The Majority Report with Sam Seder - Best Of 2025 Trumps End Times Fascism W Naomi Klein

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

It's another Best of 2025 episode On today's program: Live-streamed on April 17, 2025 Emma is joined by writer, activist and professor Naomi Klein about her new essay The rise of end times fascism. Naomi points out the new form that right wing authoritarianism has taken in finding ways to exit society and Earth itself. Naomi co-wrote the essay with Astra Taylor, which you can read here in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/n... 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: SUNSET LAKE: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% on their full lineup of CBD products to support your New Year wellness goals and Dry January aspirations 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. And I get the feeling you've been cheating. It is Thursday, January 1st, 2006.

Good job. Thank you. I spent a lot of time gearing up for that. 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. And yes, it is. our famous best ofs that we do. Emma Viglin.

Hello. Hello. There she is. Hi. For the best of of 2025. Now, I know what you're thinking. It's 2026. Why are you still harping about 2025?

Well, we had such goodness in 2025 that we actually have to spill over into 2026. Well, not maybe goodness politically in basically any possible way, except for Zaraamond. Donnie, obviously. That was pretty good. Yeah, that was our silver lining. But yes, we had great interviews and lots of great guests in 2025, I will say. And, of course, we're all at home now recovering from the crazy night out that we had last night. I don't do New Year's.

We're recording this much earlier, incidentally. I don't know about you, but I'm just, I just don't really care. It's probably the holiday I care the least about 100%. So you did not go off for New Year's part of it. I mean, no, I did not. Most likely. I mean, it's just in New York City in particular, it's so expensive. It's off.

We're getting home. It's amateur hour. Every bar. If you want to just like do something casual at a bar, every bar is, you know, reserve these days and you got to pay to get in. It's like, I might as well just watch a movie. Yeah. Yeah, more of a Flag Day guy.

You save your New Year's celebration for Flag Day? I get hammered. He was waving the flag around. Oh, yeah. It's awesome. But you do that really. That's like a Tuesday. Right, hopefully.

Right. Right. Well, to your service, good sir. I, uh, last night was at the top of the Empire State Building. Wow. I always spend, uh, new years, uh, at a, uh, a gala, uh, like a gala. Black tie affair. Black tie affair.

I go, uh, wear a tucks. And the top of the Empire State Building. Yes, that's true. It's very exclusive. And, uh, but, uh, but, da, but, exactly and I watched the ball drop it is quite possible that I watch the ball drop like I'll sometimes watch that with you know my son but he doesn't care about that right he just wants to stay up late there's this this this fireworks you can see fireworks and stuff like that I don't I'm not a big new

years I used to my big thing was I used to work on new years me that's where you get like the big bucks 100% comedy perspective well not just comedy I'm I'm actually thinking back at as like a waiter. Oh, yeah. Do banquet bartending is what I would do. That makes sense. You can make a real killing on it. Lots of drunk people wanting to tip you.

Right. But it's amateur hour. You don't want to go out with that. You don't want to deal with that. That's what I'm saying. People drinking for the first time and then vomiting all over themselves. We don't need to see that. But we do have, if you've recovered, we do have a great interview that you did.

Yes. with Naomi No, just No, just Naomi Klein Well, Astor Taylor did co-author The piece with her

But I spoke just to Naomi Klein Which She's one of my favorite guests I mean At the risk of being a dork About it Like, I don't think

There's few guests That we could have That would make me more Not nervous But anticipatory Like Naomi Klein is A hero for sure of mine So

And you sort of made sure You booked there When I was on vacation I want some girl time but also obviously the crowd you out for strategic purposes. No, it's like having a walker and getting up to the edge of the stairs and hearing the footsteps behind you. That is incredibly vivid. But people who don't know Naomi Klein, obviously you should, writer of many, many important books, activist, professor.

No logo. Shock doctrine. Of course. I mean, we interviewed her for her recent book, Dopplganger, which is really great as well. She has a book coming out based on this premise. I'm not sure exactly of the title, but this is the thesis. Her and Astra Taylor, another phenomenal guests of ours, a frequent guest of the Debt Collective, are writing a book together called The Rise of End Times Fascism. Or I think that that's the premise. That was the title of The Guardian article that is like the framework of our discussion.

And so they're coming out with this book next year. But we already spoke a lot about like what she's her thesis is about this current political moment. And, yeah, the nerves wore off for me, like five minutes into the interview. So then it's pretty smooth sailing from there on out. And her husband, Avi Lewis, is running for like NDP or something like that. I didn't know that. Yeah. He's a documentary filmmaker.

They also did a great film together called The Taking about a factory in, I want to say, Argentina, maybe, that was basically taken over by the workers. it's definitely do I have that right the take did I get that right the take this was a it's an old film

but yes so stick around this is a great interview uh that Emma did and then we'll have our famous

Matt Picks where he picks from an entire cavalcade of possible like clips or interviews and he puts it on to the end of the show and then you get the full show.

Now look, here's the deal. Tomorrow is Friday, January 2nd. You and I may do a little live stream. A little live stream like we'll see. But we may not. So there'll be either a best of show or our live stream. And we will, if you're on the app, You can get the app at majority app.com.

It's free. We don't track you really out of laziness more than anything else. I suppose we could make a lot of money off of that. But we will send you. Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel. Or the Biden campaign. Or the Biden campaign.

Anybody. But instead, what we'll do is we will send you a notification if we're on live. Okay. So check that out. In the meantime, enjoy this interview with Naomi Klein and Matt's picks. And one way or another, we'll see you tomorrow. And we are live for sure on Monday. Bye-bye.

We are back and we are joined now by Naomi Klein, New York Times best-selling author of nine critically acclaimed books, Professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia. Her latest piece in The Guardian is co-authored with Astra Taylor and called the rise of end times fascism. Naomi, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Well, it's great to see you again, Emma. Great to see you. Obviously, your work is so important to understanding just 21st century progressive politics and activism

and what late stage capitalism really looks like. And I've been getting a lot of texts from friends saying, well, what books should I be reading right now to kind of grapple with the Trump administration? And I've been encouraging folks to read the shock doctrine because, like, we're not far off from that book being, you know, it's almost 20 years old. And it occurs to me that we're seeing this evolved form of the disaster capitalist project, the shock doctrine. The Trump administration is seemingly openly creating shocks and vulnerabilities to exploit them, not just exploiting shocks as they happen. what's been your assessment of that? Sure. And it's been, I mean, that book is certainly having a revival.

I'm hearing about it all the time. And, you know, it's always gratifying when a book can have a life like that. But honestly, I'd rather it be another book than this particular book. I'd love for the shock doctrine to go out of print and no longer be relevant. But, you know, I think because the book, describes a particular strategy that is very popular for the right globally, which is, you know, trying to sort of throw so much at the public in a time of crisis that, you know, that our minds get scrambled. We lose our narrative. We're creatures of narrative. We're sort of told that like nothing we knew before this moment even applies. There's often a kind of an urge to sort of blank the slate. And so I think just knowing that this is a strategy and understanding the strategy helps drain it of its effectiveness. So I think that the shock doctrine is still useful in that way.

I also do want to say, you know, I know we'll get to this because I think there are ways that this follows a familiar script, and there are ways that the script is different and our reality is different. And I think there are always dangers of only looking to pass precedent to understand our reality, like only looking to history. and imagining that the present is just a repeat of the past. And the danger in that is that we don't see what's new, right? So I think that we are seeing a combination of tactics we've seen before in the United States, but also around the world, often pushed by the U.S. government and its various arms, and it's really now coming home.

But we're also seeing things that we haven't seen before because of the cumulative effect of the successful deployment of this particular strategy, which is why the piece with Astra is called end times fascism, which is different than forms of fascism that we've seen before. So I hope we can talk about what's different as well as the same. But what's the same is like, you know, when I see, for instance, Elon's Doge Boys running rampant and just decimating the U.S. government,

creating markets for Musk's own products. you know, they're talking about an AI first strategy for the federal government, basically replacing many of those federal workers with bots if they're replaced at all. I think that they should be seen in this lineage of wholly unqualified young men who have run roughshod over governments often in the aftermath of Kuditas. You know, I've talked about the Doge Boys as being part of a lineage of the Chicago boys in Pinochet's, Chile, or the Harvard boys in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union or what we're called the Berkeley Mafia in Indonesia,

you know, after a coup d'etat there. So there's often been this one-two strategy of first comes the shock and then sort of in the wreckage of the shock comes the rapid fire privatization, deregulation, government austerity. So I think that there are those commonalities, but they're really going for the absolute heart of the government now. And so there's old and there's new. You can see how he's almost exploiting the results of a culmination of shocks,

which include you can go back to the war on terror and trace what the administration is doing, which is the expansion of the surveillance state under the war on terror, the collapse also of the of the economy and how in after the reception of the great recession wealth just continued to be concentrated also after COVID the wealthy got richer at the end of that and there was a mass exploitation via greedflation where there were naturally occurring bottlenecks and inflation due to COVID and then when that eased and subsided well prices still kept going up and you saw record profits for folks at the very top. And so, like, that culmination has created this baseline kind of almost nihilism or level of anxiety that it feels like Donald Trump

is kind of perfect for that moment of reality, because he's a president that almost he transcends truth and reality and is very much somebody who makes his own reality by lying the entire time. And it's like it's an escape hatch to the dystopia that we're living and even as he exacerbates it.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot going on. And you know, one thing I would clarify is that is that in the instances that I was talking about before, like these earlier instances where you've had an exploitation of

of a political shock. And here I think it's worth mentioning that while it's true that Trump is creating the shocks that he's also exploiting, right? That also was the case in Chile in the sense that the Chicago Boys' economic policies backfired massively under Pinochet. And even though it was done in the name of reducing inflation, it actually led to inflation spiraling. And then there were the bailouts, right?

