The Majority Report with Sam Seder - Best Of 2025 10 Ways To Prepare For Trumps Return W Daniel Hunter

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

It's Hump Day and we have a Best of 2025 episode but first we revisit Sam's infamous war on Christmas segment on CNN from 200 years ago. Original air date: November 11, 2024. Sam speaks with Daniel Hunter, activist & co-author of the book What if Trump Wins?: An Interactive Pick-Your-Path Adventure. Check out Daniel's book here: https://www.amazon.com/What-Trump-Win... Check out Daniel's piece entitled "10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won": https://wagingnonviolence.org/2024/11... All that and more. The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Check out IceRRT.com to find an ICE rapid response team nearest to you. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: DELETEME: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/MAJORITY and use promo code MAJORITY at checkout. SUNSET LAKE: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

with Sam Cedar. The destiny of America is always safer in the hands of the people than in the conference rooms of any elite. Sam Cedar. They are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred. We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The majority report with Sam Cedar. Have I got a feeling you've been changed? It is Wednesday, December 24th, 2025.

My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live to tape steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. This is where I would place. some bells, some jingle bells, or some happy Hanukkah music. What that is. Folks, it is Christmas Eve Day.

Is that what you call it? Is that what you call it? It's called Christmas Eve Day? Well, it's not Christmas Eve because it's daytime. I mean, I think you could just say Eve Day. Christmas Eve Day. It's Christmas Eve. whatever already attacking christmas um tomorrow is uh christmas and um so we have started our

end of year vacation which means a series of best of shows and this ladies and gentlemen is the first i am communicating to you from the past and have recorded this prior to today and um we're going to feature a best of from, I just had it right in front of me, Daniel Hunter, Daniel Hunter, educator and activist. And we brought him on the show on November 13th, 2024.

If you'll recall that our best of year, our best of fiscal year goes from November 1st, in the prior year to November 1st of this year. And we brought him on a couple of days after the Trump election to talk about how to deal with Donald Trump. This is back before we knew exactly what Donald Trump was going to do. But we had a good sense that there was going to be a problem. And there was going to be a certain amount of authoritarianism. And knock on wood, maybe.

we have gone through the worst of it. Maybe we've got a while to go. In terms of the threat of like, you know, full capitulation, I don't know, Brian's shaking his head and he's saying, but nevertheless, this is important stuff. And we're going to, the best of us over the course of this week or so that we're on vacation are going to sort of track the year a little bit, at least a little bit. these were voted by you folks and by us whatever it's not it's not like we have an accountant that's overlooking the votes um so stick around with that now emma is uh out today even though we're all out but uh she'll be back tomorrow which is actually we're not going to record tomorrow it's everything's getting screwed up but just so you know we're not going to be doing anything

tomorrow on christmas day because apparently that's when people people get together and open presents and do other stuff like that. Celebrate Jesus, which is what I'm going to be doing. Celebrate Jesus. Now, I am actually, generally, I don't celebrate Christmas. But I am going to be at my girlfriend's parents' house. And without my kids as a shield. so

I'm you know I love that you have to do this and I'm not going to I don't please do not please do not comment on this but I will it's I'm there's no drink in there at this house

yeah so you have to do us some gummies going on or something like that but um nevertheless words to jingle bells? I know the words of jingle bells. I know all that. I'm not going to be doing

any of the Christmas caroling, but that does happen. You should participate a little bit. You know what I did last year? You know what it was very effective for me last year? I don't know if you remember this. Matt, maybe you remember. But when I got there, I, within a day, I had enormous pain in my tooth. I needed an emergency root canal. So I was able to stay in the room. And I was in

agonizing pain. Agonizing pain. I've never experienced before. But not as bad as Christmas. But not as bad as celebrating Christmas. So this is going to be, this is sort of like a first for me. But, you're going to injure yourself.

You're going to bite a rock. You're going to put a rock in your mouth to just jump. But before anybody thinks that I'm some type of Johnny come lately to the war on Christmas, I want to play what I think is my favorite appearance on cable television. People don't know. Like you people all too young. But from like 2004 to 2015, I was on cable news multiple times a week.

And back in 2000, I think it was from 2004 or five. I mean, the aspect ratio is different. Yeah, there you go. I was on CNN. I did a lot of MSNBC, but I did some CNN back then. And I had this dream in the back of my head that I could somehow get on with Bill O'Reilly. Because he was like one of the biggest war on Christmas warriors. But I was blacklisted from Fox News, which I found out later.

But I got a call from CNN to do that very thing. And I'm brought on with Bob White, who of course was the head of concerned women for America. Is he trans or what's going on? No, it just you can't listen, when the women are concerned, They can't be trusted to run an organization. Get us a six-year-old white man here. This is like you guys thinks things were bad now. Back then they were really bad.

And this is only like 20 years ago. Sweetheart, you can't run the organization. Yeah, just let me hit us. The broads are concerned. And here is the best thing, the most fortuitous thing to happen. You're in a room. You're just looking out of camera. that you don't see anybody.

And they went to Bob White. They were going to go to Bob White first right at the beginning. But his earpiece, there was something wrong. So they went to me first. And that really ruined everything for Bob White. Do you see how many Christmas miracles you've experienced with your root canal and with this guy's earpiece is not working?

Not only the root canal, the root canal, my girlfriend's uncle is a dentist and so I got like the least expensive root canal one could ever imagine like I almost wanted to like have one I just had another one and I was trying to hold out but all right so Sam keeps giving dental surgery every time he comes for Christmas here is me on this is my probably my favorite clip ever although only rivaled by the time where I was on Dylan Radigan with Thomas Friedman and I said, don't you think the 1% is telling the 99% suck on this? I get to say those words to Thomas Friedman, which is a whole other story. But this was from 20 years ago, and it's my contribution to the war on Christmas.

Well, Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, a Christmas tree or a holiday tree? What should it be? Depends on whom you ask. We've seen controversy, most notably prompted by the White House. It sent out cards, this card, matter of fact, wishing a holiday season of hope and happiness. No mention of Christmas. Some thoughts now on the subject. Sam Teeter hosts the show Majority Report on Air America Radio.

Bob Knight is the director of the Culture and Family Institute. It's affiliated with the Christian Conservative Organization Concerned Women for America. Gentlemen, great to have you with me. Thanks for having us on. All right, well, let's start with the holiday card. What do you think, Sam? Well, listen, as far as the war on Christmas goes, I feel like we should be waging a war on Christmas. I mean, I believe that Christmas, it's almost proven that Christmas has nuclear weapons can be an imminent threat to this country,

that they have operative ties with terrorists, and I believe that we should sacrifice thousands of American lives in pursuit of this war on Christmas, and hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Well, Sam, is it a war on Christmas? war on Christians, war on over political correctness, or just a lot of people with way too much time on their hands. Well, I would say probably if I was to be serious about it, too much time on their hands. But I'd like to get back to the operational ties between Santa Claus and Al-Qaeda. I don't think that exists, Bob. Well, we have intelligence.

We have intelligence. You have intel. And where exactly does your intel come from? Well, we have tortured an elf. And that's actually how we got the same information from our. Al-Labi. That's exactly the same way the Bush administration got this info about the operational ties between al-Qaeda and Saddam. Okay, Bob Knight, Sam is tying in now the lack of information regarding weapons of mass destruction and somehow moving that into Santa Claus. Help me out here.

What's going on? I mean, is this a war on Christians, a war on Christmas? Is this too much political correctness? Yeah, well, it was very first I want to compliment him on his dry humor, but this is actually a very serious subject because a lot of people are waking up to realize that the war on Christmas is really the culmination of a war on faith and the idea that the public square has to be cleansed of any religious expression, particularly Christian religious expression. You know, one time happy holidays was a welcome addition to Merry Christmas. So you wouldn't say the same thing over and over again, but a lot of people now see it as a substitute and it's very gratuitous at times. and it's actually insulting when you're talking about Christmas Day or a Christmas tree,

and you can't bring yourself to use the word for fear of offending someone. In the name of diversity, we're a less free country when that happens. It's interesting, Sam, because, I mean, this is a time where, if anything, we want to be even more sensitive to diversity, considering everything that's happening with regard to war on terror. We're learning so much more about different religions, different ethnicities, and trying to become more of one versus being segregated. Yeah, well, Kara, I mean, listen, I would like Bob to tell me who is the person who has been offended by someone saying Merry Christmas to them? I've never met that person.

I don't celebrate Christmas, but if someone says Merry Christmas to me, and I either think, well, it's a little bit odd. It's like me saying happy birthday to you on my birthday. But, you know, no one cares. But I'll tell you this. As we waged the war on the war on the war on the war on Christmas on our radio show, News Corp, Fox News, those people who have started this entire War on Christmas meme, fake war, they're having a holiday party. President Bush saying happy holidays, Tokyo Rose, Laura Bush, saying happy holidays to her dogs in the video.

I'm sure you've seen it. I mean, these are the things that we should be talking about when we are waging this war in a we should be equating it to the war on Christmas. What else would Bob Knight have an opportunity to do? How else would he get on television if he wasn't pretending to be attacked? You know, this would be funny, except it is serious to a lot of people who have seen their faith cleansed from the public square systematically. Are you suggesting, Bob, that someone can't celebrate Christmas in America? I mean, tell me about the person who can escape these soldiers.

Go ahead, Bob. Go ahead, Bob. I'm talking about things like in Ridgeway, Wisconsin, where the school children in the public school were told they couldn't see sing silent night. So they substituted, oh, cold night. You know, I think when you take Jesus out of anything, it gets pretty cold, so it's apt. But it's outrageous. They had children actually singing a bastardized version of Silent Night. Well, you see, Christmas trees called holiday trees. But I don't consider Jesus the Messiah. And so if you're going to ask me to praise Jesus, I'm going to be a little offended. Now, I don't think the singing of the song that you can find other songs to sing. So what about Silent Night?

