Colvette. Here that is. Hey there, folks. I've been saying that 2026 must be the year of accountability, whether

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Talk to a real person and get the honest answers you deserve. Hey there, folks. Out of respect for you, I put on a jacket and tie. And I'm really sorry that my guest, who I guess he's my first. friend so I can say publicly he he didn't. Andrew Colvette, welcome to this program. Well, you know, I apologize. Nobody's perfect, Eric. I hope you'll forgive my sins.

You know, when I'm not in an outrage. It's an outrage. It feels like I'm trying too hard or something. So, you know, here I am. We have no choice but to put up with it. The good news is we don't care what you're wearing because we're interested in what you have to say because you actually have a lot to say in case people don't know who you are. you are one of the main

spokespeople what a word for TPSA you are my friend and you were one of Charlie's closest friends and you you know you you have a lot to say that I'm interested in so where do we start

we want to talk about the madness of I mean I keep saying we're in the third existential crisis of our history you got the American Revolution you got the Civil War we are now genuinely facing an existential crisis. This is not just, you know, a weird time. This is something where the very foundations of who we are as a nation are being attacked by cultural elites.

And so the one manifestation of that is, of course, this communist incursion masquerading as Democratic Socialists. So what about that? Any thoughts on the Democratic Socialists? No thoughts. Nothing. Next question. No. I mean, it's so, but I mean, it's almost like,

it's so crazy, it's so ridiculous. They're at war with what we like to think of as America. They hate America. They hate everything that we have been and have aspired to be. and they're openly at war with it, which is fascinating. Yeah, you know, something I've been really thinking a lot about lately, Eric, is this idea that it is something called lower elite or, you know, lower, lesser nobles, if we're going to use sort of like the French revolutionary,

the Bolshevik terms. You know, we told generations, really about, we're at about like three generations in a row that they should go to college and get it and if they do that, then everything's going to go swell for them. That they're going to be rich, happy, influential, they're going to have prestige. They're going to have all the things that they thought that they wanted. Well, it turns out, you know, life isn't a direct line between do X and get Y. Oftentimes the market changes.

Oftentimes, the value of a degree change, especially when you flood it with tons and tons of people that shouldn't have probably gotten a degree in the first place. Nevertheless, you know, you're seeing this come out of some of the rhetoric from DSA, folks, right? I was just looking at this. I'll look at my phone really quick. DSA co-chair, Megan Romer admits her political organization is composed of, quote, downwardly mobile, disproportionately educated, disproportionately white members as she compares America's Democratic Socialist with the Marxist Workers Party of Belgium. So what this tells you is the underlying social economic, emotional motivations of the lower elite.

And I just want to like put it out there for everybody. Beware of the lower elite. These are a very, very destructive, envious, bitter group of people that are, yeah, disproportionately highly educated, but they're also smart enough to be disproportionately destructive, right? They're bitter. I think we have to clarify, though, when we say educated. Yeah, go ahead.

I just want to be clear when we say educated, right? Credentials. They're idiots. they know nothing. They have empty degrees. They have taken mostly courses that are just dumb propaganda. I mean, we have to be clear.

I want to be clear as somebody who went to Yale University, I speak with authority on this. It's just nonsense. And so they try to impress you. This is really what the devil does, right? He tries to push you back to try to say like, you know,

you don't know anything and you don't know. Yale University, a degree from Yale or Harvard or any of these places is worthless. It's worse than worthless. It is a guarantee that you have spent four years and a zillion dollars surrounded by bad ideas by a climate that says if you don't agree with these bad ideas, you'll be ostracized. So we have had decades of people graduating from these quote unquote elite institutions who have become confused.

They did not enter confused, most of them, but they get out and they think, okay, I got to tow the party line. You know, the UN is the greatest thing in the world. There's probably probably no God. And, you know, they really have not been educated. So I want to be clear that when you say they're credentialed, that's right. But they are, they couldn't be less educated. I mean, any homeschooled kid, graduating from high school knows dramatically, infinitely more almost, than these people.

No, I completely agree, Eric. And yeah, to be very clear, highly educated just means which degree do you check off on your little, your form? What did you get? Wisdom is something completely different, right? Wisdom is the knowledge of eternal things and the ability to make good decisions, to be able to make wise decisions, right? Now, these people are not wise, right, because they're trying to take down the most successful form of government ever conceived of in human history because they're bitter.