I mean, because this is the thing, is that they win either way. And I think this is what's important. And I think a lot of people do understand this about Trump's economic team is that you've got people who are very skilled at profiting from both a market upturn and a market crash, right? Especially if they have their hands on the levers that allow for the bailouts if it's needed. So they're not worried about the consequences of their economic wreckage particularly. But I do think that, you know, he did have to draw back from some of the tariffs just because I think, I think partly he hadn't reckoned with the, and this is what I mean about history being cumulative, right? Like because we are, you know, 50 years into the neoliberal project, the, the economy is much more financialized than it was, you know, when there was the Nixon shock, for instance.

So things do, some things stay the same as something's changed. But you're talking about the, you know, the nihilism at the heart of this project. And that's really what I've been grappling with. And I think a lot of us have been where we're watching this. And we're like, okay, don't you also have to breathe air and drink water? Like don't you're like, okay, maybe you can send your kids to private schools. You're not worried about what happens to public schools. And these folks are all grifters and they see all kinds of market opportunities in education.

I think it's really important to understand that, not just in the sort of for-profit university or like Jordan Peterson seminar racket, right? Which is very real. but also just the AI, the idea that AI should be teaching our kids, that a lot of the work of education in K-12 and post-secondary can just be done through AI. And by the way, this is not, this is a bipartisan project. And just if I could just add a little factor, which I think is important for us to remember as we're bombarded with information, there was a similar kind of AI push in the early days of COVID, where a lot of these big tech companies, and this was really being spearheaded by Eric Schmidt,

you know, formerly CEO of Google, saying, okay, well, in the name of the pandemic and, you know, keeping us safe from this virus, we're going to have this build back better, which is really going to digitize everything, right? So we'll have, and it was also couched much as we are in this moment of, you know, China is out AIing us. They use more telehealth. They use. They have more smart, so quote unquote smart cities, which are cities where you have AI embedded in absolutely everything. So Eric Schmidt went on a major lobbying campaign to sort of rebrand COVID recovery as this major, major push for AI everything, in schools, in health care, in cities.

And the person who took him up on this was Cuomo as governor. He put him in charge. I mean, he was incredibly excited about this. So this is not just a Republican move. And as we know, there are a lot of powerful corporate dens who have very deep ties to many of these Silicon Valley figures who have been pushing for exactly this. It turns out that it's not Cuomo, but Trump,

who is opening up all of the doors for their wildest dreams. So AI, in addition to all the things that we should worry about AI, in terms of its impacts on jobs, in terms of its impacts, you know, even in the dystopian sort of AI singularity nightmares that we hear about, as somebody who's been engaged in the climate struggle for a long time, what worries me most immediately about AI is that this is really a vampiric technology, right, in the sense that, like, I mean, a vampire technology in that it builds this mirror world of our world by draining our world. of what we need to live, right?

Like, of water, of energy, of a habitable climate because it devours energy on such a huge scale. So this is another way that this Trump agenda is really at war with just life on Earth. You know, you have this deregulation of, you know, health and human services and environmental regulations. And by the way, we have not even seen the start of it. They've got all kinds of big plans, apparently,

for Earth Day, where they're going to, you're really, really declare war on the whole NGO, the NGO sector. But then you have AI, which is really the massive environmental threat, because you've got Schmidt before Congress saying, well, we're going to, we need to triple our energy use in order to meet our AI needs and, you know, keep up with China. It's basically this new Cold War discourse. So that's why I think the moment we're in is really, is different,

because it's just simpler in the sense. It's just so clear. It's like it's a life for death choice. Like are we on the side of life? Are we on the side of, you know, an animate world with humans and other life forms? Or are we are we throwing in with the machines? And I actually think, you know,

I'm smiling because I actually think that this is like maybe our best hope of building a broad-based coalition. It's clarifying. It's clarifying. And it's also, I have to tell you, sorry I'm talking so long, but like, you know, last time I talked to you, I just published doppelganger. And as you know, I listened to.

way too much Steve Bannon to write that book. And, you know, I'm really struck by the fact that, you know, Bannon as the kind of the voice of the MAGA base really latched on to this idea that like big tech is waging war on you. You can't trust big tech. You know, it's a war on the human. He was using all this discourse. So a lot of people who voted for Trump thought they were voting against the big tech

anti-human agenda. And, you know, it's just one of the many ways that that Trump is, is betray. it's not just the price of eggs. And I think that this piece of it has the best potential appealing away a significant portion of the Trump base, not everyone, and we don't want everyone, but some of them. And here I don't want to, you know, I don't think we should give much credence to the idea that Bannon himself is serious in taking on Silicon Valley. I think he's absolutely talking out of both sides of his mouth, but it's telling that he

need that he feels he needs to put on this show for his base of sort of, you know, taking on the tech oligarchs and so on. Well, because as you write in this excellent piece in the Guardian, the rise of end times fascism, you know, I've been speaking about Trump as the privatization president, but your thoughts on this are more evolved in that it is the end times, almost enclosure presidency. And that works very neatly with the tech oligarch project. And you've, rightly point out that the infrastructure for their mass accumulation of wealth was, frankly, the result of the Democrats embracing the tech bros, especially under the Obama administration, and these are the monsters they've created, much like the Democrats have created this monster

of authoritarianism cracking down on political speech of protesters against genocide, right? And so these are lessons that we should be learning. But this whole concept of the network states, I'm sure you've read a lot of Gilderan and what he's reported on about how these this religion with these tech billionaires. Could you expand

on that a little bit and how this, the network state, the private city, the bunker for the rich is in effect this agenda, but they're selling it in different ways before the public can catch up.

Yeah, absolutely. And Gil Duran's been terrific reporting on this. I've been following it for a really long time because this is the sort of logical extension of Milton Friedman's libertarianism that that was sort of at the heart of the shock doctrine, right? Like this extreme idea that, you know, government is always the problem and that it's tyranny to have a functioning government and really all you need from the state in Friedman's view is, you know, protection for property rights, you know, and policing. But interestingly, his grandson, Patry Friedman, has taken this even further. And Patrick Friedman is really at the heart of this hyper-libertarian idea that is sometimes talk called the Network Society, but it's really this idea of, well, why do we live in countries at all, right? Why can't we start our own countries where we'll be absolutely free to make our own rules, pay the level of tax that we decide, like, why should we listen to anyone? Like, basically it's like a temper tantrum.

Like, you are not the boss of me, right? And let me just interject for a sec, just to say, how contrary that is to Steve Bannon's almost like fetishization, a romanticization of the state. Yeah. Yeah, and I want to come to that because once again, I think we can make a mistake where we, in overplaying the extent to which,

those visions are actually in conflict. There are ways of resolving them, and I think it's important for us to understand how they can be resolved and are being resolved analytically on Steve Bannon's war room in real time. But at the same time, like I said before, there are ways that there is a fissure that can be exploited if we do it right.

So this network society idea, it's been around for a long time. I wrote about it in, you know, in my book on fire where it was looking at this idea of how it was intersecting with a with a preparism like a preparism for the super rich. So originally the idea was, okay, we want our own countries just so that we can do whatever we want, right? But then it was like, well, what about climate change?

So if you look at their, if you look at the plans, there was this idea of seesteading, Peter Thiel is always involved. Whatever it is, Peter Thiel is giving it some money. So there's the sea-steading idea, and that didn't really go very far, but it was the idea that you could start your own countries in international waters on floating oil rigs, and you could, quote-unquote, vote with your boat. So if one floating nation had better rules than the other one for your business. These people are freaks, incidentally. Totally. And so then it turned out actually most rich people didn't want to live on floating oil rigs.

So they came up with another idea, which was this thing. this thing called Prospera, which is an island in Honduras, which is currently being challenging for it, where they're pretending they have their own little country, their own little island state. And basically, it's a glorified medspa. Patry Friedman, once again, grandson of Milton Friedman got his Tesla key embedded in his hand. So the idea is like, okay, it combines all of these niche Silicon Valley fetishes around like biohacking, right? so they're upgrading their bodies for the future.

But then a lot of these projects are foreseeing a future of collapse, right? Like that's the subtext of all of this, is things are going down. And the going down may be about viruses. It may be about climate impacts, which is, you know, an argument for a floating nation, right? You don't have to worry about sea level rise. You just keep rising with the seas. And, you know, all of its solar powered, renewable powered, and so on. I think two forces have really converged.

