Timcast IRL - Timcast IRL #821 MTG Shares EXPLICIT Images From Hunter Biden's Laptop w/ Vivek Ramaswamy

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

Seamus, Ian, Hannah Claire, & Serge join Vivek Ramaswamy to discuss Marjorie Taylor Greene exposing photos from Hunter Biden's laptop during a congressional hearing, CMT cancelling Jason Aldean over his new controversial anti-crime song, & a deep dive on a myriad of issues affecting the culture of America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome back to another exciting episode of Shimcast IRL. I am filling in for Tim, who wrote us a letter saying he's having a lot of fun at camp. Before we dive into tonight's stories, I want to make two really awesome announcements. I think you guys are going to be very excited to hear both of these things. The first announcement is great, not as good as the second one, but my YouTube channel and my access to my YouTube channel and all of my channels has been restored as of earlier today. So Freedom Tunes is back. Thank you to the people at YouTube for getting this cleared up. Thank you to Tim for helping me get in touch. And also the second bit of good news I want to share is that a little while ago on the show, I mentioned that there was a young boy, a little child at my church,

who was born with skeletal dysplasia, who needed a very difficult and dangerous surgery. I asked you all for prayers. He has gotten the surgery. He is good. Thank you all so much for your prayers. I massively appreciate it. In terms of tonight's stories, Marjorie Taylor Greene shares explicit photos of Hunter Biden in front of a House select committee and also alleges that he has violated the Mann Act. Jason Aldean's new music video has been pulled for being supposedly racist. Then again, what doesn't the left call racist? And RFK proposes backing the US dollar with Bitcoin and gold. Before we get into all those things, I want to ask you all to smash the like button, please. And thank you. Go to timcast.com,

become a member. If you become a member, you're going to get to watch the after shows. You're also going to be supporting the empire that we are building here to try to bring truth to media. So I'm going to ask all of you to do that. But first, go over to castbrew.com, buy yourself some Cast Brew. Coffee building culture has never tasted so good. We're very excited to sponsor ourselves and offer this product to all of you. So if you want to help us out, you want to help us with what we're doing, pick up a bag. And tonight, I am very excited to announce that we are joined by presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. It's good to be here, man. It's great to have you. Thank you so much. Yeah, glad to be here. I did this show, I think a little over a year ago,

and I had so much fun, we had to come back. So here we are. Yeah, you had fun because I wasn't here, man. I'm going to drag all of it down. That's good. As soon as Tim left, he was like, oh, we can't get anyone better than Seamus, but here I am. So we're going to make the best of it. That's actually true. That's actually true.

He cried. I forced him out. I said, I'm the one who gets to do this. Of course, we also have our good friend, Hannah Clare. Hey, I'm back. I'm Hannah Clare Brimlow. I'm a writer for timcast.com. I'm so glad to be here tonight.

I think it's going to be a great conversation. And of course, we're here with the fitness builder himself. I'm Ian Crossland. I gained another pound today. I'm doing protein shake right now as we speak. So I'll keep my mouth off the mic. That's good. Vivek, when you're president, I want to help you, man.

I'll take it. I'll work on science. I want to start pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, turn it into graphene and revitalize the union. Become a industrial. While becoming fit yourself. Yeah, dude. Bigger, stronger, faster, man.

Then we'll make a movie. Let's do this. Yeah, I love the spirit, man. Let's go. And I also make a movie. Let's do this. Yeah, I love the spirit. Let's go. And I also have Mr. Dupree on the side. What's happening, dog? Hey, ready to start when you are, Seamus. I'm Serge.com. Excited to meet you, Vivek. Pleasure. I missed you last time for the culture war, so I'm glad I'm in town this time. Yeah, let's get rolling, Seamus. All right. Yeah. So we have Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene holding up explicit images of Hunter Biden during a House Oversight Committee hearing. So the hearing featured two IRS whistleblowers who alleged that the president's son received special treatment during their investigation into

his business dealings. Those of you who are regular watchers of the show will probably remember that we talked about this story a few weeks ago, at least the story in reference to the two IRS whistleblowers who were saying Hunter was receiving special treatment. The investigation was being slow walked and every effort was made to ensure that it wasn't taken care of effectively and competently. Marjorie Taylor Greene showed pictures that were leaked from Hunter Biden's laptop. She also alleged that he purchased a ticket and essentially brought this woman across state lines, which she argues would be a violation of the Mann Act, which is

obviously a massive allegation. And Green also alleged that the president's son used his business to write off payments to prostitutes illegally. Not a very good look. No, especially not when you're the president's son, right? I mean, I think James Comer pointed this out that the testimony that we heard today isn't necessarily going to say anything we didn't already know. Although I argue that it's important to have an official record of these things. But rather, these two IRS agents were able to say or testify to the fact that the DOJ did intentionally slow walk their investigation and treated Hunter the way no one else would get to be treated. We make special acceptance for him. Well, I mean, I think there are definitely two standards of justice in this country right now.

And this is not specific to Biden and Trump alone. I mean, there's one standard for Julian Assange, who sits in a foreign prison, still in exile. I'm going to try to see him later this year. Another one for Chelsea Manning, who is the government agent who actually leaked information to him because she's transgender so then i see one standard for hunter biden a different one for somebody who has a different last name be it trump or otherwise part of the problem is we have this bureaucracy the irs is one example of it but a bureaucracy that really abandons the rule of law to decide what it feels like doing on a given day.