And that's the whole point, right? Because, you know, there's multiple of these, you know, clips that you, DSA's Francis Gill says people who are highly educated in this country were promised a path of economic success. but really what we're seeing is this huge downward mobility problem because in our society, the scales are so tipped in one direction to benefit the rich. Okay. So this is what you need to look at. The French Revolution led by lower elites. The Bolshevik Revolution led by lower elites. The rise of DSA led by lower elites.

Now they need the peasantry. They need the third worlders. They need the new immigrants to get just sheer numbers, right? At this point. But that is that is it. The kernel of truth is really, really fascinating to me because it turns out we probably had it more approximately correct in, let's say, the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 60s, and then everything went haywire, where only a certain number of people were actually smart enough to go to university, get educated.

They were actually, they had the aptitude, the desire, the ambition. They were curious about knowledge. and when you flood the universities with a bunch of middling intellects that really have no business being educated beyond their intelligence, what you're doing is you're actually diluting the academy. You're giving them financial incentives to just keep growing the pie bigger because they get more money out of it. You're also creating the incentives to build huge buildings and to be wasteful and you get the government involved and then the loans aren't really secure because who really cares if they get paid, you know, the federal government just going to write a Blake check. And before you know it, you've got a glut of highly credentialed, unwise, petulant little children that thought they were going to be rich and successful because they got a sociology degree from, you know, state college. And now they're upset. They're pissed off and they're disgruntled. And they want to say now they're angry. Yeah. They're angry. They're bitter. And they want someone to blame. Who should they blame? Enter Tucker Carlson.

and Candice Owens to give them someone to blame the Jews, the Zionists, whatever. You've got to have a scapegoat, whether that's billionaires, whether it's Jews, or whether it's their, you know, some daddy issue, whatever the kids, I mean, Margaret Singer was mad that her mom died because she thought she had too many kids. I mean, whatever that emotional trigger is for these people, then they just get, you know, amassed into this angry, bitter rage of a movement. And they want to burn it all down. But, you know, this is legitimately the insane clown party.

These people are not to be trusted. They couldn't be trusted with a country this large and complex. I believe they will eventually prove that out. It's just a matter of how much destruction will we have to suffer through as a country before people wake up to this madness. But of course, we cannot help but be entertained watching people like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer try to deal with this. Notice that nobody's heard a peep from Nancy Pelosi.

Is she in her basement playing ping pong? I don't know. But it is fascinating that the old guard, they don't have a clue. It's like they're coming for them. They can see it. And they think, well, how can I, you know, be the last one eaten? How do I do? Well, it's interesting.

As I've been studying this, Eric, you know, there's this other writer. It's Velfredo Paredo, right? and it's the idea the circulation of the elites theory. These DSA people, if you think they're just kind of doing this out of pure emotion, no, this is the problem with smart, stupid, stupid, stupid people, right? Or stupid smart people is they're smart enough to know the principles. They've read the books. They understand how to write a college paper.

And once you get a theory, then you think you can own the world. You think you can dominate the political discourse. One of the reasons elites and academics and middling sort of lesser nobles, as you might call them, are so obsessed with this. this stuff is because they'd never built a thing in their life. They'd never put in their name on the front of a paycheck. And they hate the American system because it's decentralized. I mean, relative to our size, I mean, you look at like England or you look at Japan with Tokyo, their main city represents a massive, massive amount of population influence and cultural

force, right? Compared that to the United States. We've got New York, Los Angeles, you got Seattle, you got Houston, Dallas, Miami. It's really difficult to control the whole. country, even from one of those power nodes, right? It's naturally decentralized, which is one of our strengths as a country. It's tough. I mean, it's built in. That's the whole idea of 1787, right? Like, let's build something that is so decentralized that it's hard for anyone to seize power.

Right. It's in our government structures and our constitution, our founding documents, but it's also in our geography, right? The founders spread power out over not only three branches of government. but they spread it out over the states to the federal government. They spread it geographically and over time. So in order for a political movement to take power and take root in this country, really you have to sustain it for six years at least, right,

and get enough turnover and enough geographical locations to do it. But also just from a pure commerce perspective, right? You've got these power nodes all over the country, and it's tough to control America because we are decentralized in so many different ways. And what the elites, the lower elites do, is they feel disgruntled. They feel like they deserve more power and more say. If only we all did it their way, everything would be better.

And so they want to, they're prone to being attracted to these authoritarian movements, like DSA, which wants to seize the means of production, wants to get rid of the Senate, wants to get rid of the presidency. All they want to, you know, pack the Supreme Court. Whatever their idea is, it's a power grab because guess what? That makes them more important again. That makes them the, you know, philosopher kings of America. And that's not what this system is about.