One is this idea of wanting total freedom for capitalism and no state whatsoever. And the other is this idea of things are going to get really bad and we need our private escape hatches, right? So this is where, I know you mentioned the war on terror. You know, I think about the wave of privatization of the U.S. military, the U.S. surveillance state and players like Blackwater and air Eric Prince, I mean, they're all swirling around this, right? The idea is that you have, you have your own private armies. One of the reasons they like AI so much is because it sort of solves the problem of who's going to serve you and tend to you in your little private states.

But the real dream world is the Gulf states, honestly. It's, it's, you know, they want to have a, they want to have luxury lives serviced by a combination of machines and indentured servants who have absolutely no rights, who are, you know, migrant workers with absolutely no rights. So that's their dream world. And you would think that it is highly, I mean, I think the thing that for us to understand is that it foresees collapse. And it perceives collapse. And it's being dreamed by the very people who are accelerating the collapse in the ways that we've already talked about,

including by going all in on AI, which is an absolute energy hog and water hog and, you know, is draining our real physical world. So they're saying collapse is inevitable. And oh, by the way, we're accelerating it. as we've prepped for it. And then you have Donald Trump saying, you know, positioning himself as this hyper-nationalist, make America great again. And you have the MAGA base who identify themselves

primarily as nationalists, but their vision of nationalism is also the nation state as bunker. And this is where I think it's really important for us to understand, even if they claim to deny climate change to not think it's real, I don't think that we can understand what's happening on borders, what's happening with offshore detention facilities, which Trump did not invent. You know, Australia was doing it.

Italy was doing it. You know, it's been going on for over a decade now, this idea of, you know, relatively wealthy countries offshoring migrants into these sort of legal black holes. It was happening on Nehru in the Pacific Islands, Manus, Christmas Island. Libya was doing it for Europe. And now, you know, the Trump administration,

is doing something similar with, you know, it's actually being built as a kind of an economic development opportunity for countries like El Salvador. So I don't think we can understand Trump's economic agenda without, or I think it's helpful to, I think of them as supersized preppers in the sense that I think all of this, yeah. Well, exactly. I mean, it's occurring to me as you're speaking.

It's like the protectionism is the bunker state or like the just like, the rapid onshoreing without first years long of domestic capacity being built up that would justify the tariffs. They're putting the car before the horse, but there's no horse for lack of a better phrase. But the key point that you made there about the overlap. And we should be really careful not to overstate the fissures on the right because it's just so different. Like the Democrats, frankly, the Republicans in this movement, they acknowledge that there is like doom on the horizon. And the Democrats talk about things like and how we should be maintaining our system, which is part of the reason that the right now has this salience that it shouldn't have because they're at least acknowledging that there's a level of anxiety and there's a problem and that our system is collapsing.

But there is key overlap between, as you write, the religious end timers, the network state, but also Christian and white nationalists, that piece that came out in the Wall Street Journal with Elon Musk talking about his fears about the collapse of Western civilization and that even though the population is increasing, he's concerned about population decreases. Well, what is he referring to? He's referring to Europe and the United States. Okay, so like, yeah, the tech guys may be different than the neocons, but they still see life in the global South as dispensable. And it can justify the genocide in Gaza. It can justify protectionist policies and climate accelerationism that doesn't take them into account, but builds walls up here. It, in fact, is actually the same thing. It's just a different letter in front of fascism, or a different word in front of fascism.

or a different word in front of fascism. Yeah, I think that's really well said, Emma. And, you know, I think it's the reason why we ended up calling it end times fascism and we played with different names is because I think it gets at the narrative structure of all of these movements, right? And it is the same narrative structure as the rapture, right? And not all Christians believe in the rapture, by the way. It is not clear that this is actually biblical text,

but this very powerful interpretation of biblical text that there is going to be this, you know, that there's going to be the return of the Messiah. There's going to be this moment when the righteous gets sucked up to their golden city in the sky, and then the final battle rages below, and everybody who has not been selected for this elevator ride is left to drown, burn, whatever it is. I mean, it's the most violent part of the Bible. But the point is that for people who believe in it, they're psyched. They're very psyched.

This is what they're working towards. And Freud called it the death drive. But I think it's really important for us to understand that whether you're religious or not, that story, that apocalyptic story, is so deep. encoded in our culture, right? No matter what your faith is. I mean, it's versions of it are in every Hollywood disaster movie, right? It's so deeply encoded on so many sci-fi stories, right?

So you have this secular version of it, and you also have it simultaneously, people who seriously believe in it, like apparently Mike Huckabee, very dangerous that people who actually believe in it are in charge of, you know, policies like in Israel because Israel, in this story, Israel is where it all goes down. And the, you know, the return of the Israelites to this land is the conditions under which the Messiah comes back. So you've got all of these apocalyptic thinkers and messianic thinkers, first of all, inside the Netanyahu government, right, who desperately want to destroy Alaksa and build the third temple. I mean, they're driving towards this story. So you have

people who actually are religious fanatics who believe it. And then you have kind of the muffs and the teals who are sort of dabbling with the religion, and weirdly, Peter Thiel has been talking more and more about how he actually is religious, never mind his gay party lifestyle, he thinks the Antichrist is here, and it's Greta Thumburg. I mean, it's just beyond the stuff that's going on. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a way, like, you know, in doppelganger, I quote Philip Roth, the kind of king of doppelgangers, who said, it's too ridiculous to take seriously and too serious to be ridiculous. And I feel that way about all of this. I mean, it's so ridiculous. No, Elon Musk is not going to upload his consciousness, you know, into the AI singularity

and live in the ether on Mars or whatever the story is that he thinks is going to protect him and his multiplying kin from the fires that he is helping to unleash. But, you know, we have to take it seriously because it has material effects on all of our lives, right? And that's why what we try to do in the peace is say, okay, well, what are we? all these people have in common? You know, whether they are actually religious extremists who believe the end times are coming and they're psyched about it, or whether they're the billionaires who are bunkering down and getting ready to do their exit, or whether it's the Fortress Nation crowd who are like, okay, which critical minerals can we bring into our bunker nation state and which people

can we send to, you know, like a deep dark dungeon somewhere else with no absolutely no rights? you know, all of them are giving up on the future. All of them are within this apocalyptic narrative. They are, you know, treasonous, really. I've never used the word treason before. To humanity. They're treasonous to humanity. Yeah.

To this world. Not just humanity. Like to creation, like to the, and I'm using that kind of language deliberately because I actually think it's very important that we understand that we're not going to win this by sort of snarkly going, I guess it wasn't about the price of eggs. No, it wasn't. It was not about the price of eggs. They are tapping into incredibly powerful myths, right? They're giving people a profound sense of nihilistic purpose in their lives. And I don't, and I think that while, you know, I've made the argument for the Green New Deal and eco-populism,

and we need all of that, like we need to improve people's material circumstances. We need to continue to fight for universal health care, for debt cancellation, for a living wage, for heat pumps for all, for all of that good stuff. But we can't kid ourselves that we can beat these sort of incredibly powerful myths only with material offerings. And here I'm drawing on work from Richard Seymour, who talks about this in his really great book, Disaster Nationalism, which touches on a lot of these themes. We really, we need our own myths, you know.

We need our own sort of transcendent stories. And I think the left at its best has been able to do that. And, you know, the offering that Astro and I make in the pieces, you know, these are people who are treasonous to this world. And we are the people who are faithful. You know, we are committed to staying. They're all, they're all planning their exit strategies, whether it's a golden city in the sky or whether it's a floating oil rig, you know, in the Atlantic. I mean, they're out of here. And we, like, we need to really think about that.

Like, we need to think about what we're willing to fight for and who we're willing to fight for. and who we're willing to fight for and what it means to be so completely uninterested in the wonders of this world. A counter narrative. A counter narrative based in humanism and that is

we have no leaders, we have very few leaders right now who are advocating for that. But, look, I live on the West Coast, so I'm not only worried about the humans. I'm worried about the salmon and the orcas and like, you know, I think you should get witch you with this shit. Oh, wildlife. Yeah, yeah. I, I,

I should expand. All of life. Yes. All of life. Astro is saying, and this is her line in the piece, like Elon Musk wants humanity to eke out a living on two dead orbs, you know, the earth and Mars. And we have all of this beauty and wonder and life.

Abundance? Abundance. Hey, abundance. Tell us for fun. Well, Naomi, thanks so much for your time today. It's always wonderful to get your perspective. people can read the piece. It's called The Rise of End Times Fascism in The Guardian, co-authored with Astro Taylor. Thanks so much. Really appreciate your time today. Great to talk to you. Take care. Great to talk to you.