And so those two stories between what Marjorie Taylor Greene saying about Hunter Biden, about the testimony of the two IRS whistleblowers, these are deeply linked. class, a bureaucracy in this country that does whatever it sees fit and is going to effectively politically protect whichever party is actually protecting them and preserving them and their existence. And right now that's the Democrat Party. So they happen to be protecting them. If that changed in the future, they'd protect whoever paid for their continued existence. But that's exactly what's happening today. Yeah, this is absolutely nothing new.

I think some people who are just waking up to these things think that it's the first time any of this has happened. I mean, this goes back a very long time. But just to give a specific example, 10 years ago, I believe a little longer ago than that, we knew that the IRS was targeting conservative groups for audits under the Obama administration. This is something which has happened numerous times in the past. We also know that there were two whistleblowers that actually spoke up about this, which I very much appreciate here. And that also lends credibility, the fact that you had two people at the IRS stepping up and saying something fishy is going on here. So this wasn't one individual person whose testimony might have a little bit of a little bit less credibility. But what I'd like to ask you is if you were elected president,

what would you do to dismantle these bureaucracies and what would you do to ensure that there weren't two different tracks within the justice system yeah so i think that a lot of republicans end up making a false promise without knowing that they're making a false promise they think it's a true promise they'll say we're gonna come in and reform the bureaucracy yeah good luck it is. It is impossible, right? Because this is a beast. It's like a creation, a monster unto itself that existed long before we arrived as somebody who ever got elected and long after we're gone.

And so I'm not going to make that false promise to say that I can reform that bureaucracy. But what the president can do is actually shut it down. And I think this is where, you know, even Trump, who is the closest we ever got to at least identifying this problem, stopped short because the traditional wisdom is that there are these things called civil service protections, which say that members of the bureaucracy cannot be fired absent some extreme finding of misconduct. Actually, if you read the rules carefully, it doesn't work that way.

The way it works is you can't fire individuals, right? You can't have backlash against any one individual in that bureaucracy at one at a time. But that's why what I'm bringing to Washington, D.C. is mass layoffs, because the civil service protections do not apply on their own terms to mass layoffs. And mass layoffs is what we're bringing to the federal government. So I think it takes somebody who's willing to break the glass coming in from the outside without inhibition. And I think Trump brought an element of that. I'm definitely bringing it. But you have to combine that with an actual understanding of the law and the Constitution. And together, that's what it's going to take to shut this thing down.

What concerns me about shutting it down, just like stopping it, is getting a resurgence of like what they did with the Ba'ath Party in Iraq. Because they went in there, they conquered it, and then they fired them all, and then they formed ISIS. Like these people have connections with DARPA, with Boeing. Like they are the military. And so like if we fired them, they just start their own secret government, I feel. line right we're not even at the start line right now we're playing a different game come in with some puppet claiming to be the elected official sitting on top of the managerial class that's a different game i'm talking about how we get to the start line of at least restoring political power to the people who are actually elected by the governed to actually exercise it so that's the starting point you're right it's like a hydraulic pump or like a water balloon. You squeeze it in one place, it'll pop up somewhere else.

But at least with acknowledging the rules of the road being the people who we elect to run the government are actually the ones who ought to run the government. Yeah, this managerial bureaucracy, they'll find their own private sector version of that that emerges or some quasi governmental version that emerges even at the agencies that exist. Yeah, we need to be watchful of that. But right now, we're not even playing the start line of that game. What would you replace it with? So it depends on what the it is. If the it is the Department of Education, I'm not going to replace it with anything. Amen. If the it is the FBI, I'm going to shut it down and I'm not going to replace it with anything. A lot of those functions are already being performed by the U.S. Marshals, by the DEA,

the Drug Enforcement Agency. And so you go on down the list, that's the reality. There are certain other functions like, you know, that you would say have to continue to exist in some form, say the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I said I would shut that down because we haven't had a nuclear power plant built in this country in 35 some odd years because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is fundamentally hostile to it. In that case, I think you can't reform the culture of that agency. You have to shut it down, but we'd rebuild from scratch an agency that was actually committed to a rational evaluation of the risks and benefits of a given nuclear power plant. So some cases shut it down, it stays shut down. Certain cases, you shut it down and then rebuild something skeletal from scratch to perform

the basic function. And then certain other agencies, you know, let's talk about the FDA, let's talk about the SEC, let's talk about the US Federal Reserve. I'm talking about a 75% layoff of the people who already work there. And that I think will get the job done. How did we get here? What made the American people so willing to have such an bloated administrative state? Yeah, it was a sort of laziness in our culture. It actually started with laziness of the elected officials, right? So initially, the way it was supposed to work was the people who showed up in Congress and in the U.S. Senate, they're supposed to have the actual lawmaking authority, but also accountability. They started to get a little lazy with that accountability. These bills get into the specifics of those details. That's a

little too hard to deal with. Presidents who we elected in the White House started to similarly get lazy, saying that, well, you know, the budgeting process, I'm supposed to ask Congress for permission to spend money. It's a little too complicated. Let me delegate that down. So it was sort of a dual delegation. The president of the United States started to get a little lazy. Congress started to get a little lazy. They said, let's just create this third party apparatus, three letter agencies, where we don't actually have to be accountable for the result because we can blame it on them if things go badly. But if things go well, we're still the people who the public knows.

And I think they started attracting very attention-hungry people to those roles as well. That's what created it, is people who wanted the glory without the accountability. They shunted the accountability to a third unspoken class. So the Capitol is a beautiful building, right? But the U.S. Department of Education or the IRS or the FBI, these are drab government buildings. Nobody visits that when they visit Washington, D.C. Let's put the real accountability over there. But then the people who actually said, okay, we're going to assume that position, they're not the people who actually needed the fame or the glory.