It's not why we've thrived. It's not why we've been so innovative and so rich and so many things. But this idea is that Pareto was one of the Italian elite theorists. So these people pass this stuff around. I mean, this is what they, you know, in their little handbooks. And he, you know, preceded the fascists in Italy and Mussolini. He believed that elites run society and they always become corrupt and sclerotic. And then they get overthrown and replaced by new elites and new values.

So they believe that their time has come to be the new elites and to be the new elites. throw out the old corrupt elites. And certainly you could point to school of our elites. I think just to remind our audience, ladies and gentlemen, all that stuff is nonsense and these people are crazy. Well, let's be clear, okay, if it's not in the Bible, if it's not in the vision of the American founders for America, you can just skip it. I can save you time.

You can just skip it. It's garbage. But these people do not acknowledge the authority of the Bible. They do not acknowledge the founding as a good thing. They don't believe in any of it. And so I want to say again, they're at war with America as we've existed for 250 years. They're at war with it. They want to tear it down.

And any chance they get, they will do it. And we're watching them try, Andrew. That's clearly what is happening. We're watching them try. Yeah, but I just think it's important to understand the ideas that are circulating in their circles and what's motivating. No, no, no. I don't mean it's not. Of course it is. And I'm glad for you to do that. But I just, I just want to remind people that, like, there have been other insane theories. So yes, we need to be kind of familiar with it, but we need to understand they're crazy and this stuff can't work. It's like fake math. I mean, and you think about the Christian principle, right? We, we humble ourselves before a king, the king in heaven. We come under the authority of Scripture. We come under the authority of Jesus, our Lord. And there is a humility in that. And I will tell you, at some level, if you want to throw all the theories and all the, elites and all this, you know, gobbly gook out the window and you just want to say,

what is the dividing line? It's gratitude or ingratitude. I mean, conservatives by far are way more thankful for the blessings of this country. That's why we're still patriotic. That's why we still fly the flag. It's why we still go out for 250 and July 4th. And progressives are ultimately disgruntled in their core, in their ideological belief. And they are, they lack gratitude. They lack thankfulness for the blessings that we have received. And we should be kissing the ground upon which we walk if you are born in this country in this time. We are the most blessed people that have ever lived. And the fact that there are still this many people that cannot wrap their head around to the fact that they should be thanking God every single second of their day

and lives that they get to be an American in 2026. It really is a testament to our fallen nature. Really, Well, it's interesting because I've been talking about this wherever I go because I'm rocking about my book on the American Revolution and I say that many Americans today are uncomfortable. Liberals are uncomfortable with celebrating anything. They just want to focus on the negative and they have really bought into it's an Antichrist's spirit that says you are your sins. So it's Satan the accuser saying you're bad. America's bad.

The Christian view is, well, if we've done anything bad, we can recognize it, we can repent, we can be forgiven, we can be restored. It's a beautiful story and we can celebrate a restoration. We can celebrate that God has delivered us from our past or our sins and we should celebrate. But the left doesn't know how to do that. They're mired in the 1619 project and that view of things, which is fundamentally negative and which is fundamentally to curse the country and to say you're bad. You're bad in your bones.

You can never change. If you're white, you are a racist. If you are an American, you are guilty. That's where they are. That's where they're stuck. So to celebrate to say, like, what a wonderful country, what a joyful thing that we get to live here and spread these ideas around the world.

And that doesn't compute for them. They have to be bitter and negative. They have bought that, basically. That's where they're coming from. And we're seeing it everywhere. Yeah, and I just think it's important to kind of understand the makeup of it. I totally agree, Eric. And, you know, but you think about why are so many of these, you know, progressive white kids so obsessed with this stuff?

It's because they're, you know, they're bitter that they're not richer or more influential or more prestigious. And they thought they, you know, would have more purchasing power. So the whole system must be rigged against them. And they're smart enough to understand a concept and smart enough to use it to destructive purposes. but they're not smart enough to understand how dumb they are. And so that's the makeup of what we are dealing with, where a little bit of gratitude and a little bit of humility would go so far with so many of these people.

And I find it fascinating to just kind of understand it. And by the way, this is kind of, you know, it kind of goes full circle with this whole burrito debate that launched on the internet that I accidentally sparked and didn't mean to. But it's one of those debates where, you know, multiple things can be true. you know, I said... First of all, first of all, say something about that because I was very busy this weekend.