All right. Let's have a little more fun. This clip, this is from an hour-long interview on Pierce Morgan. And I seriously contemplated dedicating the entire fun half of this. but this is a compilation who's put together by peers Morgan it's a no put together by a Twitter user that's really great on this stuff at the bad stats T-H-E-B-A-D-S-T-A-T-S now just a little bit of background and I only know so much because there's only so much um science Eric Weinstein that I can handle and uh in science but Eric Weinstein he was doing this about a year or two ago right or it was three years up to like

four years ago. He has a geometric unity theory with, you know, some parts that aren't exactly filled in all the way about like the Shaiab operator. Well, let's not, let's not us editorialize on that. Because you're not a physics professor, nor am I. No. You're not a

physics scientist, nor am I. You're not a researcher. You don't do anything. So we're not going to judge. English major. You're an English major. I did a little religion in political science. But we are viewers. And so we have seen Eric Weinstein on countless podcasts going on talking about how he is an

auto-didact when it comes to physics. And he has figured out some grand theory about physics. And he is being completely neglected. No one will deal with this theory because it could be so revolutionary that in many ways probably embarrassed a lot of scientists he also has a theory about the distributed idea suppression complex or disc which is you know partially in why he's not you know have the nobel are you making up no he made that okay i just want to make that clear coined the distributed idea suppression okay so there is a distributed idea suppression complex that is that we're a part of that we are a part of uh we're like the we're like the pawns essential yeah we're just tendrils And he's going out there.

He's got this, like, incredible physics theory that nobody's showing any respect for. And so, um, uh, Pierce Morgan had, um, what number is this? Oh, let's, uh, let's see. Pierce Morgan, uh, brought Eric Weinstein on with a guy named Sean Carroll. Sean Carroll is a, um, uh, a physicist. And where does he? Is he at the affiliate with the university? Sean Carroll, it looks like, is educated at Villanova and Harvard. I'm not sure.

I was at California State Institute of Technology right now. Okay. Cal State Tech. Whatever. In 2007, Carol was named NSF National Science Foundation's Distinguished Lecture by the National Science. Oh, right. Okay.

Probably the heart of the disc. But here he is talking to Erie Weinstein, And honestly, you know, like the first time the Walking Dead came on and you would say if someone had never seen it, you're like, this is going to be a little bit gory. This might make you feel uncomfortable. I would give you the same word. Can I make another analogy? This is like there's a TikTok thing where it's like, we put a amateur professional basketball player to go join this like streetball match. and they cleaned up. That's sort of like what happens to.

I would like to let people out there know who might be working outside the academic physics community that it is 100% possible to have a good idea and have an impact on what physicists do. But it's not easy. You have to do a certain amount of work to show that your theory is worth the time, that it is respectable, that it is interesting, that it is promising. The first thing you got to do is make sure that your theory makes contact with modern physics as it is understood. If you have a new paper out, businesses are going to look at it. They're going to look for, you know, where's the Lagrangian? Where's the interactions?

Is the proton stable? Is there dark matter? Like, how does it fit into what I already know? Those are all the levels of the stars. Eric's paper has none of that. You would also ask, has the theory been shown to be viable in a very basic way? Is it stable? Is it free of anomalies? Is it finite in the sense of the quantum mechanical calculation that I already mentioned? Again, none of that is there. Are there any new predictions? Eric says, completely correctly, string theory doesn't make any new predictions either. But also, I really don't want people to get the idea that string theory has some dominant picture. In my department of Johns Hopkins, we have, let me just finish and then you can talk. I think it's a good system. In my department of Johns Hopkins, We have six professors in the theoretical physics group.

One of them does string theory. And even he only does it sort of half time. I wish we had more, honestly. This is very typical. Even at the most stringy departments, it's maybe half the people who do string theory. There are plenty of other approaches being advocated, and many of them do make different predictions, and we're looking for them. Just explain really briefly. Eric Weinzen says, well, if string theory can get away with some of this stuff, which he'll explain why string theory is valued, why can't mind?

that's all this is about right and what the other thing um that um sean carroll is uh explaining is that we're not just dedicated to string theory uh we have a lot of other people doing a lot of other uh pursuing a lot of other theories not that eric would know anything about that no well of course because disc uh inhibits that type of communication we should also say that carroll is now at john Hopkins. All right. Gotten. Technology and astrophysics and elsewhere. And finally,

does your theory solve any interesting problems that we already thought we had? That's the reason why string theory became interesting because we had this problem with quantum gravity that it gave infinite answers and string theory solved that problem. And again, I

see none of that in Eric's paper. So it's very possible that somewhere in Eric's theory, there are interesting ideas. But he has given us no reason to think that it is a promising theory. I encourage other people who would like to have an impact on the research agenda of modern physics to take these easy steps, rather than going on podcasts and talking about their victimization. I do all sorts of things that you have no idea of because your attitude, which you repeat in other podcasts, and I highly advise

you to spend more time in your physics department and less time on YouTube, is that this is not a serious thing. Nobody's taken. I mean, a little bit pot. God. My God. I just love

the idea that, like, you would go on to a show and get indignant because it's quite clear. The person I'm having a debate with is not aware of the other things I do

when I'm not here. And, Oliver you, the guy most on YouTube is like, stay off of you. But it's just like, like, the idea that like, you don't know all the different things I do. I took a walk today in the park. Also, this weekend I saw a movie. I bet you didn't know that. Did you know that I bowl on occasion?

No, you don't. You couldn't possibly know. You couldn't possibly know that I did paintball just six months ago. Nor were you aware of the fact that. Sometimes I do synchronize swimming. I do so many things that you have no idea about, sir. Is that this is not a serious thing. Nobody's taking it seriously.

And your misportrayal of... Go back to get that part and their reaction. ...of things that you have no idea of because your attitude, which you repeat in other podcasts, and I highly advise you to spend more time in your physics department and less time on YouTube, is that this is not a serious thing, nobody's taking it serious.

and your misportrayal of the situation is nearly constant for reasons that completely allude me. Pause it for a second. Pause it for a second. No, no, keep the image up there. Because I want you to look at Piers Morgan's face. Because Piers Morgan is going to himself. Cannot believe I'm watching this complete meltdown. Like, he is sitting there going, like, the person who booked this on my show is going to get a fucking medal. Pop of bottles tonight.

Oh, my God. Like, he is just like, this is fantastic. It is one of those moments where, and this is the thing that Pierce Morgan's job, I envy on some level. Because all he does is he puts, like, people in there. And his whole job is to sometimes just like not smile. Like, I just have to pretend like I'm showing respect. And it's just, I'm going to- Well, I'm stirring shit.

I'm doing nothing. I'm just watching this physics professor gut. Eric Weinstein in front of me. And I'm just going to pretend like I am not, like, laughing. Like, I would imagine there was literally, like, tremors in his throat. Where he's just like, mm-hmm. Turn my mic down. Turn my mic down.

The good news is I have read Eric's paper. Here it is. I actually have it here, right here. And it's worse than you think. You know, it just very quickly, it starts off by saying the author is not a physicist and it's no longer an active, academic edition, but is an entertainer and host of a podcast. This work of entertainment is a draft work in progress,

and it may not be built upon. So we're not allowed. That is a cut by the Pierceborgian people, incidentally, to heighten how sort of like brutal this is. This is like, you know, the slow-mo close-up of the actual, like, if this was Walking Dead, this is the slow-mo of like, you know, whatever, the weapon, get a crushing across somebody's face. This is bullet time in The Matrix. It starts off by saying the author, the good news is I have read Eric's paper.

Here it is. I actually have it here, right here. And it's worse than you think. You know, it's just very quickly. It starts off by saying the author is not a physicist and it's no longer an active, academic edition, but is an entertainer and host of a podcast. This work of entertainment is a draft work in progress. and it may not be built upon.

So we're not allowed to think about Eric's theory and write a follow-up paper about it. Oh, no, you're very much allowed, Sean. To everything that is normally done in scientific discourse. You hope that people build upon your theories. You don't try to prevent them. And later on it's my theory. No one else can take it. No one else can take it.

No one. It is mine. No one's, incidentally, if anybody talks about bleaching, putting bleach inside to get rid of the thing? That's my idea. Go ahead. And later on, it says, this document is an attempt to begin recovering. I'm going to read this. This document is an attempt to begin recovering a rather more complete theory, which at this point is only

partially remembered and stitched together from old computer files, notebooks, recordings, and the like dating back as far as 1983. And this is why this paper is not going to appear in the peer-reviewed literature. It's not serious. It's not dog ate my homework kind of thing. If you have a dark matter thing, if you have a dark matter prediction, if you have a dark energy prediction, I want to see a plot in the paper. I want to see Red Ship versus Disguards. I want to see a calculation of a relic abundance so I can figure out how much dark matter is supposed to be. If you do that, people will pay attention to the theory. It's very possible. Sean, first of all, how dare you say?

of all. If you're going to go Are you read your paper? No, Sean. How dare you cast shade and spursions of the kind that I wouldn't seek to cast on you, but I will now. Okay. I'm not seeking your favor, nor do I need to seek your

approval. As you know, you fail to gain tenure at the University of Chicago. You're not highly regarded in the field, and again, I'm only returning the shade in which you just yourself cast. I wouldn't have done this otherwise. You then spent time as a non-tenure. senior faculty at Caltech, and you only gain tenure in a non-standard professorship.