They're the people who actually needed the exercise of power. And so in a certain way, everyone got what they needed out of the trade, right? The people who were running for elected office today, many of them just want to get on cable news on a given night of the week. Well, the same principle applied to actually the people who didn't necessarily care about getting attention, but just actually wanted to exercise raw power. And so there was a division of those who got attention, that's what they wanted, versus those who got power, because that's what they wanted. And that's steadied in this new equilibrium of having this administrative state that said, okay, we'll exercise all the power. You guys just get to pretend like you have it and get your dopamine hits from getting on television

or getting your attention along the way. That's a story short a big part of what happened part of what i really appreciate about that explanation is you mentioned it just starting with a little bit of laziness elected representatives not wanting to do their job to the fullest and most rigorous possible extent and essentially abdicating by trying to delegate to people it shouldn't have been delegated to or delegated to in the first place and so part of what i try to stress and i think that i've talked about pretty frequently on the show is that simply slipping into vice and having a people who are not aspiring to something higher in a spiritual and moral sense ends up creating a tangle of problems that you never would have anticipated who would have thought at the time that an elected leader just being a bit lazy just

not wanting to do what he had to do that day could result in such a massive and bloated bureaucratic state to the point where we ended up having on a duly elected president being unseated or at least having an attempt to unseat him committed against him by the administrative state? Well, I mean, I think that there is something deeper going on in our culture it's probably the deeper explanation to the question you asked as well which is that we are all so starved for purpose and meaning yeah and identity right now that you know if you don't bend the knee to the real thing you're going to bend the knee to something right so you know, if you don't bend the knee to the real thing, you're going to bend the knee to something. Right. So, you know, a lot of us, myself included, right, get into this habit of complaining about tyranny in the United States, about the abuse of governmental power. But that trick only works if you have a population that quietly is hungering to bend the knee to something. You don't pledge allegiance to that flag. You're going to pledge allegiance to something.

There's an old saying it goes if you have a hole the size of god in your heart and god does not fill it something else will instead right the israelites are lost in the desert book of exodus stuff here what do they what do they say we want to go back and be ruled by the pharaoh yeah so in a certain way idols absolutely absolutely says yeah m Moses comes down from the mountaintop. What do they do? By the time he's come back, they've already got the golden calf. So part of this is a culture that sort of demands obeisance. We owe ourselves a long, hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves how we achieve freedom from our own impulse to bend the knee because we are hungry for a higher purpose that we're lacking. I think that's the deeper answer to your question. I find it really interesting. I'm going to cut Shane's off.

He's signaling at me that he has a point, but it's my show now. Are you kidding me? Is this a mutant right now? Direct challenge. We'll see about that. No, I think what you're saying is so interesting in context of this uh whistleblower testimony you know joe ziegler came out and said you know i'm i'm a gay man i'm a democrat and i have received threats i've been told i'm a i'm a traitor to the democratic party because i am disrupting the order and i'm creating division in our country by

bringing forth this information and i can't imagine what kind of pressure you must feel especially because so many people right and left but definitely a lot of people on the left, feel as though their membership to the Democratic Party fills these voids. It gives them a sense of purpose and identity that really they crave. You know, I would say the left has been masterful at filling this void of identity and purpose. I don't agree with the prescription but race gender sexuality climate right these are the left's prescription for that void and i think where conservatives have erred to be honest with you this is part of what pulled me into this race where conservatives have gone wrong is that we've gotten complacent with saying that,

well, we're going to criticize that vision and point out all of the things that are endlessly wrong with it. There's a lot we could do. I mean, my first book is about a lot of this. My second book is about a lot of this. Woke Inc., Nation of Victims. Here's what's wrong with that vision of identity grounded on your genetic attributes. But where we've fallen short is that we haven't yet offered our own alternative vision yeah i think well i think that's important as i do before hannah planet my man yeah before hannah stole my point there was some hannah that's right you're getting called hannah from now on instead of hannah claire that's so aggressive here tonight we have a nice guest she started it okay so there's one thing there's a couple different things i i want to say firstly your your last response reminded me of uh three quotes firstly

a great quote from chesterton that when a man stops believing in god it's not that he believes in nothing in fact he often will believe in anything and that's huge another quote is from augustine you were sort of mentioning people looking at political tyranny and not their own lives augustine said a man has as many masters as he does vices and we as a people have unlinked freedom and virtue from each other as if freedom has nothing to do with your individual capacity to choose to do good and is merely the circumstance of having many alternatives and then the final quote uh that it reminded me of was when solzhenitsyn said the the battle between good and evil runs through the heart of every man why just look at the

administrative state why just look at the bureaucracy why just look at tyranny when the evil exists inside of you as well and you have to do the work to become a more virtuous person if you ever want to fight the the evil the system that said, you made another point here about the left doing a very good job of offering up this counter narrative to people so they can fill that void. I would argue it's even a bit more malevolent than that. And I don't think it's necessarily intentional on the part of all left wing people who are promoting this, but all of the structures that they've taken away from us and tried to shame us for caring for, whether it's a sense of patriotism, whether it's a faith in God

and divine revelation, whether it is the cherishing of your own family unit, all of these things are very important. They're things man needs, but they're also things that man has come to an understanding of being important through the exercise of virtue all of these other things like sex or race or even this strange kind of reversion to a weird worship of the weather and in signing intentionality to climate events is really incredibly primitive I think these are the things that human beings just fall back into when they don't have a rational way to orient themselves towards the good. I actually think there's something instinctual there. And as we've torn away the social conventions that have helped us to behave more virtuously,

we're falling back into things like group identity or seeing weather patterns as an indication of immoral behavior that needs to be settled, even through things like population reduction, which is really another method of human sacrifice in a somewhat abstracted sense i actually actually there's a lot to that because in a certain sense the thing that separates us from animals is our ability to believe in something bigger than ourselves animals as, as best we know, or non-human animals don't have that same ability to have faith. Yes.