So because you're offended, none of those other kids can celebrate the great heritage of Christmas carols and Christmas music. No, I'm not the one who said they couldn't do that. No, I'm not the one you're a grinch, sir. That's what you are. Why are you trying to force conversions on people? Let me ask you guys. Yes, you are. Yes, you are.

Absolutely. Let me ask you guys about the pressure that's been put on on stores, for example. American Family Association called for the boycott of Target stores, the weekend after Thanksgiving, accusing the chain of banning the phrase Merry Christmas from its stores. A charge that Target denies. pressure from conservative groups look like it has an impact here, complaints from the Catholic League. Walmart agreed to create a Christmas page on its website rather than a holiday page, and then Macy's, which is perhaps more closely associated with Christmas than any other retailer,

sent activists a letter touting its use of Merry Christmas and ads and store windows after it was the target of a small-scale boycott last year. I mean, this is pretty amazing, all these boycotts of pressuring all these stores, these businesses, Bob. Well, these businesses are taking millions and millions of businesses. dollars in from Christians in particular and others who celebrate Christmas giving gifts in the name of the Christmas season and yet they're so worried about offending people like my opponent here that they don't want to mention the word Christmas people are going to holiday time I'm not your opponent but I do agree with Bob you are I do agree with Bob that I think what should happen is companies should calculate

how much money they're getting from people who are celebrating Christmas and provide exactly that much amount of Merry Christmas because that is exactly how I would want any type of religious holiday to be celebrated. Would we be having this same argument about Hanukkah? I'm curious. Would we have the same, would argument about Hanukkah? It's not the same as Christmas.

It's not a major holiday for one thing. And this is the Christmas season. That's why billions of dollars are really being spent. It's Christmas. Well, it'll also have to interspecta for a minute. I don't know, Bob. People might argue that that Hanukkah is just as big as Christmas. Well, I don't agree with Bob.

I would have to agree with Bob. None of them says Hanukkah's as big as persons. No, Hanukkah is not a high holiday. Our high holidays are Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which I'm sure Bob has been protesting why there aren't more Yom Kippur sales or Rosh Hashanah sales. Well, I mean, why shouldn't they be, right, Bob? Well, if that was associated with that holiday, then maybe I would join you, but it never has been. Bob, have you ever protested Martin Luther King Day not being celebrated?

I mean, do you resent when people don't say happy Martin Luther King Day? month out in advance you know let's put this in perspective let me be in and Bob I want you to be able to respond but what's interesting is the CNA USA today Gallup poll the question was is it okay for people to say Merry Christmas 88% said yes 11% said no yeah well 96% of American celebrate Christmas so why would we care about the what's the war Bob 4% that get offended by it I know anybody who'd be offended by someone wishing someone a merry person I don't care why are we making all the changes Bob I

I mean, we do. Bob, where's the war? Where are the battle lines? I mean, you can tell me that silent night can be found in one school in Wisconsin. That's just one example. That's not the totality. So don't create that's a cell. The totality is 80.

You brought it up. The totality is 88% of the American population has no problem with it. You don't care about the people who don't celebrate Christmas. Fine. But I don't celebrate Christmas. And I don't care. So why are we wasting everybody's time? It's so that you can fundraise. That's why, Bob.

And I think you know that's true. Bob, I got to let you have the final thought, Bob. Okay, you know, when the Nazis moved into Austria in 1926. Oh, that is an expensive, Bob, to raise Nazis. From the schools. That is right about it. Hold on, let Bob. Hold on, Sam.

Let Bob make his point. Let Bob make his point. Go ahead, Bob. Okay, Maria Trapp wrote the story of the trap singers that's in the sound of music. And she said she sent her kids to school after the Nazis took over. And they came home and said, Mama, we can't say the word Christmas anymore. It's now winter holiday.

I think that ought to disturb people that were moving toward that kind of attitude in this country. The Puritans also outlawed Christmas. The founding fathers of this country would find you in Massachusetts if you celebrated Christmas at the beginning. So don't talk about Nazis, Bob. I think that's really inappropriate. Why do you have to bring hate to this Christmas and a holiday season? That's so sad, Bob. It's the truth.

You ought to read the book yourself. Bob, it's just sad that you have to raise Nazis when you're talking about Christmas in the holiday season. And we all know that Christmas actually Tannenbaum, it's a German holiday. Bob, I'm really, really disappointed in you. I'm starting to disappoint you, but if you're, if you can't understand the force of history. To bring up Nazis, Bob, oh. Oh, who are you calling a Nazis? Gentlemen, who are you calling a Nazi?

We got to let it there. I'm not. We could probably continue. You are, sir. Sam Cedar. I'm offended. Air America radio. Bob Knight,

Director of Culture and Family Assue, gentlemen, obviously, hey, it's a discussion. Everyone's... That was, I had a lot of fun on that. That is?

Like when you feel, you pretty very aggrieved, like, how dare you say? I am offended. Calling me a Nazi. Have you no decency? I've never run into Bob Knight

since then. I think it's probably, he was probably unemployed about a few minutes. I think. that didn't work out so well. He was so, so excited about, I think it's a pretty cold night without Jesus. He really, they had written that and tested it for a long time and then the whole von Tropp story and yeah, it got a little bit ruined for him. In a moment, we're going to have Daniel Hunter, who's going to talk about 10 ways to prepare for Donald Trump's return. This,

of course, was from November 13th, 2024. But first, the word. from our sponsor, Delete Me, makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Delete Me is actually one of those products that I was using years

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The only way to get 20% off, go to join delete me.com slash majority. Enter the code majority at checkout. That's Join Deleteme.com. slash majority. Code is majority. We'll put that link in the podcast and YouTube description. Now, an interview with Daniel Hunter, 10 ways to prepare for Trump's return from November 13th. And then after that, Matt is putting in some of his Matt picks, his Matt Leck picks. Like a blockbuster section or whatever. Yeah. And it'll be some fun stuff. We don't know what it would. Maybe it'll be a clip.

Maybe it'll be an interview with some comedian or something that was funny that happened or or a left reckoning episode or like 14 left reckoning episodes. Check it out. We'll be back on Friday with more of 2025's Best of. I want to welcome to the program, Daniel Hunter. He is an organizer and a movement coach and trainer, founder of Choose Democracy, author of What If Trump Wins an Interactive

Pick Your Path Adventure and also the piece, 10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump is won. That was an update from what if he wins. Daniel, I am happy to have you here,

but wish we were not having this conversation. I feel like that's the way I've been having lots of conversations with friends and gatherings and so forth these days, which is, it's good to be with other people. And I wish the circumstances of which we were gathering are different. Yep. All right. Let's go through these 10 steps.

Really, I mean, very helpful. And, you know, I've been sort of winging it over the past couple of days, just largely from, like, you know, my experience the first time around. But this is really, really helpful. And I also found it interesting. And, you know, for someone who is not necessarily immediately inclined to think this way, where in preparing yourself to help others, really, in this, you have to start with sort of like making sure, like, it's psychological what you need to do first before you start to actually get into any type of sort of like broader activism.

And so for number one, it's you write, trust yourself. Tell us about that. So I'm a strategist. My interest is how do we win? How do we actually beat back, you know, the policies that Trump wants to put in place? So I surprised myself because I thought, well, I wanted to write an article about how we organize that. And for a while I thought we'll start with strategic principles.

but actually we have to back up a little bit, which is what is Trump? Trump is part of a global phenomena of right-wing populace. And they're not emerging from nowhere. They're emerging from a condition in which people are feeling greater and greater distrust of social institutions, greater, distrust from each other. There's greater distrust. I mean, if you remember what COVID did to a lot of us distrusted with our families and our friends.

And as a person who works on climate, that's my heart, even greater distrust in the weather. I mean, there's just, it's in the atmosphere. And so one of the things that authoritarianes do so strongly is they add to that feeling of distrust, including just by our own selves. And I'm remembering the quote from 1984, that great book, would they say, the party told you to reject the evidence of your own eyes and ears. It was its final and most essential command. And so we have to just ground ourselves back in, you've got to trust yourself, the things you're seeing are there, you can't internalize the crazy making, or at least

you can do as much as you can to create boundaries around the crazy making us out there. And so that became the starting point. I, you know, I had been reading, come across some reading in terms of like just abusive personal relationships. And this is also like sort of one of the sort of like core principles within the context of that is like how do you get past the gaslighting? Before you can do anything, you need to be confident that your assessment of what's going on is in fact what's going on. That's right.

And so I think there's two steps, which is one step is building some trust in ourselves. And the second is testing it out with people that we trust, extending that. trust outwards into our community, which people have been doing naturally. I mean, reaching out to friends, texting. I've noticed I'm making like an own mental list of who are the people who check in with me during this particular time and noting that is a kind of, that's a trust-building measure. And so we've been gathering and sometimes that's gathering around a fire pit, sometimes that's just hanging out. But it's also a chance to share assessments, not just about what happened, but about where do I want to be in these times? What are the pieces

that I have to offer in what look like an uncertain environment. And so to use each other to help find grounding. So trust with ourselves. And then second, trust with each other, finding spaces to be together with other folks. And this goes sort of dovetails into the third step, which you say is grieve. And before we get into that, too, I want to say like, you know, based upon the first two, like how much, yeah, how do we assess whether we're overreacting, right?

Like, I mean, the, you know, the, the, the, there is a tendency, I think for some people to be like, you know, I've got to get out of the country, um, etc. And frankly, you know, for some people, I don't think that's, um, I think that's within realm of, you know, uh, that's not unreasonable. I mean, you know, if I was involved in like, let's say, you know, if I was on the prosecution team on the Manhattan DA's office, I might be concerned that they're coming for retribution. And I mean, I might, you know, like the idea of leaving the country might not necessarily be, you know, extreme. How do we get a sense of calibrating what the threat is to us as individuals and what the threat is. to different constituencies.