You're not a leading person in the field. My belief structure about this is that you imagine that I'm coming to you saying, oh, Sean Carroll, let me tell me which graph I should do so that I can please you. As you know, because you've read the paper, what you said about Lagrangians is false. What you've said about predictions is false. My concern is what you did is that you seized upon something where people have built on my ideas since 1994. The equations that Nati Seiberg and Ed Witten introduced that took over the world were called the insufficiently nonlinear equations when I was at Harvard in 1987 and introduced them. The question is why it appears as an entertainer rather than as a physicist.

First of all, neither you nor I are trained as physicists, Sean. You're actually trained as an astronomer. What you have in this situation is that you and I are both interloping in a field that is not the one to which we trained. That doesn't bother me about what you're doing. I've enjoyed some of your papers. I've fought very poorly of others. You have a wide range of interest. I think you're very creative.

Your intellectually insulting aspect reminds me of you as the Marie Antoinette of theoretical physics influencers. I'm not here to please you. You know that there are tables in the document that you're really. reading to have plenty of predictions. You know that it solves plenty of problems. What you're doing is creating an environment of fear where every university worries what does it mean to talk to this person. And what I would say to you is you are commenting on the effect that you are in fact inducing. You and a small cadre of people are like intellectual border collies of physical sciences casting shade and aspersions on those who are succeeding where the quantum gravity, string

theoretic, and M theoretic programs are failing. Sean? Look, I mean, I didn't say anything about Eric as a person, his history, or anything like that. I said things about the paper. Everything he says about me is like 90% true, as many things he says. The paper is not giving us any reason to think that this approach is promising. There is no quantum mechanics in the paper. There is no attempt at showing that this solves any of the known problems of quantum gravity.

Again, it's not just about Eric. It's about anyone. If you want to make an impact on the physics research community, you have to give them a reason to think that what you do is promising. You have a serious problem with dark energy that you're developing, and it's going to go right through having being a problem with Lambda CDM, to eventually being a problem with the Einstein. and field equations themselves perched as they are atop the space of metrics as an completely

inadequate space of field content. He just definitely, like, I'm going to, I'm going to try and prove my credibility by saying these things. Now, now, honestly, to me, I mean, it sounds like he puts those things and it sounds impressive. He certainly knows the name of these different things, and he has stacked them on top of each other. He's avoiding the thing. There's a guy named Timothy Nguyen, who back in 2021 point out about geometric unity where there's a whole sort of like part of the paper where it's like, well, there's this thing called the Shaiab operator that makes this

this complexity understandable to people who study physics. I don't know what that is anymore. I lost my notes to that. So that's literally in the paper. Like I don't, I lost my note. to what this come this function is and that's what he points out like there's a paper here by timothy newin it's titled people can read it as pdf that sort of originally um you know this explore this a response to geometric unity by timothy new and people should read that what the sean carroll here is saying is pretty much what any physics person that reads this paper that's a papers written like somebody who's not addressing. I mean,

in any, in any academic field, you have a construction of the way that ideas are presented so that there can be some type of like unified, um, way of assessing ideas. Eric's too much of a free thinker to be, uh,

constrained by such things, it seems like. Where does it? She was, Listen, just a little bit more. We got a little bit more here. Top the space of metrics as a completely inadequate space of field content. What you've just said, and with the aspersion that you have just cash, you are simply not qualified to say.

What you have said is that I have given no reason. Let me imagine that that paper, which was a draft rush to get to an ankle first date, remains in a world where Sam Altman and Elon Musk continue to compete. for better and better AIs. What would you say if at some point those AIs then got to that paper and said, holy cow, that is exactly what we've been missing. This thing solves all sorts of problems. And the problem that we have is that a group of influencers with a pension for being,

and this is becoming one of my least favorite word, although I didn't have any negative association until recently, debunkers. So what if AI says? says you're wrong in the future is Eric's rejoinder. I mean, that is, uh, I mean, if the AI says you're wrong in the future, you're in trouble, buddy. It'd be nice if AI came around and said I actually should be in the NBA. I should be playing two guard. Uh, AI in the future will be telling me that this should be the six-time award-winning, uh, majority report.

Ladies and gentlemen, Fox Populi wrote. wait, he published this paper on April Fool's Day and they're scared. He had to Russia to April Fool's Day. Oh, my God. This is from that Timothy Nguyen paper. Unfortunately, the details for this unification, as far as the authors can tell, are hardly provided,

and thus the central insights of the theory are not possible to verify. Our conclusions that even suppose the previous sector concerns could be addressed, the volume of missing or inexplicit computations renders a formulation of geometric unity, actually incomplete. I will, I will say this. I have no doubt that Eric is,

um, light years, and perhaps that's the wrong analogy, um, uh, more, uh, advanced in physics,

uh, than I am. For sure. Uh, so I only, uh, suggest this analogy as a way of, of,

of, when I was like in, I don't know. Maybe I think it was, I can't remember it. Maybe it was like a freshman year of college and had a, an assignment. I can't even remember it was in philosophy. In high school, I didn't think about that. I was aware of what philosophy was.

We didn't have that authority. And I basically was supposed to write about, I don't know what it was. the, you know, the pragmatists versus, I don't know what it was. But I decided instead, I'm going to write my own philosophy. And the assignment, and the teacher just put it at the end, the professor at the end of it was like, this was interesting, but this was not what we're looking for. You're like, how dare you?

Yeah, how dare you? You clearly don't know. You're part of these education influences. Someone's trying to disc me out of this. Do you not realize like, oh, I'm sorry, I need to compare and contrast two different of your philosophies. Because you can't handle the truth. You can't handle the true philosophy. Mine.

Which is undoubtedly like using like when one group of kids, show up at the parking lot with Bush beer and the other group of kids have Genesee and a fight breaks out what can we learn from this oh man I have the paper here it's worse than you think

oh my god that was a real treat that was a real treat that was pretty impressive well we're not going to get to the other part we're going to read some my I-Am's didn't get out of here. That was fantastic.

Maybe have shown on. I... That's the whole thing again. Is there a place where we can send, like, an email to Eric and ask him to do more of those debates? Just, like... Eric versus Science Communicators, I would subscribe monthly. Yesterday, I was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. for less than 24 hours.

Stayed at a very corporate-y hotel. Not particularly fancy. But I did have a nice pasta dinner at the bar as I tried to watch the Celtics heat, and apparently they were blocked from there. Blackout restrictions?

Yep. Ridiculous. Not a suburb. So I went on there, and on the plane ride down, I had watched a video that Patrick Bet David and his crew of guys did on Elon Musk's presentation in Wisconsin. Now, they did this video before Elon Musk became, you know, it became clear that Elon Musk was literally like a radio. active. And the video was Elon Musk and his buddy going over all of these Social Security numbers. And so the first thing I wanted to try and do on the Patrick Vet David show was to bring this up and talk about it. But what was fascinating is how quickly they wanted to get away from this. So here is this first clip of that. I watched the video of you guys on the plane down of when Elon Musk was

in Wisconsin blowing up his whole brand essentially. And he was on stage with a guy named Garcia. Do you guys remember this video? Of course. Yeah. It was like two days ago. Yes. The Social Security numbers spiking in the last four years.

The Social Security numbers. 2.2 million new non-citizen social security numbers. Yes. And the amount of misinformation from every single person, all of you, was astonishing to me. What was it? What was the misinformation? I mean, I almost feel like we should go through the whole video. This is coming from a socialist.

No, no, no, no, wait, wait. The level of credibility is socialists. Let me progress. Let me, wait. But I want to hear. That is anti-old. I want to hear it. I want to hear it.

We want to hear it. Go forth. First off. Yeah. You seem to not understand that these were not undocumented immigrants who were getting these social security numbers. They are non-citizens. Now, when you came to this country.

Yeah. You were an immigrant. Your parents came legally. Every single one of those people who got those Social Security numbers are here legally. They're not citizens, just like you weren't when you first came to this country. You get a green card. Your parents get a green card. They go through a process.

All of those people. And to understand, they got their Social Security card. I really want to see your point. Well, the point is you referred to them as undocumented and legally. You did. i said non-citizen excuse me don't say everyone here i said non-citizen i i can't remember which one of you got it wrong i think you just be so you're thinking but i we can play the video and go through it but i'm still trying to get to the i just want to make well the point is they're not on they're not

illegal they're not undocumented they're all legal right okay they went on like this they kept like you know a bad what's the point so because they wouldn't let me go through it we're going to go through this video so they can see and it is true that Patrick Bet, David, never said that they were illegal. But at least two other guys on the panel did. And Patrick Bet David never corrected them. It's all like this mysterious thing.

And in fact, the guy on stage with Elon Musk, who himself was also an immigrant, said this guy. It started from like 55 seconds in. This, yeah, right? there, right there, 40, 40, yeah. Just before this guy says this. And we found this by accident. And this isn't political, by the way. My parents immigrants, uh, Leah, this has been great to us. My brother and sister all born in Spain, I'm pro-legal immigration. This is not, this is not

political. This is not political. This is about America and the future of America. Pause it. He's going to show a chart of two million plus Social Security, numbers given out under a program called the EBE. That is enumeration, providing a Social Security number, beyond entry after they have entered. They are all legal. This is a program that was started under President Donald Trump in 2017. It is a coordination between the Social Security Administration and Homeland Security. to give Social Security cards to people who are in this country legally.