And so the fact that that's essential to our humanity, also the flip side of that makes it something that we really badly need to fulfill. Yeah. So long as we are actually fully human beings.

And if we're not going to fill it with the real thing, we're going to fill it with something else. And so my definition of a cult is, in many ways, a religion that has not withstood the test of time. And I think that we have the rise of these different secular cults in America that have oddly arisen at the same time in our national history. Right? You think it's a coincidence that we bow to the god of climate, as you said. I like the way you put it, worshiping or sort of sensing changes in weather patterns as something that we have to use as an atonement for our sins.

It's an interesting question. It's a separate question of, do you see that at the same time that your identity is based on your race, your gender, your sexuality, and that you're on some intersectional pyramid, higher or lower, based on the combination of those attributes you inherit on the day you're born? Or religion that says the sex of the person you're attracted to is hardwired on the day you're born at the same time that you have to believe that your own biological sex is going to put your fluid over your life? I bring that up because what is a faith-based system or a religious system? It's a system where you could espouse otherwise illogical beliefs, right? Logic and reason could not lead you to these beliefs, but it has to be a different way of believing them. That's what we as a human being have a need for.

We have a need to have beliefs that defy logic. And so if it's not going to be grounded in belief in a traditional religion, belief in God, even belief in a nation, a commitment to a nation is not something that flows out of logic, flows out of something that we as human beings have a desire for, of a need for, something bigger than ourselves. We're going to channel that impulse to something else. But the problem, and this is the danger of it, is not that it's not the time-tested faiths. It's the fact that we then trick ourselves into thinking that it isn't faith at all. Because when you go to church, you know what you're doing. You go to a temple, you know what you're doing.

You're praying to God. You're exercising a side of your brain that's different than that which you're exercising if you're pouring chemicals in a lab and measuring things. But I think what's happened is in absence of traditional faith and traditional beliefs, where we recognize that we're exercising our faith to believe in these things, we see the rise of new secular religions, secular cults instead, which we fail to recognize are actually religious belief systems. Exactly. Like the climate belief system. And I think the most dangerous religions

are the ones that we fail fail to recognize as religions in the first place and delude ourselves into thinking that it's actually logic or reason that led us there exactly that's exactly what's happening in the country today well there's a few things i'd say in response to that firstly ultimately i do agree with the point that these ideological systems are more or less religions but rather than having a personal god they have have a much more abstract God, and it generally ends up boiling down to a form of self-worship, usually. But I would push back against one part of this. I agree that there are many religious systems where the faith does conflict with reason. I don't believe faith has to conflict with reason.

And I would say part of what's so insidious about this kind of left-wing cult we're seeing and a lot of these bizarre new ideas is it directly does conflict with reason I think there are elements within Divine Revelation that a person could not have reason to on their own but it doesn't contradict reason or or it's not asking you to accept something which is like completely and totally absurd such as your biological sex can change on a daily basis it it gives you ideally the tools and this isn't its its singular purpose but it does give you the tools if it's the the right system to interact with the world in a way which is actually productive and helpful and these new kind of cultist beliefs don't so i would i would definitely agree with you on that second part yeah i think we actually agree on the whole part because the religious belief systems don't have to conflict with reason of course they don't and so what i said is a cult is a religious system

that has not withstood the test of time part of withstanding the test of time is that i think you do you withstand the test of time better if it is compatible with reason. It's not totally incompatible with reason. The problem with these near-term cults, right, the same cult we talked about, the biological sex being fluid versus sex of the person you're attracted to being fixed, call that the cult of LGBTQIA+. The cult of climate effectively says that carbon emissions are bad if they come from the united states but not if they're exactly you can't believe those two things at the same time and so it's the religions that haven't withstood the test of time that are the ones that actually run most contrary to logic and reason when it comes to like climate science i don't think it's

unreasonable to think that humans could destroy the earth's atmosphere we easily could nuclear war is one way to do it we could do lots of ways comets could destroy the earth's atmosphere but what's unreasonable is to tell people they have to stop producing waste and that's one way to do it. We could do it lots of ways. Comets could destroy the Earth's atmosphere. But what's unreasonable is to tell people they have to stop producing waste. And that's the way to solve it. Like, people are going to poop. We're going to make waste. We're going to burn stuff to stay warm. So we need to figure out a way not to stop.

I believe it's unreasonable to expect people to stop producing the carbon dioxide. And we have to be reasonable about the climate. We need to reuse the waste. This is why I'm obsessed with pulling the carbon dioxide out of the air. It'll create another climate crisis where we start to pull too much carbon dioxide out of the air. And then we start to compete with the trees. And we need like a united global coalition that's working together to not pull too much methane and carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere because that is a valuable resource. Yeah, it's it will.