And we just spoke to an immigration lawyer. And there's like the idea of, you know, deportation for a couple of million people is not in any way a overreaction to anything. And, you know, and there are other cohorts of people out there. How do you, like, and tie this into the grieving, too, because that's also like a full assessment of like what the implications of this are. Yeah. So I mean, overreaction means that you're in reaction. Your reaction is something else. In this case, we're in reaction to a future that's uncertain. And so when you're in reaction to a future that's uncertain, you can't know if you're

fully one way or another, right? There's no, there's no way to tell exactly what will Trump do, how extreme will it be. There's different scenarios about how that could go. So we have to check in, I think, a little bit with ourselves. And I think that's part of the, of the community grounding, part of the grieving, which is to make our best assessment. And I work on climate change. And so one of the psychological dynamics that I'm familiar with is extreme thinking. So in climate change, we talk about denialism, which is the idea that in the face of uncertainty, it just isn't real. And so there's a set of people who just can't imagine climate change is real and they deny it. There's another version of inability to handle

uncertainty, which is doomism. It's just over and there's nothing we can do about it. Both of those are, the therapist tell me that both of those are psychologically the same position, which is attempting to handle uncertainty by creating an absolutely certain worldview. Right. And so neither of those are necessarily accurate. Neither of those are backed up by sort of a scientific perspective, certainly not denialism and not doomism either. And then, And so what that means is there's a window of uncertainty that we have to be able to tolerate. Grieving is the process of assisting us to acknowledge the things we know to be true, grieve the things we think to be true, and allow some amount of uncertainty in terms of what might happen.

And that may be very uncomfortable. Humans do not like living in uncertainty, especially when it can be things as deeply personal, as passionate as, you know, what happens to my family, what happens to my own personal safety, etc, etc. But that is the human condition and that's the condition we're in right now under a President Trump. That's not to say that we can't find some pieces. And I think the grieving process is about starting to name out, yes, he will attempt to do a mass deportation program of some sort. Yes, he will absolutely roll back climate policies at the federal level. Yes, and on and on like that, beginning to name, acknowledge and let go of. And whatever

feelings arise around that, anger, frustration, sadness. that were in those conditions. But that grieving process is so important because even if you're not necessarily a feeling person, we all remember the number of people who ran around in 2016 in this days saying, I can't believe he's doing this. I just can't believe it.

And that's a signal that people didn't do grieving, that they didn't accept the reality that's coming towards them. Because Trump told us his plan, just like again, he told us his plan, and he intends to implement it. and it will be a more extreme version of it's not the last 2016 experience it's a more extreme version of that that he's planning to do so uh we have to accept it believe it let's let's deal with the reality and so uh it's a it's a well i guess the next part of that process is release that which you

cannot change so it's one an acceptance of like this is all real and this is going to suck and we just don't know exactly how it's going to suck and it's going to be dangerous for people and we don't know exactly how it's going to be dangerous uh for people and for whom um and then the next part of that is saying okay starting to assess and i am the type of person where it's like i will prepare for the worst case scenario and i'll try and get that done first so that like i can relieve myself of some of that anxiety. Like, I've done everything I can do. I may be overreacting, but it's easier to course correct if I'm overreacting than it is to course correct if I'm underreacting. I feel like my pessimist friends have been in better psychological shape at this

moment than folks who are holding on to greater amounts of optimism. I do want to just caution, though, I think one thing I just want to remind people about, because you said it's going to suck, and that's absolutely true. It's also the case that it won't only suck. And so just for folks who are in the position of sort of heading into a dreary landscape of it's just going to be, it will be chaotic, it will be rough, there will be bad policies after bad policies, 3 a.m. tweets that Trump comes up with a national policy that will twist the, you know, federal instruments into a new thing. All those things are true. There will also be many beautiful days that we will experience. And so part of the protection psychologically for us,

us is to remind ourselves to be rooted not only in what Trump is up to and tracking that, but also in the beautiful lives that we have and the family and folks around us. So just to affirm, yes, it will suck. It won't only suck. And that's a reminder that I keep getting reminded to by colleagues of mine who are living under authoritarian regimes who keep pointing out, yes, it's bad. Some parts of it are bad, but also there's a lot of beauty. and that's a little bit of the part of like releasing out.

We're not trying to control everything. We don't have to get involved in every fight. We don't have to respond to every tweet. We don't have to track every wild conspiracy theory that Trump's going to put out there. That may be important for certain people. I mean, I think Sam, you're phenomenally good at tracking all of these things and being, you know, educate and rest of us about what's going on. But that for all this, we don't necessarily have to have to invest ourselves in all of those. And in fact, that's going to be important because we just can't psychologically, I think, most of us hang on to all of those things.

And so therefore, we have to let go. And so I use the serenity prayer coming from Rail Neber as the example of that because he wrote it while he was watching the rise of Nazism. I did not realize that. I didn't know where that came from. my perspective on it has changed insofar as like you know I've seen it on doilies and and and you know in knittings and I'm like oh boy but uh it really when you when you when you take that you know grant me the god I guess but really you can grant yourself the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the cards change things I can and the wisdom to know the difference when that is the in the process of watching a fascist regime come to power as a result of that. It's really basically, in many respects, saying like, you know, take stock, deploy your resources in such a way that you don't deplete yourself. And don't, you know, and make a wise assessment as to what the landscape is and where you are best suited to, I guess,

to deploy those resources, which is number five, find your path. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So then we're drifting into more strategy piece of where I thought, oh, we'll get right into it. But actually, you know, it takes some time to get to that point. Taking our path is starting to identify what are the different pathways of resistance.

So eight months ago, we began doing scenario planning with different activists. I brought them in and we did a kind of role-based, turn-based option. So Trump would do a move and then people would do a counter move as unions and activists and so forth. And initially when we began doing it, activists picked essentially two big strategies, which was, let's keep doing petitions. Let's get a lot of people to say this is outrageous in some way. And the second was let's get a lot of people to show up at marches, rallies, protests, etc. And Trump didn't care about either of them.

He just kept implementing policy. Trump would do this. We would do March, and he'd say, okay, and then he'd keep going. And so we started to get more clear about it. We need to help people understand certain roles will be more important. It's not to say there's not a role for marches, not to say it's not a role for outrage. But it's a different ballgame. We're not dealing with a man who values democratic spirit.

We're dealing with someone who is a bully and authoritarian. And so a bully doesn't care about your feelings. A bully wants you to be in pain. So our expressions of pain don't actually isn't the thing that's moving him. So that means we have to find that different role. So I just sort of identified four that we started to see over and over again, that were strategies for combating. So one of them is just protecting people.

Huge amount of people are going to be lives disrupted, trans folks, immigrants, et cetera, et cetera. So the role of developing mutual aid conditions, developing mechanisms for us to protect people who are politically targeted. I hope some of these people who are targeted don't flee overseas, that they don't go overseas, and that we can, in fact, give them a lot of security support in our own communities.

Second one is disrupting and disobeying. That's the one that I come from. That's the place that I have the most experienced. And that's strategizing acts of non-cooperation. So in fact, the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, is now in that category, as he just announced, will you resign if Trump asked you resign? He said, no, I will disobey what I believe is a wrong order. And that's the behavior, actually, that will be very helpful for stopping an authoritarian.

We should also say that announcing that is also very, very important, right? Because it's the flip side of what we saw with Bezos and the endorsement for Kamla Harris. I don't think that endorsement would have meant to anything. What it really signaled to me was like, oh, this, at the very least, this billionaire, I mean, this is the model, right, for how the fascism grows, where the billionaire goes, I can do what I'm been doing, but it's, I'm going to go with the path of lease resistance, and I'm going to take that path before I even get to the turn in the road. Like, he doesn't even have to threaten me.

I'm going to do it in advance. And Powell sort of like, he could say, well, I'm not going to address this now. But by saying it out front, he's emboldening other people to take a similar position without having to happen to him. That's right. And that's a signal for the rest of us. So for those of us who are in government jobs, for example, to not resign, not make this easy for them to have a power vacuum, but to hold on and to use our professional ethics, remind ourselves, remind people of we have codes of conduct. We have internal ethics processes that we want to uphold and stay, stay despite the, you know, Trump administration's attempt.

Okay, so we've got to protecting people. I'm just going to name the four here. So protecting people, disrupting and disobeying. And then defending civic institutions. And so all the folks who are both bureaucrats who are inside will be involved in, hopefully, a defense for that institution, for the EPA to continue to do the thing that it does. And for the, for the U.S. military, for example, who's been told we've been forewarned, Trump has intentions of using the Insurrection Act to deploy military against protesters in the streets, me.

and the military knows that will forever politicize them if they were to be using live bullets against protesters and doing lethal damage. And so they understand Trump's putting them between a rock and a hard place, either disobeying orders or outright or engaging in what will be the end of the military as we know it in this country. So the difference. defense. So every one of those civic institutions has its own strategy. And those are on the outside

also get to support them partially by holding up a mirror to how resistance can look and encouraging them, celebrating the people like Jerome when he does that thing. Yay, Jerome. And celebrating people who get fired when they get fired for the right things. And so on. And so we have a role in responsibility in playing that. You talk about this later in the piece, the idea of you like you sitting down like I know you've done some like other uh sort of like uh you know game theory uh sort of conferences with you know military or ex-military people and you know you're saying like it was weird for you to be sitting there because that's those aren't the type of people you tend to strategize with and you know I'm sitting here like uh the hegsith is going in

to clearly be part of a process of purging the military of people who they think is not going to be loyal to Donald Trump, as opposed to the institution or the Constitution, which, you know, supposedly are aligned. And, you know, me having to get over my sort of like, I don't know if I would call a prejudice, because my disposition towards the military, I don't think it's unfair prejudice. But like I'm, I have a healthy skepticism about the military.