Maybe they have a green card, maybe they have temporary protected status, etc. Those numbers are definitely higher in 2024 because you had a lot of people on temporary protected status from Haiti because of all the unrest there, from Ukraine, from Afghanistan. We had a big search. and none of the, I should say, all of these people are legal. Some percentage of them may ultimately become citizens, but the Social Security card they get literally says on the card, you cannot use this to vote. And what happens is these people pay in to Social Security, and most of them will never get payouts because you need to be an American citizen to get payouts.

Now, the ones that ultimately become citizens, as opposed to going back, home will get Social Security, but the most of them don't. So we have undocumented immigrants in this country pay about $22 billion into the Social Security fund. These folks, several billion dollars, that they will never get payouts from. So just listen to this from this. And with that in with that knowledge. And there are a lot of good people in the system that pointed this in this direction.

I want to say, I want to honor them right now. They're working in the government today who took risk to show us these numbers and tell us what's going on. Pause it right there. Okay, so can you zoom in? So do you know what this is? If you're watching this, so this is new non-citizen social security numbers issued. The furthest one to the left is 2021.

That's Biden's first year. Okay. Is there a way to see what that number is? I can read it. I can't zoom in because it's a video, but it's 270,425. That's first year. Now, pause for a second. And be clear, they're not showing you 2016, I mean, 2017, 2018, 2018, 2019, because they

they don't want you to know that this program started under under trump also to be clear uh you'll notice then 2025 they're at um a little bit less than half of what's in uh 2024 Donald Trump has been president for most of 2025 and they already got half in the first two or three months that's because the program's actually working the program is taking in now there's no out there was more immigrants led in in 2024, again, because of all these different types. But the program is getting them into the system,

having to pay taxes, and not getting any of those Social Security benefits. But go ahead. I've given out Social Security. Seconder looks like $590, if I'm not mistaken. Correct. Third year looks like 964. Yep. And fourth year is over $2 million. But is it $2,995,000?

Yeah, $2,95,247. And can you, can you, can you, do me a favor and research and then this year in the first few months which means this is is that really 960 in the first few months 900 that is that is a little bit that is wild to be thinking about rob what what is the year that we've given out the most social security numbers out to non-us citizens can we just kind of see so 2.1 million that means out of 340 million people live in here, 1% of Social Security cards were given away

just last year in 2024 to people that aren't supposed to be here. Oh, wait a second. What? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, won't supposed to be here. I find it very interesting. I didn't pick it. That's the first lie. So, now watch if Patrick Matt David

corrects him. They are supposed to be here. They are here. And they are put into the system and they're paying taxes and they're getting no benefits out. Go ahead. To people that aren't supposed to be here. They're not. These are not. What is the most?

What's the most? Oh, pause. Do you see how he said? These are not. These are not. And he knows because he is one. He came to this country from Iran. His family, I think we're refugees. He probably came in under, if not the exact same program, that these folks from Afghanistan, these folks from Ukraine, these folks from Haiti or something that is similar in 19. He knows this.

Just think about like what has to be going on in your head. That's why he knew when you brought it up on the show that he didn't himself say it. Exactly. He remembered that because he was walking a line. I'm going to let these guys say it. That's the way I do it. Go ahead. In one million, that means out of 340 million people living here,

1% of Social Security cards were given away just last year in 2024. To people that aren't supposed to be here. They're not. These are not. What is the most? What's the most? What's the most? What's the most social security numbers in a year to non-citizens?

What was that? Over two million. So the record is in 2024. Over two million. Wow. That is absolutely insane. So now, very basic. Why did this happen?

What percentage of them do you think going to be voting Republican? What percentage in them are you thinking to be voting on the left? Oh, pause it. I can, listen. I am not able to see into the future, but I will tell you what percentage of those people will vote Republican and vote Democrat? Zero percent. Because on their Social Security card that they received, it literally says the words,

this card is not eligible for voting purposes. They did, I mean, obviously you can see. They don't do any research. They're just willing to lie about this stuff. go ahead get this what was the motive Tom lots of questions your thoughts on this well my thoughts on this is obviously

first of all I really appreciate this guy saying hey I'm in favor of legal immigration and thanking the people that were working in the SSA Social Security Administration who cooperated with them and said hey this is a funny part with this guy this guy is supposedly this guy is supposedly like their policy expert they always defer to him and his big commentary on this

which he has no idea what policy is. He has no idea it's the E.B. He didn't, like, the thing that he really appreciates about it is that the guy, Garcia, was nice to the people at Social Security Administration who obviously either told him, either told him

the wrong information or told him how to present it as if this is nefarious. That's the policy guy's response. But let's see, does he imply that these are undocumented people. Go ahead. First of all, I really appreciate this guy saying,

hey, I'm in favor of legal immigration. He's polite. And thanking the people that were working in the SSA, Social Security Administration, who cooperated with them and said, hey, you're here looking for waste and fraud. You need to see this.

So that means that there are people in the Social Security Administration who were realizing what was happening. And what do I think about this? I think the administration in power, at the time was a Biden administration and the support of Schumer and Pelosi were very, very liberal on this issue. They were issuing Social Security numbers to non-citizens. They were helping people who got here to stay here and work here illegally. Okay, right there. Boom. Right there. No, no, no, no. They were not helping people who got here to stay here and work illegally.

Incorrect. Incorrect. Perfectly legal. Now, of course, he doesn't, like the 900,000 in this in two months at this rate it could be a much bigger number but they are legal these people are doing exactly what these people supposedly prepare to want which is you need to be legal and they're paying their taxes and they're not going to get their social security benefits unless they end up being citizens which is also supposedly what they want continue on it's just the whole segment it's a 16 minute video. We're not going to go through the whole thing. But we can't even get through the first three minutes without all of them lying about this. We're issuing Social Security numbers to non-citizens.

They were helping people who got here to stay here and work here legally. And by the way, Vinie, I'll give you something here. Let me ask you a question. So every state in a nation, you have to be a citizen and you have to have a social security number to get a real estate license or an insurance license and pat would know something about that he founded that vision and built one of the largest insurance distribution companies in history and guess what we would go to the states and say well all the person has is an i10 which is a temporary number sorry can't be an agent if you have a social security number and then they lied to us about citizenship guess what state of california state

texas wouldn't know you now you're now you've got this so they're giving social security numbers out to people i believe knowing full well that they're helping them hide in plain sight as illegals because very lot again about a job and they and they say do you have a social security card yes i do i'll show you my social security card my number right here and you fill out a what's it called an i-9 with um is that i think that's the form that an employee has to fill out to say that they're a citizen on i-9 and so this is the administration giving social security numbers out so people can help in plain sight who are actually not citizens. And the main goal was for what, Tom?

To change the voting block of America. I-9, you fill that out, and you have to show something. So here's my social security number. He's my driver's license. Yes, you have to fill out an I-9. But everything else they're talking about is a complete fabrication. And Vinnie is going to say that they're doing this to change the electorate. Again, they cannot vote.

Just like Patrick Beck-David's parents, when they first got here and they just had a green card or they had a visa or they were here under a maybe there was a specific law about Iranian refugees. I think it was in the late 80s that he came could have been theoretically. They could not vote until they became citizens. And he knows it. He knows it. he knows that every dollar that he has made, aside from there being maybe lax regulation about certain practices, is a function of him being able to come into this country, have his parents get a visa,

and he is targeting all of those other people, letting the people to the left and to the right of him, literally lie about these people and demonize them. It was just three months ago that Patrick Bet David had the whole H-1B kerfuffle where he took Elon and Trump's side on that. And I would just encourage any of PBD's listeners to look up. Do H-1-Can H-1B visa holders get SSNs? In fact, they 100% get it through the EBE program. Yep.

Go ahead. The aim goal was for what, Tom? To change the voting block of America. I-9, you fill that out and you have to show something. So here's my social security number. Here's my driver's license. Yeah. And guess what I just found it.

the year with the most given, Rob. So more than 37 million Social Security numbers had been issued by the end of 1937. That's a total had been given. In the next dozen years, the number varied with the number of new entrants into covered employment. It reached at a peak of 7.6 million given in 1942, but dropped to 2.7 million post-war period 46 through 50. Okay. But wasn't the first year of the starting point? because there's only like 90 million Americans.

But hear me out, this continues. Then the highest number of social security numbers issued in a single year was 9.1 million in 1990. Here's a more detail breakdown. The peak year for social security numbers that was not, uh, uh, Rob, do me if you've ever type this in in Google and you'll see exactly what I'm looking at. Now, that is why I kept saying Google it because I found out that that's the way they do their research in real time. Great. And I told them on the show over and over again.

Google it. Go forward a little bit because the other dude who sits on his right, I can't remember what that other guy's name is. Okay. So here we go. This Tom guys is awesome because he pretends like he's the, he's the, uh, the wonk. The wonk. And he never has anything to say. I believe, look this up.