It's an interesting idea um i i think kind of touching on this this concept of old ideas and new ideas that uh vivek was mentioning i'm curious ian where do you sort of stand uh i i'll sort of launch into my perspective on this but i've talked about it before so i'm curious where you are on this when someone says this is a new idea or that idea is old and conservative and retrograde what's your response to that well what's an example what do you mean well often people will try to label liberalism and conservatism as a war between old ideas and new ideas and conservatives just like the old ideas and liberals like new ideas uh geez well i mean we stand on the shoulders of giants nothing's new we have new data

we can see things from different perspectives with microscopes and telescopes and things like when you get a radio telescope and you see the cosmic microwave background radiation for instance it's this web of radiation left over from the big bang out in the universe it looks like a neural net like that is god to me that is a evidence that there is a god in our universe and i've been agnostic my entire life but when you see that how can you deny that that is not sentient or that or that it is i mean it is it is functionably active so that's like an old idea that is now seen in a new way it doesn't have to be liberal or conservative it's like we're just human seeing seeing things from different perspectives and if you can i don't know maybe if you can accept that some people don't quite

don't see it the way you see it it'll be a lot easier to convince them well the way you see it i think that's an interesting point uh obviously i i would disagree with some of the the spiritual proposals that you're making there about the nature of the universe but what i will say is i think you hit the nail on the head when you said there's nothing new uh and i firmly believe this there's nothing new under the sun and vivek you described a cult as a religion that has not passed the test of time. I think that that is a very good way of describing it. It's certainly a helpful way of understanding it. The way I've always sort of conceptualized the, you know, war between traditionalism

and progressivism is not that you have, you know, old ideas trying to fight new ideas. It's that you have ideas that have stood the test of time against ideas that have been tried and have failed so miserably that people forgot about them. And now they're trying them again. I think it's very hubristic to say that man has been thinking about such matters for virtually all of human history. And now we've discovered something which is totally unique and totally new. I think in terms of technological development, there are certain things we can discover that are unique to our place in time. But when it comes to human moral behavior, these things are constants but you know the problem you mentioned this too vivek that the big problem that's happening in the conservative movement i

see right now is that people are screaming no at these things that are rallying people in the liberal whatever economic movement that are like climate side whatever whatever and rather than offer another idea it's just no that's bad that's bad. That's bad. And that's right. It's not functional. It's not inspiring. And that doesn't move people. That doesn't move people towards being the true version of themselves they want to be, which is what we all hunger for. And so, you know, when I say the left offers this narrative grounded in race, gender, sexuality, climate.

Well, what I'm in this race doing, hopefully, is articulating a different vision grounded in the individual, the family, nation, God. Amen. Right?

So now you have a different vision. We have competing choices, race, gender, sexuality, climate, individual, family, nation, God. At least it's a different alternative vision, which is what conservatism used to be about it used to be about conserving that's right those things right those those pillars of human identity why do we need those pillars of identity you know the way i look

at it is we are in many ways like human beings analogy I would use, we're like blind bats lost in a cave trying to figure out where we are. How does a blind bat figure out where it is? Sonar. Sonar. Echo location. Right. It sends out signals. So say we're in this cave.

Bounces off that wall. It's something fixed. It bounces back. It says, this is where I am. Let's say I'm a human being. I do the same thing. It bounces off that wall. Say my family.

The two parents, mother and father, who brought me into this world. That means something to me. That bounces back. It says, this is where I am. Send out a signal. It bounces off my belief in God. That is a true faith to me. That bounces back. It tells me this is where I am. Off my belief in this nation, that I'm a citizen of this nation, not some nebulous global citizen somewhere, but that I'm a citizen of this nation. In some nebulous global citizen somewhere, but that I'm a citizen of this nation. In our case, the United States of America. That means something to me. That bounces back and says, this is where I am.

I work hard. I create something in the world. You make music. That's great. Whatever it is. That is real. It is true. That bounces back.

I'm proud of that. It tells me this is where I am. What happens when those things each disappear? We send out these signals and then nothing comes back. That's when we're lost in that abyss. And so we will latch on to anything, race, gender, sexuality, climate. And the conservative movement is a bit of a paradox here because we're supposed to be conserving something but when the thing we're supposed

to be conserving does not exist now we have to be in the business of actually recreating something or if it was actually missing but the signal is blocked or distorted because of pharmaceuticals like 14 year olds on xanax or something crazy. You can't experience God properly. If your mind is tweaked by drugs. I mean, I don't think you, I don't think, I don't think you can have a healthy baby.

If you've got amphetamines flushing through your system, like how can you even learn to love if you hate, if you're in pain from, from, so not only is it, if something is missing, but you need a clear mind. What do you think about colonizing Mars?

What a segue. I like this. I really like the smooth transitions. This is great. This is not a topic we selected, by the way. We're fine to talk about. I'm in favor of exploration. I'm in favor of new frontiers.

I do think that there's a it's so should particularly the united states of america lead the way in establishing roots on mars absolutely i'd like to see that but i do think that it's an interesting point i'm going to tie to the discussion we just had there is a bit of escapism in that to say that I'm going to find my sense of meaning by going somewhere else when I actually could have it right here at home. Right. Yeah. There isn't enough. There isn't anything we couldn't understand at the atomic level that wouldn't be more edifying and liberating for us that would require us to go to Mars to do instead.

I'm not denigrating the value of going to Mars. I would support it. I think as a spirit of human advancement and human achievement and a down payment on a future that's much longer than I believe our past has been, that's great. But I do, whatever the case may be, I see one serial substitute after another arising saying that, oh no, maybe the thing that's going to give me fulfillment is going to Mars. Yes, it's that thing. Let's get behind that versus being grounded in the things that have, for most of our history, grounded us and given us meaning as human beings. So work out, eat healthy, get to know your neighbors. Yeah, that could be it.