I kind of missed it. And I didn't, but I certainly missed the fact that you had a hand in sparking the great $22 burrito debate. Can you tell it? Just give us the background on this because I was, I don't know what I was doing. I was speaking in South Carolina.

I didn't have time to... You were doing what you were supposed to do as an American, actually getting off at the internet and paying attention to real people. Yes. I encourage. Yeah. So, you know, basic.

there was this ongoing debate. I think Matt Walsh was kind of spearheading it, talking about the affordability crisis, and he wants the Republican Party to focus more on it, right? Because people are still struggling from, you know, the inflation of the Biden era and COVID money printing and all this stuff. And so essentially what happened, you know, Blake, who I also work with was kind of taking the other position,

and I just felt like that was a little bit dismission. Blake, Blake was saying, you know, actually prices haven't gone up relative to earning. that much compared to other things in the in the markets. And I was reminded of, and I like to spar with Blake a little bit. And I was reminded of a conversation I had with a student at our chapter leadership summit. We did these roundtable discussions, heard their perspective, learned from them, tried to correct air, by the way, that's one of our jobs. When we talk to young people's, we correct air. But we also listen and we understand that part of our job at Turning Point is to be

their voice more on a national scale. So I thought it was just a perfect antidote. He said, you know, this is a Christian kid. He's trying to marry his fiance. I think he's like 20. He wants to get married and have kids and he wants a career and he's working holding down a job. This is not a whiner, right? And I probably should have included that in the tweet. I think eventually I got to that. But he said, you know, doing everything right. But, you know, at some point, I just feels like a burrito shouldn't cost 20 bucks. Now, if you have met a college student, in the last 40 years, you realize they all basically live off of burritos and pizza. Like that's one of their staple items, right?

And they're on the run and they're going to class. And so they stop at Chipotle and they get the steak with the rice and the black beans. And they go. And that's going to run them about 15 bucks. They get, you know, some places, if you tax tip, maybe it's 17, 18, 19 bucks. So it sparked this whole thing. A lot of half the internet was like, a burrito does not cost 20 bucks. And I'm like, I don't care.

Like, if it's 15. it might as well be 20 to them. And then it sparked a whole other debate about, you know, whether or not kids should be cooking from home. I mean, yeah, absolutely. Young people should be learning how to be thrifty. Absolutely. But my point is to ignore the lived experience of your voters is political malfeasance.

And then, Eric, it became a proxy for, you know, like foreign policy and like the war in Iran. I don't know how that happened, but essentially it became like, well, hey, prices are expensive because, you know, President Trump decided to go into Iran. That's not at all. Let me just, let me just because I never talk about this. Prices are expensive because of Joe Biden, the auto pen president, who made a dirty deal with Bernie Sanders that we will steal the presidency from you, but we will govern as though you were president. They destroyed the American economy. I know that. I was here for that. You were here for that. They destroyed the economy. And Trump is doing his best to deal with it, but let's not pretend that we were handed a decent economy. We were

handed an economy in tatters. I cannot believe how prices went up under Biden. It was astonishing to me. So the fact that they haven't come down dramatically is another story, but they did not go up under Trump. So to blame the Iranian war, I don't think that that's fair. It's an element, but it's certainly not at the heart. Listen, multiple things can be true. at once, which is what the internet struggles with most. So nuances is the death of the internet, right? So the internet is the death of nuance, rather. So let's just correct some air and some basic macroeconomics.

Okay, go back to Milton Friedman. Milton Friedman said, D.C. is the only place that can create inflation, because D.C. is the only place that has a printing press. It is about how many dollars chasing how many goods. So when you get to COVID, right? and we're talking about 15 days to slow the spread. The world shuts down for those 15, 30, 60 as it kept going days. We actually had a contraction in the market, not a complete contraction, but fewer goods,

but there were more dollars out there. And then we just kept spending. And then Biden just tacked it on in multiple, multiple ways. And your point is absolutely well made. He made a deal with the far left progressives. He staffed his government with them. He was checked out. He did not have the mental acuity or the energy.