I believe the Family Support Act was if you were claiming dependence on your tax return, they had to have Social Security number. and sometimes people wouldn't get social security numbers for their kids, and so they were 16 and going to get a job. That's true. So I think that $15 million in two years was so that people could have to put in balance. I guess the idea is that they thought the angle in this, like Patrick Bed-David, I think, realized very quickly, like, wait a second.

These are not illegals. They're non-citizens. I'm going to let these guys run with the whole conspiracy theories associated with it, but I need to come up. with an angle and the angle i'll come up with and because of course he had no idea about any of this before he ran is biden allowed much more immigrants in that year than in other years they're also a little bit hampered by the fact that under trump that number is half after three months that it was in all of 2024 so they they're they're flying blind here but he is going to he is going to like hang on to this like

number of immigrants like Biden just let in a bunch of immigrants. So it's just anti-immigrant sentiment of which Patrick Met David was not born in this country. Yeah. When they say illegal, they mean foreigner. Go ahead. Social Security number on their tax return to identify a dependent. Okay. So then the title here is what? New non-citizen social security numbers issued. New non-citizen. What is the most we've done for new non-citizens? I'm really curious at this point. Most social security numbers given to non-US citizens. Edit this out of the clip.

Are you able to find it? Do you see any of it? It keeps coming back to 2024 with two men. You keep seeing that. Me too. I keep seeing the same thing as well. Guys, Dave, back, can you also look this up to see? Maybe you find something that will.

we're not seeing Adam what are your thoughts on this so get off your phone Adam the I'm doing the math here that's what I'm sort of so we talked about last week he's gold card Adam have some water I will but I was doing math in the middle of it but we talked about the gold card last week yeah probably this is what they do incidentally when they don't know what they're talking about they immediately pivot to something that they do know about so you're talking about so you're talking about Social Security numbers from immigrants. And let's see, I'm doing the math here. Oh, Trump is doing also something that has to do with immigrants where you can buy citizenship.

Okay. That's what I'm going to go with. Adam has some water. No, I was doing math in the middle of it. But we talked about the gold card last week. People are paying $5 million to get access to America. $5 million. How many people did he said that he did this?

Like a thousand people already. They're trying to raise billions of dollars and potentially trillion dollars. Why would you, why would you pay? Just come in illegally, go through this whatever nonsensical waste fraud and abuse process. Okay, pause. I just let me clear. Just be clear. They're not coming in illegally.

Again, these are for non-citizens. The reason why they say non-citizens is because they, are here legally, they're just not citizens. And the process, the waste and fraud process he's talking about is literally compel them to pay taxes and knowing that they will unlikely even receive the benefits from that. I'm just part of America. So it just seems like the people who are doing things right are not prioritized, people who are skipping the line, not going through the door, are just skipping the line and able to cheat the system.

So do you know what happens? For a second, these people are literally going through the system. They are part of the system. They are so systematized. They have a number. And that's sort of the hallmark of being in the system. They literally are inude a number.

They're so in the system. They have like a multi-digit number. You can't get like further into the system unless we were to physically shove each legal immigrant into a computer. Go ahead. Skipping the line and able to

cheat the system. So do you know what happened this weekend in the UK? Did you hear what they hosted? So this past weekend in the UK, they hosted the summit to end illegal immigration. It was called the Organized

Immigration Crime Summit, put on by Prime Minister of the UK Kier Stormer, 40 countries participated. $33 million is what they're putting towards doing what? Prosecuting smugglers who are basically helping to smuggle people

into the UK and into Europe. And it's not the countries that you would suspect to be there. Obviously the U.S. was there, France was there, but Vietnam was there? Why is Vietnam there? Iraq was there? Because this illegal immigration

or mass migration is not just an American thing. It's not just a UK thing. It's happening all over the world. Essentially, people from poor countries, authoritarian countries are like, what the hell am I doing here? And they're going to cross the border illegally. The rich people are going to be okay. Oh, sorry. That is illegal again. I don't know if we need to go through this, although it's pretty funny. There's another eight minutes on this, and it's basically six minutes. and they're just basically telling us. So when you see in the PBD thing,

when I start to bring this up, why all four of them start to lose their minds and start to it's because they must have known they had no idea what they were talking about. Yeah, they didn't know they were showing their ass and then they panicked. It's a good point that it brings up at the end there that it's actually not just a conspiracy against the West that they're displaced people. It's right. and also that they're living in places that are authoritarian and bad regimes like understanding that the dynamic of immigration is far more often about where they are being unlivable for instance let's say you kept cooing their government over the course of a hundred years destroyed their oil industry you destroy their oil industry you wreck their economy you wreck their economy you um You shipped people down there and, like, created gangs, essentially.

You created a market for illicit drugs that could destabilize countries, and then people want to leave. I mean, that's basically what we're looking at. Fascinating. I'm happy PBD is a citizen. Be nice if he could extend that grace to other people. it's just I it is so hard for me to understand the mentality and I should say like you know one of the things that I came to understand when I was down there is that the show is a lost leader more or less I mean I don't know maybe it maybe it breaks even maybe they make money on the show although you look at the numbers the numbers are really good but you know they flew me down that costs money they put me up at a hotel that costs money I assume they do this with other guests they probably treat them even better and they got four people sitting in there

they got a studio that's not the old studio that's not the bank they used to be in they moved the whole studio into like an airport hangar wait that's a different studio than the one you were yes they they took all those things and dropped it in there weird and they bought another building and the other building is a big business building that houses Patrick beck david's newest business. He sold the PHP. I can't remember what that stands for. But that was a business where they would sell insurance, but they would also really drive their revenue through

membership. Like you become a member and a salesman at the same time. There's some great videos about it, actually, that break it down. But he sold that, and he started another business. And I was told by somebody in the building that he's got 50 business consultants working for him as part of a business consultant business. And that, I'll tell you, that building was a lot bigger than this one. And so that dynamic is, the show is like a way of getting his name out there and establishing

his bona fidez. And it's on a private airport. I imagine he maybe has a private plane there. I don't know. But I just don't understand how you can be an immigrant yourself have you know i think he has like a 25 million dollar house i'm not sure but a very you know i saw a picture of it from some article i don't know if it's the same place he drove a Porsche 9-11 Carrera with like uh i mean he's living the life all because as an immigrant

he and his family his parents were allowed to come into this country under some form of visa. Maybe it was a refugee thing. I think he was in like a refugee camp. I think at one point, I'm not sure. And he was allowed to come into this country and he wants to like, not just shut the door behind him, but demonize these people. And these are all legal immigrants. Every single person he was referencing in that segment are legal non-citizens in this country. What do you think 1979 Vinnie and Adam would have said about refugees from Iran. Oh my gosh. I mean, they're younger than me, significantly younger than me, as my understanding. But I remember 1979 in this country. That was 14. And if you were Iranian

or Sikh or frankly, you know, like, you were nervous. You were nervous. I mean, really amazing. And just I just don't understand the mentality of somebody like that. How can you sit there? And it's really, I think it's like for them, it's just capitalism. We're just making money here. And we'll make it any way we can. And that's it. But it still just is hard for me to to like wrap my head around it.

All right. So we play this one more clip. Just because of the picture of Judge, you've seen Howard Lutnik. Is that his name? Howard Lutnik say his 97-year-old mother-in-law, who lives in his mansion, probably literally has 24-7 care. Unrelated to Howard, like, I mean, like I'm saying someone he hired, would not complain if her social security check was a monthly. Or if she did, he would think she was a criminal.

Yes. You've heard Harris Faulkner, is that her name, say, we're at war. We're at war. Trade war that we started. The entire world. The entire world. And therefore, people are going to understand that if their 401k's crash and they can't retire, you know, within a year or two or three or four or five from when they thought they could. or they're going to retire with, you know, whatever, 10% less than they thought they would.

People will understand. It's called patriotism. Well, here's Judge Neen with a very similar take. It's amazing how these incredibly wealthy people are not so upset about their ability to retire. Enough. And this is what Donald Trump ran on, and he's delivering. And you know what? I don't really care about my 401.

today. You know what? Not that I can afford it. Not that it isn't important. Not that I'm not at a point in my life when I should be worried about my 401k because I am. But this is what I believe. I believe in this man. And I believe that what we're seeing now with his bringing in a trillion dollars in business and manufacturing and companies moving back to the United States and seeing what we saw during COVID when we couldn't, we had all those supply chain problems. We couldn't get many listen in this country. Other countries were prioritizing themselves before they were sending stuff. As you just say that fortunately for us, pharmaceuticals are exempt from these tariffs because about 40% of our pharmaceuticals are manufactured overseas, China, India, and 80% of them have

ingredients from those countries. So this is not to build out any industry whatsoever that she is talking about in terms of supply lines. Now, to be fair, Biden didn't do that with the Chips Act. It was those chips. It was those that slowed up like stuff for cars, and we saw it with computers. But this is not an industrial policy, as we talked about with David Day. And if it was, you would see a whole host of other supports from the government, not willy-nilly same tariffs on bananas as you get on dishwashers.