All of those things could be on the list. That's like the individual, the family, and the nation. Take care of yourself. Take care of the people around you, right? I think that we'll hear a lot more people worrying about taking care of somebody in the congo which i have no problem with somebody in the united states taking care of someone in the congo but what's your relationship with your own family exactly neighbors right and i think that in the same way there's an impulse to say let me go to mars as a substitute for self discovery here at home.

I'm going to Mars to look for something that I could have found by just taking a long, hard look in the mirror myself, which is actually a deeper journey into the harder question of who I really am and who we really are. in terms of talking about the climate or talking about curing hunger on a continent halfway around the world before we actually ask ourselves who we really are and what we're really doing here at home. And I think that characterizes the American moment, characterizes why much of the modern left is lost, but it also characterizes the work cut out ahead for conservatives or, you don't even have to use the label conservatives, but leaders who want to fill that vacuum of purpose and meaning in our country. I would totally agree with you. And piggybacking off of what you said here about looking at home for problems that you can solve. This is something I believe that Mother Teresa said when someone asked her about traveling to some other part of the world and helping the poor. She was she your response was basically to say, what about the

spiritual poverty that exists around you? What about helping to meet the spiritual needs of the people in your own life who are impoverished in that sense? Another thing that you mentioned was caring a lot about your country, having some sense of patriotism and a national identity, people having certain values that they stand for as a result of their citizenship in a nation as great as the United States and how a lot of that has been taken away from us. Recently, there was a song that was released by Jason Aldean. He had this music video he put out there.

It's really making the rounds and there's been a lot of controversy surrounding it. And the song is called Try that in a small town and the whole purpose of the song is basically to say if you're behaving in the disrespectful ways which are generally tolerated in large cities in which we have been told as a population for decades are morally acceptable you're going to have some trouble in a small town so the lyrics are cuss out a cop uh you know he's describing doing things that are violent or unacceptable and then he says try that in a small town and see how far you make it down the road we take care of our own here you cross that line it won't take long and you know find out or for you to find out i recommend you don't try that

in a small town so this is a music video where someone's essentially saying, don't come to our town and cause problems. I think it's a great message. There are people in the media who have literally referred to this as a pro lynching anthem, which is the most bizarre, insane and ridiculous stretch of an interpretation i could possibly uh imagine so this this idea that traditionally american values are racist that wanting to protect your community and your town means that you're in favor of lynching and that we need to abandon our american values is so pervasive that a song like this is criticized whereas you have gangster rap which talks about committing actual crimes and harming innocent people and treating women poorly and doing drugs in the media never decries that this. It looks like these lyrics could should

have been had the word if if you if you cuss out a cop or spit in his face, if you stomp on the flag and light it up, you're going to pay for it in a small town. Like but the way it sounds, stomp on the flag, you know, cuss out a cop, stomp on the flag, you're going to pay for it in a small town. But the way it sounds, stomp on the flag, you know, cuss out a cop, stomp on the flag, you're going to pay for it. It doesn't have the supposition, so people might be reading into it as if he's telling people to do that stuff. I don't think that's the problem.

They're upset he's saying don't do that because gangster rap tells people to do horrible things like that all the time and there's never a controversy. Right, I think part of the problem is we live in a culture where we're expect supposed to expect our neighbors to share values with us we're supposed to live and let live and he used to love that phrase when i was younger right because i was libertarian ideals and it's not that i don't now but i think ultimately the

fabric of our society is strong when we have a understanding of what is is acceptable and what is not acceptable so the some of the stuff he's describing here, right? Like, don't come to my town and attack law enforcement. And we can have all kinds of debates about law enforcement, but we should all mutually agree that we expect one another to preserve our safety, right? We don't want that as a social contract to be violated. All of these ideas that he's promoting are actually completely reasonable. It's just that

he is presenting them in a way that people don't like. And you're not supposed to tell other people, well, you're not supposed to do this. This is against what we're allowed to do. We're supposed to let people live and let live however they see fit, which is just toxic ultimately. We function the best when we are able to say, I know that my neighbor shares my values and therefore will not look at me and say, well, I'm allowed to do whatever I want and I'm going to. Yeah. So I want to ask Vivek how he feels about this and what your response to this song has been. And also just in general, the denigration of American values and a national identity and how it's brought us to this point. Yeah. So I think there's the superficial element of this, which, you know, frankly,

others have covered over the course of today as well, which is something I agree with. I said it this morning, is that anytime you have a song that actually celebrates who we really are, something that a majority of Americans, by the way, at least until very recently, the values enshrined in that song would have united all Americans. That's actually what is subject to censorship and cancellation when, in fact, songs that glorify violence or other kinds of undesirable behavior are the ones that we actually end up culturally venerating. So there's a bit of a paradox there. I do think there's something deeper going on and it ties to our earlier conversation in the country, which is this idea of whether we believe do you take care of yourself or your family before you're solving global poverty in Ethiopia or whether you're addressing the climate?