But in this moment, like, we're in like popular front mode for these type of things because it could be that serious. I mean, that's the, that's the tricky part is that there is, there are going to be voices out there. And I, you know,

like obviously I conceive of this in, in my world, but there are going to be voices in my world, in my universe of like of YouTube and Twitter and whatnot, who are going to be like, oh, you're making common cause with the generals or something like that. And it's going to trigger my like, I don't want to make common cause with the generals. I don't like the generals. I don't like the military. But in this instance, like maintaining a focus on where the threat,

lies in this moment. Like, how do you do that? I mean, you know, on some level, we saw it with, like, Harris getting together with Lynn Cheney. Now, I, or Liz Cheney, you know, the problem I have with that is I just think it was going to be effective. You know, I mean, I was like, if they're going to do that and it works, okay, for the time being, I can fight this other fight later.

And, I mean, I even remember a story, like, an Israeli general was, like, told at one point, You realize your supposed allies in the United States of these Christian scientists, they want you to burn in hellfire when the second coming goes. And he goes, I'll deal with that bridge when I get to it. And they have made that alliance. I mean, that adopting that mindset is seems to me to be a big, you know, it's much easier for me to do it with EPA scientists. And it's much easier for me to do it with like some people in the DOJ maybe, depending on where they are. and in, you know, the National Labor Relations Board or, or, et cetera, et cetera. But there are certain areas where I have a reflex of like, ooh, but you can't have that because

it's about the civic institution and not almost like what fills it. Yeah, I mean, I think there's two aspects of it. I mean, one, we don't have to play all roles. So I'm not a defense of a civic institution person by my nature. I have a different belief system and it's not in defending the current version of democracy that the U.S. has. But I am aware how destructive it will be if some of these institutions are fully taken out. In the case of the military, it's very practical, though. It's the second one for me, which is I don't want to get shot in the streets and there are folks inside who

also don't want to shoot me. Right. And so those are aligned in that aspect of it. And I think what that means is that what we're doing here is we're not building a sort of framework of common cause of we're all aligned in the movement together. But instead, it's more understanding we have overlapping interests here about not getting the military to be involved in this particular set of behaviors. So I think both of those can go hand in hand. And you're mentioning this is so important because it brings up the fourth category, which is alternative institution building. which is it's not enough.

I mean, for those of us who are deeply unhappy with the current system as it exists, we're not interested in just defending the previous version of democracy that the U.S. has had. Instead, we're interested in new. Can we get rid of the electoral college? Can we talk about developing participatory democracy mechanisms?

Can we talk about strengthening education? Because you cannot have a meaningful democracy without education, representation, participation. And we barely have representation. So I think, you know, the alternative institution building is a place for those of us who want to pour our energy into tracking all the many things that need to be changed and creating those institutions to do that. And so the reason I find those four roles so helpful is because we're not going to be attracted to all of them. Right. But it will be helpful for us to observe other people doing some of those roles that will be useful for us at some other moments.

moment. And I want to flag it. And having some respect that they're, that they're doing it. Like being able to say, like, this is not what I want to do. I don't like it. I'm allergic to this. But being able to accept, like, it needs to be done. And I'm glad that somebody's doing it. It's all going to be hard work. Protecting the EPA is going to be hard work. Supporting people who are undocumented to find safe places. It's going to be hard work. It's going to be hard work all around. And so if we're not in appreciation mode, if we're just in criticism mode of that strategy isn't the way I think that everyone else should go, then we're going to spend a lot of energy attacking each other rather than appreciating the movement ecosystem and appreciating the different roles, including what I'm finding with some of my own friends,

is that roles that I used to play last, you know, four years ago or eight years ago, I'm finding, I'm feeling called to something new and appreciating that within their own selves, that maybe I didn't want to be a disrupt person, but actually this is now too extreme. Number six, you have do not obey in advance, do not self-censor. I mean, we sort of touched on that in terms of like, you know, Jerome Powell in the Fed.

I mean, he is announcing beforehand that like, if you do this thing, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to do it. And, you know, I, you know, in the context of this job, when I was doing Air America, we were all like, we're going to get audited, probably. I mean, we didn't, which I frankly was surprised about. And I wouldn't be surprised if I get audit in this situation just because of the nature, you know, one of the reasons why I got fired from MSNBC was because we went after Mike Cernovich. And, you know, he got Jack Posobiac to dig up an old tweet.

They got Don Jr. to retweet it, and then it was off to the races. And, you know, that specter of like, do we keep our head down or something like that? And in the meantime, I mean, would you do it again, Sam? Would I do that tweet? Oh, that tweet, yeah, it was a funny tweet. That experience worked out quite well for me. I mean, you know, at the end of the day. But that's just, you know, that's a story to tell, Sam.

That's exactly it. That's exactly the point, which is. is it may be the case that you might lose your job at the EPA by doing a resistance something. And it may be the case that you will be so proud to tell your kids and grandkids that you are part of a very important resistance campaign. And so that's the historical moment we're in, which is it's a great moment to take great pride in acts of resistance, tweaking, you know, noses of the elites, whatever it is. And so in that way, it's almost a different relationship to repression than the relationship of I'm still worried about getting repressed.

And absolutely, I believe people should make good calls. I think people should. I have no judgment of anyone's individual circumstances. But what we're aware of is the primary way that authoritarian, we see this across the globe in Hungary and Brazil and Turkey, the primary way that authorities are able to claim. control isn't through a lot of repression. It's through occasional repression that scares people so they know what to do in this administration. And therefore, they seed power right away. Power you don't use, you lose.

It's sort of the Fonzie theory where he told Richie, I'm talking about happy days. Nobody knows what I'm talking about because I'm so old. Sorry, Sam. You got to have to bring me in. bring me in uh it's almost not worth it i don't think there's anybody alive and knows what i'm talking about but there was a show called happy days it was very popular uh faunzy was the tough kid and richy wanted to know why it was that everybody listened to fonsie he's like i had somebody once and it's all i had to do and then everybody else knew uh not to mess with me at that point but this is also a

little bit more like, you know, getting people to self-censor. And, you know, it doesn't mean necessarily for the EPA. You quit. It could mean you stay in there and you fight. And, you know, people have got to make that decision. Reorient your political map was what we were talking about like earlier in terms of your, you were, you know, doing some game theory, essentially, with people that you otherwise, you know, could just be easily.

been protesting in another circumstance, but it's about assessing the moment and understanding and prioritizing sort of like what's going to keep you from getting shot at, I guess, out on the street. Yeah, I mean, just to affirm my credentials here, my first arrest was against Fort Benning, Georgia, for its support for training people to assassinate human rights workers overseas. And so, yes, so that the. And I told the generals that. I told these ex-generals my story and they shared their story.

And here we are in that moment. That wasn't the School of the Americas, was it? It was the School of America's. Okay, okay. So the reorientation of the political map, I think, has to do with when you have an authoritarian, it takes a while for people to catch several nodes. I think one of them is right now a lot of us are really oriented around who voted for Trump and who didn't.

And that's one way to analyze. It's not a very great way to analyze because, in fact, on lots of policies, on lots of issues, the way these things split is very different. And progressive policies are very popular. They remain very popular when you ask people, do you want clean water, clean air, do you want to deal with climate change with renewable energy? Do you want to keep people who are here for? Expanded Social Security, I mean, healthcare, whatever. Name it. So they continue to be very, excuse me, they continue to be very positive.

And so sticking to the framing around Trump, not Trump, won't necessarily be helpful in the long term. So at some point, we're going to have to break apart our political map a little bit. And it's not about, did you vote for this man or not, it's more about, and therefore sort of the party element of it. And it's more about going back to the policies, going back to the ways these policies harm or don't harm real people. And so that's one aspect of it. And I think another aspect of it is under an authoritarian regime, there will be new. I mean, we use the word common cause and then said don't use it,

but some version of common cause with people who we do find abhorrent. What do we do when Liz Cheney gets arrested? What's our relationship to showing up for her in this particular moment of watching him attempt to scare other people? And I think that's part of it. is then dealing with the political repression. That's honestly the perfect example to like really freeze me in my tracks because just even at the words Liz Cheney gets arrested, I'm like there's a, I felt like I felt a smile

brewing inside me, but that's exactly what I have to fight against. I hear you. No, no, you can still, I don't know, I think we should figure out how way to be both. I think we should be able to say, yeah, it's a shame she's getting arrested for the wrong reasons or whatever it is for us. But honestly, I think the truth is that we do have to do a kind of reorientation around people who are particularly when we're seeing visibleized repression, even if those people aren't necessarily in our milieu,

the political repression is not attempting to just freeze us. It's trying to freeze a population. Right. And so I'm jumping ahead here to number nine, but I'll just walk into it. It's like focusing on the act that is taking place rather than who is it's subject to. That's right. And so the attitude we have in terms of when that happens.

So one aspect of when political repression happens is we can share the story, that's horrible. Can you believe that they arrested Liz Cheney or Dana Hunter or Sam or whoever? That's one way of telling that story. Another way of telling that story, I think I'm inspired by a group named Apur in Serbia. So they were dealing with a dictatorship who was very repressive. They regularly beat up poor folks. And they used to have a saying that they would say, it only hurts when you're scared.

And what they meant by that was they were attempting to create a story that says, we're not going to engage in fear. The major tool of an authoritarian is fear. And we're not going to feed that fear. In fact, quite the opposite. that we're going to express and show bravery in the face of it. I did ask one of them, does it hurt less if you're scared? No, it hurts the same amount no matter what.

But the point here is attitude, that we're going to take a different attitude than being nervous, scared, joke about, oh, I don't want to get on a list, da-da-da, I want to get on a list. So one response politically, for example, I'm just, I think I tell them this, the article is a story. from someone I've learned a lot from Byrd Rustin, he was dealing with Martin Luther King at a period of time when Martin Luther King was very young and new to non-violence theory,

he and a bunch of other folks in Montgomery were being threatened with arrest. So they went underground. A lot of the preachers were like hiding out in other people's houses. King himself had like left the city for a while. And Byard Rustin walked around and said, this is not how we should be. He was trained by Gandhi and had a Gandhi. and philosophy. And he said, you shouldn't be hiding, worried about what's going to happen to you.