We're not going to grow bananas in the U.S. There's not going to be suddenly a huge, like, rise in the banana industry in New England, for instance. Do it. Countries were prioritizing themselves before they were sending stuff to us. It's about time we recognize we've got to have manufacturing in this country. And we need to bring them to the table. And Donald Trump is the only one that could do it because he's got the biggest consumer base in the world. He's not afraid of anybody. He's to the wall in terms of, you know what I mean. Say that again?

Yeah, you know what I mean. And at the end, it's going to help the working class. And who's complaining? My last point. Who's complaining? Wall Street. Too bad. He's helping the middle class. And finally, I think it's going to be over this summer. All right, Dana. We have. Okay, wait a second. Now, wait. Okay. Again, tariffs are a regressive tax. That means they hurt the working class more than anybody else. It's just that Wall Street is sensitive to it because they know that we have a consumer-based economy,

and if you're going to create that type of inflation, it's going to hurt the stock market. Koalski from Nebraska says, technically, Sam, we can grow bananas and coffee. In Hawaii, it might be time for us to reach back. to our colonies like the Philippines and start turning them into crop plantations fair fair the mill rind uh i will fix the robots detective dubois sam got value tained so hard tim pool's emotional support beanie uh as soon as sam starts to make them look dumb they resort to yelling over each other it would be comical if it wasn't so sad when they say they weren't supposed to be here what they mean is i don't want them here exactly it's like chimpanzees like

reacting to a new chimp being introduced into the cage and they just start jabbering spike us the great and powerful dr oz john miller the turning down to the volume of the shouting red face was hilarious especially after he says i'm not yelling it was pretty cool the setup they had they had like little panels where you could actually control each mic two in terms of the way that you were getting the mix in there. I don't know how that happened. But the problem was I didn't know, and they didn't know, which number he was.

And so I kept, like, turning myself down in my own ears. And so you'll see by the end of the, like, at one point, I'm wearing the headphones here. Because he was too loud. I mean, aside from him yelling, just his mic, for whatever reason, was cranked up on mine. And he was sitting next to me, like six inches away. from me.

His face was so red. But the funny part is, is that I sit down, and he's, I think, like, considerably shorter than me. And I sit down, and I'm like this, and he goes, do you want me to lower your chair? And I'm like, no, I'm fine. So I don't know if they ever put us in two or three shot or something. Daniel from Virginia, it's called a mixer.

No, it's not. It was a distro. It was like a mixer, but a distribution box as well, because they were sitting on everybody's... To have each of the mics independently adjustable is boggles my mind with complexity. That means that they must have a mix minus that goes to the five of them,

the five seats, or that somehow there's a mix minus in these boxes that are right here. There's a lot of money invested in that studio. And, you know, they may do a million views a day, maybe more. which is more than we do, but not that much more. And we don't fly in guess. We're going to have Matt Duss in studio next week. He's the only person we allow in studio for whatever reason.

Dummy Legg. There are four dudes in Florida with broken ankles and busted backs from all of the pivoting and goalpost pushing they did yesterday. Well done, Sam. It's not easy to try to explain progressive policies for reactionary rockheads like that. They really, I think, think I'm a communist. And then they were very fixated on who do you like in the presidential election. And I'm like, I really. That's when I tuned in.

And they were like, just say somebody. I don't. I don't. I mean, I said, you know, I think like I can tell you who I think it's going to be running. But I need to see what their policies are. Come on. What's that about? It's just about like how I decide who to vote for for president.

Like what, like, I don't. I kept waiting for what the gotcha was. I'm like, I don't have a name. I think they wanted to say, like, you to say like AOC so they could just do their bash AOC package or something like that. But you said McGovern and they had nothing. Who's your favorite politician? Well, I mean, you know, Jim McGovern.

I'm from president. He would actually be pretty good. Can we Google Jim McGovern? Oh, he doesn't look pretty sexy. Google Jim McGovern awoke at him, quick. I wonder if that's the first and the last time anybody's ever going to say the name Jim McGovern. on Patrick Bake Davis show.

I have not heard from Congressman McGovern for the thanks of the shoutout on the PDB show. Dixie Savage. Watches on the weekend. Hey Sam, any opinion on Sean Fain and Janus Varifakis supporting these tariffs? I was surprised to hear that. I'm not terribly surprised.

I mean, certainly from a car standpoint, this is going to be helpful to the car companies. And Trump has threatened the car companies and Ford came out with like they're going to do even a discount um and fain's primary agenda is going to be to strengthen the ua w and verifakis i think broadly speaking i mean look i am in favor of tariffs as part of a bigger uh industrial plant we need much more of this from our government Doing tariffs without the supports mechanisms doesn't do anything. And doing tariffs in this way, where it's just we're going to do it per country, not based upon an industry.

Again, you know, like there's probably a list of 100 or 200 or 500 or 1,000 products that make as little sense to produce or to try and build an industry in this country, you know, all la bananas, despite the fact that. we could level Hawaii and just grow bananas there. And also to do it without any ramp up to say like, you know, under the Chips Act, this is a company TSM. They're from Taiwan. They came in to build semiconductor chips. They don't have the workers in Arizona to fill all these. positions. They had to bring in

like a thousand workers. And the idea is over time they're going to train, but they can't do that. Because you just don't have the workers yet who know how to work in these factories because these are, you know, high-tech factories.

So the idea that you can just do this overnight without any planning, without any government support, if Donald Trump came out and said, like, we're just doing the, you know, a tariff on vehicles or let's say like solar panels and we're also simultaneously passing legislation to retrain coal miners to assemble solar panels and the job's going to be just as well paying and

we're going to send them in school and we're going to provide these support and we're we're we're giving you know an enterprise zone you know i'm just we're going to give you subsidies to build it in West Virginia or into Pennsylvania, whatever it is. That would make some sense. Broadly speaking, from an ideological perspective, I am all in favor of tearing down the fake free trade regime that we have because it's fake. It's not a free trade regime.

It's we don't allow labor to go across borders. We allow capital to. We allow empowerment from corporations. over the sovereignty of various countries, I am also not in favor. So what Sean Fain says is really not that surprising to me. I also say, like, this whole thing with tariffs is kind of avoidance of the real issue with our competitiveness. B.YD, the car company that you're going to hear more and more about because they're out-competeing us. It was given $2.1 billion in subsidies from the Chinese state two years ago.

Of course. of course we have to be spending investing in things that matter for the next century and here's the problem is that the story these guys like to tell is that government has no

role in this exactly and when they see industries outpace us because they've been supported by government because the fact of the matter is and it's going to come as a shock to a lot of these people the pursuit of

profit is not sometimes it can be in the best interests of society but not always i don't know what the percentage breakdown is i would say it's much less than i think we give it credit for if you ever talk to somebody who's like uh who does uh like vc work in the medical field they have all these stories of these amazing medical uh devices or uh drugs but they're just not profitable so they don't invest in them Number 13, do you think there's no possibility the military gets too concerned about Trump's behavior? Don't they swear to the Constitution? I mean, we'll see.

I don't know. I'm not in favor of a military coup. I should just go on record saying that. I'm against the military coup. But I think this reality show they were going through is... I'd be more worried about corporations, personally. Tim Poole fan. Sam, I think your PBD episode was even more painful to watch than your Jubilee episode.

You know, the funny thing is, is that like, I'm going back to the airport. I'm in the car and I'm going like, there were four guys talking over me the whole time. And it never really occurred to me during that being in there, like, hey, wait a second. I should call this out. Like, it just sort of, like, that's what's going on in my head most of the time anyways. It just happened to be embodied. But I was like, I wonder what would happen if I invited Patrick Beck, David, on this show. and had him sitting in this studio and we had to like walk him through stuff like there is a big

advantage and and frankly like when we have a guess on i try to uh i try and do my best to be fair about it there is a big advantage when you're asking all the questions there's a bigger advantage if you have four people who are talking over the person you've asked the questions when they try to respond to it but even with that said i feel like they should be embarrassed by what happened in that studio not just by their own behavior but by how i encountered everything they had to say that was even remotely substantive they got me on the i couldn't pick a presidential candidate uh company townie waiting for the crash was so boring so we just caused a crash.

It's been present. All right, five more of these. Vermont, Ben, has trickled down economics

ever worked for working class people? I've been hearing it in my entire 33 years in this planet, but I keep getting caught in recessions

and bailouts for corporations. No. Correct. I walked them through that Kansas situation and they just

had nothing to say. Davey Hill. Davey Hellbender. Did Patrick's dad work for the Shaw? I don't know. I wouldn't imagine that he's in there until 1989. I think he was Christian.

I think that was part of it. Phineas Herb, the next time Trump orders the military and protesters, does someone say no? I don't know. I don't know. The massive. Network audio, most likely, like Rednet or something. I don't know what that means.

We can do it. All right, two more. official penguin rep rickets has the advantage ricketts is popular with independence in nebraska advantage to osborne is state republicans are sliding further right while people within the state are growing tired of the constant culture war and the final i am of the week james darwin most important to impose tariffs with no preparation for them while slashing the social safety net amounts to shock doctrine tax I suspect we're going to be talking more about that in the weeks and months to come. We'll see.