to basically manage a bunch of, you know, misfit teens that were running his, his administration, his lower elites that were running at that point, upper elites. But the point is all of that is actually completely correct. And when you get inflation of 30% over four years on basic goods, not to mention some categories, inflation exceeded the sort of overall rate of inflation, right? Health care, things like that, education. So you're not going to get a lot of those prices. ever back down. Okay? That would be deflation, actually, and you don't want that. The only way to get through it is to balance your budget. We've got to get back to these basics. Eric, balancing the budget means that you're not going to get the monetary growth and the printing to keep up with

the deficit. So if you're running $2 trillion deficits, guess what happens? You get inflation. Okay. Milton Friedman was a proponent of setting the monetary policy at increasing it three, increasing the money supply, 3% every year setting it, forget it. He wanted to get economists out of the game of playing with the money supply because they too often were either slow to react or overreacted sparking inflation. So the only way you're going to stop inflation, which is a killer, by the way, inflation is how you get radical politics like we're experiencing right now. I wish everybody understood inflation and supply and demand, basic macroeconomics, because it is the gateway to understanding your modern financial world.

So if you want to do that, you want to balance the budget, you've got to stop printing money when a crisis comes up, and you've got to stop increasing the money supply like we did during COVID. All of this is radicalizing, because guess what? If you get inflation, guess who benefits? It's the elites, the people that own assets, that own equities, that own homes, because those just shot up in value. The people who get extraordinarily poor during inflationary periods are the working class,

the hourly workers, the salaried workers. And that's where you get this K-shaped economy, right? Where the halves have more and they have-nots feel like they're getting squeezed and you're getting the middle classes getting squeezed in the middle and you've got more poor people and you got more rich people. That is a recipe for radicalized politics. And it all starts with monetary policy, bad monetary policy, bad fiscal policy. Okay.

So the question is, President Trump is a genius. Scott Bissent is a genius. What do you think they're thinking about right now with everything you just said? Yeah, I just had Scott on the show, actually, and it was a fantastic conversation. I mean, you've got to grow your way out of this. That's the key. Now, you've got to actually get investment in businesses. You've got to get small businesses started, both of which we have record growth on both fronts.

So record number of small business filings, record number of investments in, you know, factories, new, new kitchens at the restaurant, things like that. Those are skyrocketing. Now, you don't turn the Titanic on a dime. You don't turn it quickly, right? You've got to slowly move it away. And we're seeing that, actually, in a lot of these numbers. You're seeing wage growth outpace inflation for the lowest 25% of earners and all the way up to the 75%, right? So that's working in middle class. families are seeing their wages grow faster than inflation. Inflation was brought down. Really in 2023, it started coming down. I mean, you got to sort of be honest about the calendar here, but Trump has completely kept it there and done a great job with it. Now, we also have to be honest because I don't like lying to people. The Iran war did cause a supply side shock on the energy markets. Okay. So that is going to create some short-term inflationary pressure on because, you know, fuel is factored into your, you know, how you drive your car. I want to ask you because I know I know we're running out of time here.

I have to ask you, it seems to me that one thing the president has not done, because he's deliberately K-G, he doesn't like to say what he's really doing. The Iran thing is a major reset globally, and he hasn't really made that case. People like Rod Martin, I hope everybody is aware of Rod Martin. Rod Martin brilliantly is explaining in his substack what the president's doing. so much going on and it is important. But the president has been pretty quiet about that. He doesn't really explain why we need to do this and how it's not, you know, just about doing Bibi Netanyahu's bidding. This is actually in America's best interest dramatically.

No, I totally agree. You know, I'm sort of the jury is out on the wisdom of the Iranian war, but I absolutely can acknowledge what he was doing. And if we're ultimately, successful in this. Yeah, you're talking about a massive geopolitical reset. He started this chain of events with Venezuela and the energy market there, the oil market there, which was really becoming like a playground for the CCP, Russian, Iranian, Cuban actors. So to take that chess piece off the board was a huge first step. Iran was going to be the biggest one of all the risks, right? I mean, it's a bigger country. It's more populous. It's more powerful. But yeah, if you take that off the board, here's what's interesting actually. And Scott Besson talked about this with me is that eventually

what's going on when it comes to, you know, the Strait of Hormuz being this choke point, well, it's eventually going to become irrelevant. So Iran can only play this card for so long because the Saudis, UA, E, they're building pipelines and routes around the Strait of Hormuz to get that oil, get that energy to market. So if you outlast them, they're going to lose this card to play in the future, which could be a powerful new reality. in the Middle East. It kills me that we're at a time. Andrew, my friend,

it's a joy just to talk to you. You encourage me, you cheer me up. God bless you. To be continued. Thank you so much. Next time I want the pink shirt, though, Eric. I'll find it. Thank you.

I will find it. That's my promise to you. Thank you for having. And the American people. Thank you.