Go the opposite direction. Go towards it. And so he convinced a couple of people, pastors who were likely on this list of arrests, to go down to the police station with their congregation and to demand that they get arrested there and then. And so they went in, several of them got booked, and more people began to show up as the crowd like swelled as people came out holding their citations proudly. And in fact, some leaders went into the room demanding that they get arrested were turned away because they were told they weren't on the list. And they said, I'm a leader. What are you talking about? I should absolutely be arrested as well.

And so they began arguing that they should get arrested because what would their people think if they didn't get arrested? They weren't really a leader. So it became, instead of being a fear-inducing tactic, the arrest themselves became part of a signal of strength. Well, you're also in that moment taking power because you get to dictate, you get to dictate at least one element of this. If you're going to arrest me, you're going to do it on my terms, and that's going to be right now, right here, that type of thing. That's right. And you're doing it with your people. you're getting to say signal.

Again, this is attitude. This is about expressing an attitude towards repression, which is rather than grinning, bearing, and being scared of it that we, it's not always that we invite it. That's not at all what I'm suggesting here, but it's about the attitude that we take when it comes our way.

And so I think we have a lot of control. And in fact, everybody has a lot of influence about what kinds of stories do we tell when so-and-so gets arrested out of the government, or fired or whatnot, we should cheer. Congratulations. Welcome to the club. Yeah.

Let's talk about the get real about power. This is really interesting. The upside down triangle. What does that tell us about power? So the upside down triangle comes from folks in Thailand with some of the first originators of it. And what they did was it's a power, it's a theory of power.

So you imagine it upside down. triangle. And it's not stable. An unjust power is not actually a stable power. It needs pillars of support to keep it up. And those pillars may include a mainstream media that tells a positive story about them or most recently from the last election that treats them like, you know, equivalence. There's this and that and Trump said this and Harris said that, as if they're in equivalent worlds. There's military, there's any number of different institutions. But also that those things, all of those aren't done,

they aren't implemented by the elites. People in power that we think of traditionally in power, they don't do anything. They tell other people to do things and other people obey. when people don't obey, these systems start to fall apart very quickly. And that is the long arc around dealing with authoritarianism. So in other regimes, like when we're dealing with regime change in other parts of the globe, the pathway to resistance is developing a long story about why people should stop obeying an unjust authority.

And if Trump turned out to be the person that many of us believe him to be, he is and will be an unjust. unjust authority in the authoritarian style. That kind of style doesn't respond to democratic norms. That style may or may not even respond to whether or not the next election pushes them out. The reality is that we have someone in power who's attempted coup, and so we have to get real about power. And that means convincing large swaths of the population to potentially not obey.

I'll just give three examples of it. I'll give one clean example that tactically that's being talked about now, which is the idea of a general strike is a way to disable, disabled parts of the economy such that the whole system can't keep grinding forward. So that's one conversation that's happening around sort of in the non-cooperation circle of people. And I think I just want to say this, which is at this stage where we are, it can seem impossible to imagine Trump being kicked out because we're just, we're so far out of that period. So I just, we're not there yet.

Non-cooperation always starts small. It's always ineffective in the beginning. because you're not at the size to be able to work. But very targeted non-cooperation has a history of success and has an ability to change national policy in a way that just pleading and asking for government officials isn't necessarily successful. I tell a story from one of my mentors who recently passed away, Dick Taylor.

He was involved in a thing called blockades where they were trying to stop the U.S. who was supporting a dictator Yaya Khan of East, East Pakistan, what we now know is Bangladesh. Yaya Khan was involved in mass murders, huge amounts of people were dying, and the U.S. was the sole country basically arming him,

sending shipw or armor shipments. So this group found out in Philadelphia, a group of Quakers, that the armed shipments were being loaded here in Philadelphia. And so they said, you know, we're going to do, we're going to stop them. We're going to organize the naval blockade. And they,

with their 25, 30 people jumped into boats and began blocking these massive arm shipments. As expected, they were pulled out by a Coast Guard and, you know, they weren't successful on their first forays. But they began doing it over and over again. Eventually, they got to the international longshoremen and the longshoremen of the folks who load those arm shipments on and off. And the longshoremen said, if you guys set up a picket line, we won't cross it. They were moved by these stories of what was going on, and they realized they had a role to play in history. And so they refused to load these arm shipments. As a result, U.S. was no longer, I mean, first they stopped using Philadelphia ports, then New York City ports, then on and on until, againually, they got the longshoremen all across the East Coast to stop loading arm shipments.

That's non-cooperation. That's not a protest in the streets. That's not asking for. That's not pleading for. It's saying there's a thing we're going to get in. the way of, either as the Quakers who are jumping into the boats or as the longshoremen who are saying we're not going to load, we're not going to obey. And that was the major contributor towards shifting U.S. foreign policy in terms of supporting that particular dictator. So that's a

history I want to just be alert to because it tells a story about how non-cooperation can be successful in this country. And that stratagem of understanding that the pillars of support is about if you pull enough pillars, it doesn't mean we have to convince the elites to go along with us. We're not going to convince Elon Musk. We're not going to convince Donald Trump. We're not going to convince the Trump family. But if we're able to pull pillars, they don't have a choice because they don't do anything. They don't work. They don't do real things. They don't do things with their hands. People who do things with their hands, they can make decisions about how we actually do things. When we do it in a united front,

as we can collectively do non-cooperation. That's the pillars of power. That's the upside-down triangle. When we pull those pillars away, the triangle falls. And number 10 is envision a better, a positive future. And I think, you know, we're going to spend time here, obviously, and like talking to authors and people, I mean, yeah, a plan is better than no plan and it's important for us even in in eras where we don't have the immediate ability to make to shape society in the way that we wanted to it's important to to have a sort of a northern light I guess and some ideas about what we would do if we were in power both as an inspiration and you never know like I mean you just

You never know. And that is a big deal. Well, this is, Dan, this is really, really helpful. And we're going to put a link to this and to your book. And we will check back in with you, hopefully soon to get a sense of like where we're at and what's turning. one thing I just want to ask you about that is sort of off this list. You know, I see things like, you know, how we can make, create fissures within the constituency that has been supportive of Trump. I mean, you've talked about that a little bit, but like, you know, I'm looking at like this Bobby Kennedy stuff.

And I don't know if he actually wants to get into the administration or he's just trying to raise money or what the deal is. But a lot of the stuff that he proposes is completely antithetal. to Trump's agenda. You know, like they want to get rid of the administrative state, and he supposedly wants to make the FDA, the EPA, the USDA more effective. He also wants everybody to get hepatitis or, you know, other diseases. But there are elements of what he wants to do that people are attracted to, people who are supportive of Trump.

And they don't seem to realize that it's fundamentally at odds with the other part of Trump's agenda, which is to get rid of the administrative state. You know, there's corporations are not going to take yellow dye number seven out of Captain Crunch by themselves. And, and so are there, is there a concept of like strategically creating cleaves within their constituencies? Like, is that a strategy?

Is there, like, what are the tactics associated with that? Yeah. I mean, I think, yes. I mean, the reality here is this is a organ, sort of, this is a riotous group of people who've been out of power for quite some time. They are not in alignment. They're not an agreement. And they're basically being held together by loyalty, an authoritarian loyalty system, which is perhaps more dangerous than being in alignment in some ways, because it allows them to move on a dime. Trump says, we'll do this. And they say, okay, that's, that's the way. we're heading. So in some ways, certain ways, potentially more dangerous. But it is true. They're not an agreement. They're not an alignment. And some of those things I think can be taken advantage of. I think the most effective way for us to do that is to really be rooted in our own values and asserting what's the vision that we have to become attractive. Because infighting can be

handled and managed if we don't know if that's, you know, handleable, manageable. But Trump is very relaxed about a lot of chaos in his administration. That's what we've seen. So the idea that there's infighting he likes. So I don't think it's an attempt to just kind of add drama to that. But I think it's about cleaving off parts of it and saying for folks who either supported Trump, for folks who, you know, didn't vote for whatever reason, I think there's opportunity here to say, here's a vision that you have that we're in alignment with.

And to cleave in that way by being attractive, because the future that we're going to need is going to need a lot of people to have increased trust in us and our vision and in a sort of progressive worldview that is not well understood, actually, by a lot of the folks in sort of that group. So I'm less trying to get to the elites, and I'm more trying to cleave off the supporters, people who back Trump. But we'll find out that he has every intention to screw them. That's why he's putting billionaires in. he's not going to represent them and their interests. So they need a place to land. And so I think we need to create some open invitations, some places to do it.

Daniel Hunter, the book is What If Trump Wins, an Interactive, Pick Your Path Adventure, and 10 Ways to Be Prepared and Grounded now that Trump has one. We'll put a link to all of that and I hope to talk to you soon. Thank you so much. Thank you, Sam. It's great to talk. Really helpful. Thank you.

folks well we're going to head into the fun half um the fun half hour the fun half hour there you go the fun yes exactly not quite we're not great with math here

I think you know we'll talk about this but I think we should clip Daniels and maybe rerun it soon because sometimes I'll get lost you know we didn't You got too long, and they were both very important relative to like sort of the immediate things that we're going to be facing. But we will both clip Daniel's interview either as a standalone or within the next three or four weeks.

We'll just play it again as if it was, you know, a quick repeat. because I think it's really helpful to give people a... I found it incredibly helpful just to read it to get a sense of like, okay, this is how we're going to approach this. And here's the value in doing it this way and that way. I think it's really good. Donald Trump did everything he could not to get overshadowed in this inauguration.

last inauguration he had he had to spend all of his energy sort of like backfilling why or sort of retconning the idea that there was nobody at his inauguration because he was embarrassed by it he likes to have a good audience and so this time they did it indoors

but then some of the speakers went to like what is it the capital one thing is that where um yeah where and how many is that how many how many is that seat um is it is it 200 thousand people oh no it's the bathroom little under 21,000

little under 21,000 excuse me yeah oh okay so like a wizard's game like a big comedian like a draw from like a like a mid-level comedian the wizards never get at this full okay so there was 20,000 people there interesting was there a huge

there must have been throngs of crowds outside of it because there's you know the people Elon Musk went over there to give a speech and you know, he's neurodivergent. And he gets really excited. And he's never had any friends.