And I think that that's one of the questions we have to regain alignment on. I think it's an interesting question. I'm offering one view. I'm clearly biased to that view. But I think that there's a legitimate question of saying that, no, no, no, we don't necessarily have to solve problems at home before we solve them somewhere else. Or do we actually take care of the problems on our own street? If you try that

in a small town, it's like almost I'm going to stand for my people first. I'm going to stand for my family first. I'm going to stand for my town first. I'm going to stand for my nation first. Is that the right way to think about our commitments? Or do we have transcendental commitments that go beyond those traditional boundaries somewhere else? And I think that's in many ways, it's not a right or left question. It's an interesting question to ponder. And I think that that's part of what's going on when we make up these new abstract religions to substitute for the hard thing which is look in the mirror and ask myself who i am actually do something kind for my parents or for my family members or my

neighbors in some ways ukraine has actually become a substitute for this right i was a substitute religion i mean if this song was called try that in ukraine i don't think anyone would be complaining about it exactly because what are we trying in ukraine or russia you know on one hand last year the thing that we said cluster bombs that were going to be war crimes are now the very things that we will send over to ukraine and so it just becomes a the re-emergence of a new kind of religion and we have a new one every couple years i mean a couple years ago we were all all posting black squares. And there's always a symbol. There's always something to it. And it's a test, right?

Do you comply? Can I give you an outward symbol that I line up the way that a dominant culture wants me to? And I think that's why songs like this are so interesting is because they make people so... I mean, Variety has this article saying that it's the most cynical song when really it's a call to action and actual protection. This is, I mean, like, look, if you want to argue there's something wrong with the song, I think you're incorrect. But this is the most cynical song of all the songs on air today, of all the songs on the radio. This is the most cynical. You're out of your mind.

It seems like a psychological, I don't want to be too like conspiracy, but it seems like a psychological operation with the internet. Now we've got all the nations of earth influencing our nation we're all influencing each other of course but there are like overt applications to corrupt and disband the united states because it's the global leader and who's who's making who's who's seeding this this that that's a bad thing to protect your neighbors who's who's doing that is it the chinese i don't want to be crazy conspiracy because i don't know but like who wants the u.s follow the money i don't know but i i get a vibe that this is not a natural phenomenon from within our country the reaction to this you is what yeah yeah you know it's it's it's plausible to me it's almost so bizarre that

that is a very fair question to ask. In some ways, China is absolutely responsible for a lot of this, right? Because China, you know, the game they have played, I'm going to come back and say that's not the entire explanation. But I think there's a lot of truth to it, though. Because China has played this game on our culture for the last 20 some odd years, which is they want our psychic insecurities to flourish. They want us to be psychologically insecure. And here's how they do it, right? The spread of global capitalism in the 1990s was actually their way of accomplishing this, where we fell into this trap that said we were going to export Big Macs and Happy Meals

and Western music was a big part of this, too, to places like China to spread democracy. That was our vision of democratic capitalism in the 1990s. Bipartisan consensus, by the way, Republicans and Democrats alike. What they realized is, oh, wait a minute. We can use these vehicles as a way to actually spread our values back to them. They thought they could use our money to get them to be more like us. says okay we're going to use access to our market to get america to be more like us how did that work what they basically said is you can't enter the chinese market be it a music company a movie company etc a lot of entertainment fits this description you can't enter disney fits this description the nba fits this description you

can't enter the chinese market unless and until you abide by the CCP's way of doing things. But we will roll out the red carpet if you criticize the United States. So this idea of self-loathing of large companies, institutions, entertainment institutions in particular, relentlessly criticizing the United States while actually staying silent about the actual human rights atrocities in places like China. That started in some ways as a form of a psyop, right, by China on the United States to say, we're going to get those institutions that you guys venerate over there, many of them are companies or entertainment providers, to relentlessly criticize the U.S. because the more you do that while also staying quiet and criticism on China, the more they're going to roll out the red carpet for those companies and institutions to be able to expand into the Chinese market, which means more money. psyop component to this but that trick only works if we have a culture that's still willing to buy up what they're selling which goes back to that earlier absence of purpose and meaning and identity

in our culture i think you're absolutely right about the fact that the the chinese government has a much better grasp on what is going to tug at the heartstrings in what will upset the sensibilities of the american people as opposed to the american people's understanding of what is going to upset people in other nations or in our own or in our own that's a very fair point uh so uh one one story i usually bring about the uh biden administration with respect to how effective i think he's been as a leader on the foreign stage is he told this story and and again this is him telling this story he thought this made him look good the story was he met with vladimir putin and he said to vladimir putin i don't think you have a soul man and according to him vladimir putin responded we understand each other okay i hear

this story and i, the president of the United States just told a foreign leader who was waging a war that he thinks he's mean. This is not going to upset that foreign leader if this ever even happened. On the other hand, what does China do? China tells the United States of America that the United States of America is racist and needs to apologize for being racist, despite the fact that in order to market a film in china you have to reduce the size of black characters on the poster china doesn't care about racism but they know that the united states has a hyper fixation on it so they try to manipulate us with it uh and you touched earlier on turn our psychic insecurities against us as weapons back

against us and then they use capitalism as a vehicle to enforce it exactly because companies don't get to play ball in china unless they actually carry out that dictates it's just the game it's how they play and this is actually why i've loved talking about the nine dash line in relation to the barbie movie i think so many people are not aware of the subtle games that china plays so having this line on a map that probably a lot of u.s students are used to seeing there but as soon as someone in vietnam says hey by the way that's actually a claim to land that belongs to us a bunch of americans don't have to go oh wait i've never ever thought about anything that affects you because i take the information that is provided to me without question.

And they have no culture. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why someone in America may not be aware of the territorial map of the South China Sea. On the other hand, how interesting that the Barbie movie is suddenly this thing that calls attention to the subtle claim from China to this historical area. It's fascinating you use the example of a movie. Top Gun, the recent release of Top Gun, had a lot of those attributes to it too,

where, I don't know if you guys noticed, but the enemy was some nebulous, vague other nation. We don't know who it is. With snow. Yeah, and by the way, the old Top Gun, the maverick jacket that had the Taiwan and the Japanese flag on it, in the revised cut of the movie, that had disappeared. In the original cut, you know, it was actually real.