And he spends his time having to pretend that he's smarter than he is, paying people to play video games for him so he can seem like he's cooler than he is. I know people who were at parties of his. like back in the day before he, you know, really was as big as he is now back when he was in the PayPal Mafia. And they would basically hire girls to come to the parties. And it was very weird, apparently. Wow.

So he's awkward. And so here he is just getting a little awkward at the beginning of this speech. He's number eight. This was a fork in the road of human civilization. Okay. This, this, you know, there are, there are elections that, the elections that come and go, some, some are, you know, important, some or not. But this one, this one, this one really matter for making it happen.

Thank you. Oh, hold on. Wait, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa. This is number eight, right? A clip number eight. What was the thank you? you. What? That's a thank you? Is that the international symbol for thank you? Could just go back a little bit?

That is an interesting thing because he really, from my heart, Howard? Thank you. Is that what he's saying? Go ahead. He matters. Yeah. My heart, is that what he says next? My heart goes out to you. There's a little shiver in his voice when he's saying that. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. My heart goes out to you. I see. He really, that's, that's a little. the classic my heart goes out to you and then you just thrust your arm throw it up throw your heart at a 45 degree towards the roaring crowd okay and then uh well all right i mean everybody makes a mistake once it was obviously not a premeditated thing he's just getting excited apparently NBC edited out the second one is that right okay play these Thank you for making it happen.

Thank you. Oh, you did it both. You did it to both sides. Isn't that awkward? Isn't that awkward? Now, a lot of people are trying to pretend that somehow this is some type of Nazi fascist salute. When Elon is just, he's neurodivergent.

Okay. And let's compare it. Here is, this is from last year in January. This is the CBC. has a footage of dozens of Italian fascists giving a salute during a far-right rally in Rome. Here it is. Now look, do you see none of them are touching their heart and thrusting their arms out? They're just thrusting their arms out.

he clearly musk was clearly saying this is my heart i send it out to you like thrusting it out and you know if that was the case like um

and some people have suggested it could be a rome a roman thing too right now the roman thing was actually just made up in the 1800s by theater people by theater people and then I guess apparently the Nazis adopted that in the same way that they also came over here and took like the Massachusetts State Police uniforms they found them to be the most sort of like Naziish

I guess what they were going for but let's look at this guy famed Roman theatrical a guy played a lot of Roman performances here he is I

G high open I don't speak Italian. What was he saying? Well, didn't they speak Latin in Rome? Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's speaking Latin, and he's doing some type of theater production. And Cicero?

And that's why he's doing the thing from his heart and going out, right? Yeah, give us one more time. Let's see that one more time. In the Nazis and you. Well, he's going to. Does Zeke Heil mean my heart goes out to you? Thank you so much for doing this. This is a fork on the road. We're at the crossroads of civilization. My heart goes out to you.

I give my heart to you. Everybody. You know, Gilbert Godfrey had a great joke about Kurt Waldheim, who people don't remember. But he was at one point the UN chief. and he was a he was from Vienna and it came out while he was ahead of the UN that he may have had a Nazi past

and Gil McGrathrie had a great joke where he was talking that Kurt Waldheim and his wife were on vacation just like in the late 30s and he was in front of they went to germany and he was in front of some fountain and his wife was about ready to take its picture and they saw some Nazis come walking through and Waldheim said wait don't take the picture don't take the picture don't take the picture and that's when she snapped the picture and that was what the problem was so

Um, look, there is no doubt in my mind that Elon Musk, remember, remember, you have to remember who this guy is. He pays people to play video games with him for him so that he can look like he is a top video game player. He has a team of like writers coming up with something like where he wanted to go on Saturday Night Live and pull out a rubber chicken out of his pants. say do you want to see my my uh see word um because he's juvenile and has no friends and um there is no doubt in my mind that this guy uh definitely came up with this as a troll like i'm going to do this i'm going to say my heart goes out to you and i'm going to play it off that way and he practiced it And he practiced it without a doubt. And it was like, watch what I'm going to do to whatever friends he pays to be around him.

And they're all going to get a huge laugh out of it. But understand there's not a huge difference between that and a fascist doing it earnestly. These symbols have, they exist for a reason. They create an in-group and an out-group. And if you're in on a joke like this, you're part of the in-group. And if you're on the out-group, you're on the out-group. It's not a coincidence. They do these things.

They do these things to create that in-group and out-group. Secret shanks, handshakes, I mean, all of this stuff. Sometimes they can be benign and sometimes they can represent other things. So, and, you know, at the end of the day, the symbolism is one thing. the actions are going to be more important, and we're going to go through the actions that Donald Trump has taken already as president. Remember, destroying things and hurting people is a lot easier than building things and helping people. It just is.

So that stuff can move quick. Remember, this was a long time ago, on Monday, when Elon Musk desperately tried to show how much of his heart goes out to you. And he mistakenly ended up doing some type of thing that everyone interprets as being a Nazi salute. Including like actual white supremacists who were very excited about it. He did it not once, but twice. And as AOC pointed out, repeated for emphasis and clarity.

Oh, yes. But we're in the era of don't believe your lying eyes because a lot of. wealthy people on our communications platforms, and they can just promote all of the accounts that will gaslight you about the very obvious thing that you just saw right in front of your face. I love this post-truth era. And there is no better way to suss out a complete bootlicker than someone who has made their, built their reputation on being the Pope of the Jews. And one of the things that you have to do as Pope of the Jews is also police things like anti-Semitism.

And we have the actual Pope of the Jews. As you know, he is Jewish and is very sensitive to anti-Semitism, but also has incredible interests in staying in the good graces of this oligarch, Elon Musk. So let's tune in. Let's hear this is a little bit suspenseful because we have Ben Shapiro and we're going to see where will Ben Shapiro? Can you guess what Ben Shapiro is going to, A, really hand it to Elon Musk and say, hey, buddy, what are you doing with your Nazi salute? Or B, you guys have him all wrong. I got to say.

I have a pretty high radar for Nazism. I like a bit of a stake in this particular game. Like, I feel like I can spot some Nazis when I see them. My Nazi radar does not go off around Elon Musk. You know why my Nazi radar doesn't go off around Elon Musk? Because he's not a damned Nazi. Oh. Pause for a second.

I got one other reason why his Nazi radar may not go off around Elon Musk. It's because Elon Musk is a problem. friend of mine, he's extremely wealthy. In fact, I rely on his good graces in many, many aspects of my life. That's because his Nazi radar is a little bit more updated to the current conservative context, where it only goes off and beeps when somebody criticizes the state of Israel. That's a good point. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, he must have been really good with that Nazi radar when he hired Candace Owens. Hmm. Well, well, sometimes that radar gets jammed, buddy.

Go ahead. My Nazi radar does not go off around Elon Musk. You know why my Nazi radar doesn't go off around Elon Musk? Because he's not a damned Nazi. In fact, Elon and I, one year ago this week were in Auschwitz together, visiting Auschwitz, together. We did an event where he spoke about anti-Semitism and how evil it is and the evils of Hilarianism.

Like, what is wrong with you people? Hold on for a second. I didn't know this. Wow. I didn't know this, Emma. He was in Auschwitz. He went to Auschwitz. Well, of course, if you go to Auschwitz, you are definitely not a Nazi, unless, of course,

you were there, the, you know, early on in Auschwitz's existence. Right. But going to Auschwitz and saying you're not anti-Semitic, wow, well, I really wonder what inspired him to do that. Do you have any idea, Emma? Well, it is interesting. because prior to that visit, it was just coincidental that he went there after this.

Elon Musk, November 223, so this is five weeks after the Hamas attack. Elon Musk agrees. So this is about a year ago, right? Just like almost. A year and change. A year and change. So just before a year ago when Ben Shapiro went to Auschwitz.

and Elon Musk went to Auschwitz and spoke at anti-Semitism is bad. Okay. Elon Musk agrees with tweet accusing Jewish people of quote hatred against whites. Can we go down to the tweet? This is back when the ADL criticized him and they said that they felt it was anti-Semitic at this time. The tweet said Jewish communities

have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites when they claim to want people to stop using, that they claim they, want people to stop using against them then Elon Musk responded you have said the actual truth now hold on now hold on everybody sitting there going like oh when he says you've said the actual truth that sounds like what he's saying is you have said something that's true right but your truth goes out to me people don't know he's awkward he's awkward in certain situations so by saying you have said the truth. Maybe what he meant was, you are saying things that I disagree with. Right. Or,

or I am neuro atypical, so I don't know what to say in these situations, except for I feel compelled to agree with you so that things aren't awkward on the platform. Maybe it was opposite day. When he went to Auschwitz, you know what he said there? He said he was, quote, Jewish by association after going. And he says he's aspirationally Jewish. Huh. What are people talking about with this anti-Semitism? Because I never hear that dinner conversations.

Well, you know when like you're just kind of like used to a specific environment and it almost becomes a part of, you know, your being. And when you leave it, then you're shocked by it. Maybe it's that kind of situation. I, you know, it's impressive, though, that he goes to dinner parties. where there's no overt anti-Semitism, I guess maybe it's not there. It's also, he's like, well, maybe I should go to Auschwitz to see anti-Semitism at that time. But obviously, like, Shapiro was his beard, essentially, to go to Auschwitz and get the blessing back in the good graces of the Jews.

I mean, you know. After that, he went to Israel, by the way. Netanyahu defended him on a social media as a... well. So, you know, that's what the right is saying case close. I've got news for you. Netanyahu engages in Holocaust revisionist history quite frequently. He has repeatedly said a false claim that here's Netanyahu's defense of Elon. Elon Musk is being falsely smear. Elon is a great friend of Israel. He visited Israel after the October 7th. Right. He visited them after he made that anti-Semitic reply to that post.

We also know that like that Israel has been for years and years well before, you know, October 7th, making common cause with right-wing anti-Semitic parties in Europe because, I mean, it has benefited Israel. I mean, Lord Balfour was an anti-Sematic. Right. And Israel itself was promoted as a way of getting the Jews out of England. So like the idea of Israel's incentive structure and anti-Semites instructs is, uh, anti-Semites incentive structure being aligned is really not that strange of an idea. It is literally a significant part of the founding of Israel. But let's go back and watch just like Ben Shapiro with it. See if he is bootlicking. makes his, hurts his throat? Yes, I just wanted to, because I lost my point that I was making earlier. Netanyahu has said that Adolf Hitler got the idea to exterminate the Jews from the Palestinians, which is not true.

It's false. So my point is that Netanyahu regularly engages in this kind of Holocaust revisionism to justify the genocide and the horrific treatment that he does with the Palestinians. So let's not go to him as some arbiter of truth on this front. And Elon's a fan of the AFD party in Germany. Germany, which also just endorsed them, which also Netanyahu's son has also voiced. Far right, far right German party endorsed by Elon Musk, but he's not a Nazi. Don't worry about it.

And the evils of Hilarianism. What is wrong with you people? And the answer, of course, is they know better. Of course they know better. Of course they know better. No one honestly believes that Elon Musk was giving a Nazi salute, but they have to characterize their opponents as Nazis. It's the only way.

It's the only way. this by the way has been the tactic of the entire post-World War two left anybody who is not a communist is a Nazi that is the way this that's the way it works you know we could also uh it's not like Elon Musk is not a target rich environment and when it comes to uh you know the uh casual attacks that could be launched upon him on this elk I mean he is and his buddies are all from apartheid South Africa which I had no idea at any dinner party that there was any type of racism. I never saw it there. And it's funny you bring up apartheid South Africa, because in the context of what you were saying about Balfour, Israel actually used to be very close with the government of South Africa. And you know when that was?

It was when it was led by white people, and it was an apartheid regime. And I'm forgetting the name of the leader at the time, but he was a literal Hitler fan. and a Nazi apologist who was leading apartheid South Africa in, I think the 60s and 70s, the Israeli government had no problem with making allegiances there. So, you know, how long can Ben Shapiro make this case, even to his audience, that criticism of Israel is equal to anti-Semitism?

Like, we are at the end of the line here. No one buys this anymore after all this time. It's ridiculous. All right. So we've heard from the Pope of the Jews, Ben Shapiro, as to why it was ridiculous that Elon Musk was. And again, you know, I personally think that it was a troll where Elon Musk was basically trying to cover his tracks with something that could be somewhat ambiguous, he thinks, as a, as a Hitler salute. So he'd have some type of

deniability. Did you see how he was acting at the inauguration? You think it was juiced? I'm not saying that, but I'm saying people could look up videos of his eyes rolling back into his head and then one of his handlers having to whisper in his ear something. It seemed like that's what happened on camera.

He might have been a little over enthused on stage. And then something that he practices in private, just theoretically, it's just a theory, could have come out, because I don't know did you see the video of Billy Ray Cyrus

like there were a lot of people that were enjoying themselves I think he I think that was practiced I really do think that he really practiced

that moment I mean which is not mutually exclusive from being hopped up on something but you know we know his sense of humor

we know his sort of like a whole thing and you know you on Twitter I you reposted a quote from

Satra, you know, saying that like, one of the things the fascists do is play with stuff like this, because they can, and because they know they have an advantage against people who are using language and representation as meaningful tools. They know that they can play loose and fast

with this, because they don't have to communicate to 100% of the people. They don't want to communicate to 100% of the people. They know to grow their movement, they need to communicate to the dog whistle people. Here is Jean-Paul Sotra. Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge, but they're amusing themselves

for their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with the discourse, for by giving ridiculous reasons they do. discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument, but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely,

they'll abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is passed. I mean, people have written ad nauseum. This is part of the irony. Yep. In the whole thing. And so the idea...

But that's from 1946. and it applies perfectly to the far right today. Yep. But here is, we heard from the Pope of the Jews, let's listen to Joe Rogan, who also happens to be a buddy of Elon Musk's. And, you know, it seems relevant, because later in this clip in the second part,

he does seem to insinuate that they've spoken. Oh, interesting. My friend Kurt Metzker told me this. We were talking about the Elon Gaff, where he's like, my heart goes out to you. Like, hey, don't do that, though. That's the perfect example of when you see a story, you believe it's true. If you believe he's a Nazi, you're going to see him do a silly hand gesture and see that as that.

Well, he's saying my heart goes out to you. But that is how the Nazis did it. Yeah, yeah. But this is the thing. This is what I found out last night. You did it twice. That's also how they used to do the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance used to be done like this until the Nazis came along.

And then we switched it to this, your hand over your heart. So we cut out that part. There's going to be a screen grab of you. Well, there's already screen grab. This is what's funny. Pause it. See, this is, this is amazing that he's using this as some type of justification. There is no doubt that I'm sure that there was some type of salute like that for the Pledge of Allegiance.

In fact, the Nazi symbol wasn't always a swastika. It was not always a swastika. It was an indigenous people. design. It's still used in certain parts of the globe. You know, Nazi uniforms? Well, they were based on Massachusetts State Trooper outfits. But we know now that the Nazis adopted this. Like, the whole point

of a salute, again, is to represent something. When you do this in the U.S. Army, or in the military. You're indicating that there is a hierarchy that's going on. First person to do it, there's a hierarchy going on. We do this because this is what our, you know, this is our in-group. And if it suddenly changed to, you know, this,

this would mean something different than it did. Right. Two days ago, which is just like, nah, nah, nah, nah. But if we switched this to, oh, this is the way that you signal that you, you're talking to a superior officer, the idea that this used to be nah, nah, nah, it's irrelevant because everybody

now knows. So the idea that any given hand gesture can be innocent, of course that's the case. But to go back in history and even imply, which of course this is,

it's not a direct defense, but it's an implication. But Elon Musk, as a child growing up in South Africa, and I would say, because he's got to be younger than me, Elon Musk, right? He's in his early 50s. He's in his early 50s. He did not grow up at a time where the statute, the Pledge of Allegiance, you would stick your hand out like that, because I didn't. And he was not in America, so he did not do the pledge of the allegiance to the U.S. flag. I mean, yeah, his family, they come from all around. His grandparents, according to his father,

who were members of the Canadian Nazi Party who liked Hitler and went to South Africa because they liked the apartheid there. That's according to Elon Musk's own father. But this is what Rogan is stripping into all context, saying, oh, yeah, prior to the Nazis, they managed. No, that's because context matters, right? And now he goes into the personal agreement piece. This is what the two arguments they have here is to flatten the context. don't believe your lying eyes. And then also, they're always coming after us conservatives.

Yeah, screen grab of you. Well, there's already screen grab. This was funny. CNN, during the COVID times in particular, whenever I get in trouble, the photo they would use of me was me at the UFC Wayans. So when I do the Wayans, I announce the Wayans, I say, welcome to the Wayans, everybody. I'm waiting to the crowd. That's what they did.

So they would use this photo of me to try to make it look like I was some sort of a Nazi. whatever because i'm waving to the crowd and they take a freeze frame of it yeah that's not what happened there was video of elin musk doing it twice twice right and not just like a it wasn't a gesture it was a slap it off like who uh he's just to got an awkward way of going like i give you my heart are you kidding me yeah i mean but if you go to that second part bradley i don't really care about Rogan's victim complex as a multi, multi, multi, multi, multi millionaire. Because every defender of Elon is doing the exact same thing that he's saying right now. They're posting a photo of Elizabeth Warren waving and pretending it's a sig hail.

They're posting a photo of AOC waving and pretending it's a sigail. No one's posting the video. No one would have, I would have defended Rogan if there were all of these CNN outlets calling him a Nazi and just posting the still and then you find out that it was him waving. No, no, no, no. we know what we saw. And like all of this defense of him precedes him

basically revealing here that they've been speaking. Long time, first time claims they never did the Nazi salute for the pledge. It was proposed, but the proposed gesture ended with the hand up and it never made it into the flag code for obvious reasons. And Bullprog makes the point. Kaepernick wasn't kneeling.

He was saying he would propose marriage to the flag because he loves America so much. Go ahead. Right. Right. how's Elon handling this whole he probably like what the yeah he was definitely what the fuck and he was happy that the ADL of all people defended him

yeah that's good yeah well it's obvious uh... posit actually what's more obvious is at one point about a year ago Elon Musk said you know what maybe your organization needs some funding and the ADL's ability to like

Arbor, be an arborator for any of this stuff has always been suspect, but now it's just absolutely out the window. And maybe Israel, do you need some intelligence assistance or satellites for your military campaigns? I'll be down for that. I'm one of the Pentagon's biggest contractors. I'm not an anti-Semite. I've got cold, hard cash for you to commit genocide.

Here's anti-establishment, Joe Rogan, continuing to carry water for the world's richest man. I defended him. Yeah, that was good. Yeah, well, it's obvious. Like anybody, but all these people on Twitter are just chiming in saying it's clearly a Nazi salute. He's doing a Nazi salute. Yeah. No.

No. So dumb. It's so dumb. It's not clearly. Yeah. The whole thing's crazy. But that's a sign of the times. And they couldn't help it.

They saw a thing. And they're like, we're going to run with it. He's clearly showing he's a Nazi, you know, the Trump's in office and he's a Nazi. and this is, fascism is real, folks. Here it is. Okay. My heart goes out to you. Yeah, we got it.

We got it. We got it. It's hilarious. My heart goes out to you. So I know people have forgotten this, but there was a Madison Square Garden rally that preceded the election by a few weeks that caused a ton of controversy because of a bunch of racist comments that were made there about Puerto Rican people in particular. It was an obvious homage to the Bund.

That's what it was called the Bund rally of American Nazis at Madison Square Garden. They were trying to evoke it. They pretend like they're not in public. And then they snicker about it behind the scenes in private. The exact same thing that these 4chan groopers are saying secretly in response to Elon's salute. He knows what he was doing. He. he never did my heart goes out to you with that emphasis and clarity in other contexts.

He wanted to do that in front of the presidential seal of the United States in this country. And as AOC has been saying, like, there's a few foundational things for her politics in her response. She was saying, we hate the Confederates and we hate the Nazis in this country. And, you know, there are still World War II veterans that are alive here. And I think it's disgusting that a billionaire thought it would be really cheeky and cute for him to go up there and do that kind of symbol, let alone the number of American Jews and other people who have been victimized by neo-Nazi ideology and just the literal Nazis. It's just gross. And I guess if you want billionaire PR now, you go to Joe Rogan's podcast. Of course.

Rogan's going to be, you know, going to be carrying Elon Musk's water. Okay. So we've heard from Ben Shapiro who bootlicked Musk and, you know, really put his yarmulke on the line to protect Musk from any criticism of being anti-Semitic. Joe Rogan just said, this is absolutely crazy. Where do people get this idea? Thank God, Musk paid the ADL, contributed to the ADL, and got their support. Here's something funny happen at PDB, at the Patrick Bet David podcast. Remember this guy was really going off on like, there should be an all-Jew network or something like that, back, you know, a year ago when he was getting on Ben Shapiro.

So Patrick Bed David, they're all. going like, this is sort of weird. Like, you know, I mean, if people went around town doing this, I give my heart to you. I give my heart to you. People would be like, this seems like a weird gesture to give your heart. This is not like, it doesn't feel like, why are you pounding your chest so hard and then thrusting your hand out there? It's your heart.

Shouldn't you like. And he said my heart goes out to you after. It wasn't at the same time. Oh, he planned it so much. and but these guys now are trying to figure out another excuse. Maybe it's just like he, I don't know, just doesn't know how to work his arms. Go ahead. For making it happen.

Thank you. Incidentally, pause for a second. He did it on the other side. He did it twice. The CNN cut away from him when he did it the second time. Yeah. But he did it twice. He turned around, did the same thing.

heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured. Thanks to you. Civilization. Tom. That's not it. Yeah, a lot has been talked, there's been a lot said about this. I don't know.

I see what people are saying. I see what he's saying, okay, he puts it right on his heart and goes out. Then he also says, my heart goes out to you. so I don't know what was in his head, and I see how people were talking about it, but, you know, I don't know. I don't know if I can draw the conclusion. And I think it looks a little weird, but I have a tough time with a hard conclusion. Adam. Well, look, Elon, there's so many good things I can say about Elon, smart, intelligent, witty, the richest man in the world.

You know, you talk about golf scores all the time. Yeah. You know, if you played Madden, he's, you know, a 99-1. on wealth, 100 on wealth, 99 on strength, speed, agility, all that. Listen, Elon, public speaking, maybe isn't your thing. Stand-up comedy, maybe isn't your thing. So if he paid a little bit, just a little bit more attention, maybe preparation before going on stage, he would sort of avoid any gaps. Now, he's literally did a- Pause, pause, pause, pause. First of all, the first of the first,

like 15 seconds of what he was saying was just like, slurping it up. Just just keep it up, buddy. I mean, suck up to that guy. That was disgusting. He'd be a 90. He's giving him Madden ratings on his IQ.

I thought you wanted to say something. That's far as causing it. But that was a disgusting. Like, we get it. You want that sweet, sweet money. Oh, no, no,

yeah. He's on full bootleg mode, but he's got to be reasonable and be like, Elon just, you know, he's not great at public speed. He was just winging it.

But I'm sorry. Like, this is the time where he comes out for the first time in his life he ever goes. Like, he planned this out. And he planned it out in such a way that there was enough ambiguity so that it would get this type of reaction. This is exactly everything that we are doing, they are doing, everybody we've covered is exactly what he wanted to have happened. And it's a fairly easy thing to manipulate if you're willing to do that. And the point is, is that he has no problem with it being interpreted either way. Right.

And that is what you do when you're a fascist. Like, that's the thing. You don't need everybody to see it as a Nazi salute because the Nazis see it that way. And for those people who don't see it that way, they're looking around going like, boy, anytime somebody's accused of being a Nazi, it's just overreaction. This is exactly the game plan.

This is what they do. Go ahead. Any gaps? Now, he literally did a, and I go, whoa, what was that? Now, as a Jewish person, let me help you guys out out there. He's not a Nazi.

He doesn't go to Nazi rally. He's not a fan of Adolf Hitler. Stop it. I can already. see the ridiculous media attacking this guy. Here it is. Reuters, Elon Moss's hand gesture during Trump interview festivities, draw scrutiny.

The guy was talking about space. I'm sure it looked awkward. I'm sure it looked weird. No, he wasn't. I'm sure if he had a chance to do it all over again. He probably wouldn't go out, throw a C-Cal out there to the atmosphere. He's more interested in going to Mars. Stop it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. He was talking about civilization.

You think he said civilization after that as a mistake? You can't. You're all. Only a Nazi. If you say you're a Nazi, if you go to Nazi rallies and you say you love Adolf Hitler, wow. Wow. It's crazy. That number of people, honestly, is probably in this country smaller than like the avowed white supremacists that are in groups that are basically Nazis, but don't call themselves Nazis. But if you were to have a beer with them or two, they would talk about the Nazis fondly. Like, it's just like, okay, fine, don't call him a Nazi. I'll say that that was a fascist symbol. A far-right fascist symbol meant to signal something to Nazis and did signal something to Nazis. Does it make it better? Like, I don't even care if it's, even if it wasn't in Elon's heart, even if he wasn't

obsessed with Western birth rates and natalism, even though if he didn't hate unions and communists and leftists, which is, by the way, also part of the Nazi ideology, even if he hadn't made anti-Semitic statements in the past, even if his grandparents weren't allegedly members of the Canadian Nazi Party and loved apartheid. Even if we didn't have all of that context. Unbanning and retweeting Nazi accounts on Twitter. Right. Replatforming white supremacists, even if we didn't have all this information, even if he wasn't a Nazi, you know what, I wouldn't care. Because what he did, empowered and made those Nazis excited in the same way that when Donald Trump said proud boys stand back and stand by, does it, Donald Trump's not a proud

boy he would have had to have the outfit he would have had to go to the rallies he would have had to say i'm a proud boy put it on my chest or was he just trying to signal to those groups because that is the same thing it's the same thing but to be fair he did put out a bunch of tweets saying that he really regret it oh wait no he didn't he did a bunch of puns using uh um famous nazis as a way of like joking around like people are really taking this seriously even his his crony buddies on these shows are like it was a Nazi salute but he did it accidentally because I'm sure all those times at Tesla when he had those big Tesla meetings he said my heart goes out to you oh they absolutely give you the Nazi salute oh my God what else where else these guys go a little more but on behalf of the Jewish community relax the guys on the good team he's on team America he wants the good guys to win sustain this attack he's going to be just For all the people out there, yeah, great point because if you're playing the Hitler, Nazi, whatever, just shut up. Just shut up.

First of all, the guy's autistic. He has, this guy has never been in the limelight. He's not, he's on interviews, which he's freaking amazing. Wait a second. He's never been in the limelight. He hosts Saturday Live. He's in the baby. He had a cameo in Iron Man 2, which came out 15 years ago.

You're kicking babies just the richest man on a lot. earth and he's a like the level of infantilization for the richest person on the planet is the most like insane thing i've ever seen he's a little little baby how can you attack him the more they do this the more it's quite clear like the how far they have to go like autistic people have a problem control their ability to give the nazi salute wait right at tombberg never did that never did that you know she's just a leftist advocating for climate change and like ending the genocide in Gaza. I mean, gosh, we could go on and on about the different people that like are neurodivergent that don't do.

Just don't be an idiot. He's autistic. Go ahead. Yeah. Has never been in the limelight. He's not he's on interviews, which he's freaking amazing. He will put your lights out and he did it to that BBC reporter. Like, I don't think, he never thought in a million years.

this guy would be go remember the last rally he went to where he was jumping he's so excited I don't know if you guys have ever dealt with people that have Asperger's or they have these conditions they have autism I have family members that do I have friends that do they don't go in front of crowd all the time the type of stuff the guy's genuinely excited he's telling his heart is going out to them he's in the moment he's not sitting thinking about it he's not planning it so for people to try to do it by the way this story will be dead after tomorrow nobody gives a dimbab this guy has bigger bigger plan he has bigger missions. Did it look bad? Yeah, for people that were kind of looking to say,

oh, show, hey, Hitler, which, I mean, how many more Hitler jokes and Holly, Charlie Kirk just walk by? Charlie, we love you. How many more Hitler jokes? Actually, that's a good question. That's a good question because, you know, Elon Musk, if, if he really didn't want that action to be interpreted in the way that it did, and he was just like, whoa, I'm not a Nazi. I don't want to appeal the Nazis. He would have issued an apology and said, like, I'm so sorry. I got caught up in the moment. You know, maybe my my cave bag was a little bit stronger than typically.

I mean, just like, again, that's a joke. It's just theoretical. Oh, this was his apology, Sam. Don't say Hess-Tenoxie accusations. Has, of course, is one of Hitler's top generals.

Some will say Goebbels, some will gobbles down anything. Gourbles was the, basically the minister of propaganda uh stop goring your enemies another um uh hitler uh general uh himler uh his pronouns would have been he himler is another um and bet you did not see that coming i've heard that joke uh seven thousand times um but uh amazing puns good stuff good stuff and once you know he had the adel uh give him the stamp of approval, then he was fine.

I mean, why does he even need to apologize when he has guys just sucking him off in the media for free? Sorry. I mean, kissing his ass. Jeff Bezos came, Bill Gates came,

Mark Zuckerberg came, many of them. Don Jr.'s knows, wow, majority report violating YouTube terms of service and showing a video of the PBD guys valading musk live on air