In the original movie, it was actually original version. There was actually identified enemy nation. We're talking about the U.S. and USSR, an actual rival. Here it's a nebulous nation. Why is that? China's first read was that this movie was too patriotic for the U.S. to be played in China.

So they come back and make those concessions. So part of that, that's micro. That's at the margin, right? Well, the Japan flag and the Taiwan flag no longer show up.

It's a nebulous alternative enemy or rival as though it was disconnected with the present reality in the United States. Made it slightly less patriotic than it otherwise was. Is it any surprise that you then see the same types of reactions

from the same movie industry associations or recording industry associations that then are engaged in self-flogging here in the United States, even as they will expand into the Chinese market without a peep? So I do think that there is a cynical force at work here. Ian, I think you're totally right about that, but I don't think it's the whole explanation. That just amplifies a deeper insecurity that still existed in the first place.

Yeah, I think a lot of insecurity comes from drug abuse from the pharmaceutical industry. We've been broken by the opiate crisis in the 90s into whatever's going on now with fentanyl. I mean, I've been through drug abuse. I know. And it wasn't hard drugs. It was weed for the most part. And I've been through alcohol, some alcohol abuse.

It was, I was a shell of a human being. I had to find, I started mines because I didn't know I was asked to be a part of it. Thank God. And I found purpose and I'm beginning to claw my way back to being able to love love myself again but these kids that are on the drugs there's kids on amphetamines like i agree with you that that destroyed shaken humans are very susceptible to psychological operations yeah yeah how do you propose that we disentangle shamus i'm sorry do you want do you have a question you want to ask right now uh no no i'm gonna ask more about you i would actually like to hear an answer to the question you asked.

How do we disentangle from China while maintaining our alliances with them, while still maintaining friendly relations? So I think that in the next instance of that, that's going to be very difficult to do. But what friendly relations do we need to maintain? Some of the other ones we've cut off. So if I'm U.S. president, I'm thinking January 2025, I'm taking office. Here's how it's going to look. All right, I think we have to actually reenter some of the deals we exited, trade deals we exited

with places like Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, Vietnam, you go straight around the Pacific Rim. I think we have to reenter that to say that I'm now in a position to sit across the table from xi jinping and say we're cutting the cord there was one of the trans-pacific partnership i'm not sure the tpp yeah the um the the investor state dispute settlement clause within that allows malaysian oil companies to sue american citizens if they discriminate messed up so what i would say is i'm a big fan of using silver linings in our favor. So that was the TPP. Now we have the revised CPTPP.

They want the US in, right? So I would use the fact that Trump pulled out as leverage to say, hey, we're coming back. But here are the concessions we need from Malaysia to Japan, subsidizing their state-owned enterprise. There's some tweaks we'll need there. But believe me, now that we're not in it, we have the leverage to say we're coming back in on these terms. We come back in. But those are largely still with friendly nations. That then puts me in a position as the president to sit across the table from Xi Jinping.

And he'll know I mean it when I say we're cutting the cord. We're declaring total independence. We're banning U.S. businesses from doing business in China. You will not buy land in our country if you're affiliated with the CCP. You won't donate to land in our country if you're affiliated with the ccp you won't donate to universities in our country we're decoupling unless you either radically reform and play by the same rules no ip theft no data theft but also no turning companies into your one-sided cultural and political lobbying pawns in the united states and if you don't meet our conditions

then we're out the i actually think she shouldn't think that meets our demands that's i think what happens yeah um and i i think that's a very good point there's something you mentioned there a little bit earlier about like global capitalism and how this neoliberal vision has resulted in us allowing ourselves to be susceptible to the economic leverage of hostile nations there was this idea that was very popular that i became familiarized with heavily in my libertarian phase known as the golden arches theory basically this idea that two nations with a mcdonald's had never gone to war with one another well surprise surprise russia and ukraine both have mcdonald's there uh in operation now on this

question of countries that we are allied with um decoupling or just tension growing with nations that we're hostile to, it seems as if we're seeing something similar in the U.S. just with respect to our own states, which is kind of a segue here into a story about another bus of migrants, which carried from texas to los angeles so this is something we've seen in the news repeatedly uh in this instance the the bus left brownsville texas on monday at 4 25 local time and arrived at union station at 6 30 it had 45 asylum seekers from various countries including brazil chile china colombia guatemala haiti honduras and venezuela according to the coalition for humane inter uh humane immigrant rights I apologize uh mentions here in the article that the bus included 37 adults and eight children with the largest group of migrants 23 people hailing from Venezuela so it seems to me as if people who are in states that are more wealthy and further from the border

don't have as much of a problem with unfettered migration. And of course, people in border towns who are actually directly affected by it do have an issue with it. Now, what we often hear from left-wing activists on this issue is there's simply a failure of empathy on the part of people who believe the federal government should have any oversight over who's crossing the border or that border patrol should be able to do its job in securing our border of course the irony is they're totally incapable of being compassionate towards people who live in border states and actually have to wrestle with the struggles of unfettered migration you know look it's actually an area for national unity that i see here so i ended up visiting uh now a couple months ago now i visited the south side of chicago

not a which part i went to south shore okay went to other parts of south chicago oh really originally yeah yeah so south shore high school right now is being converted into an encampment for migrants actually by the way seven thousand dollars per person per month is roughly what that costs but it's like ninety thousand a year by the way i mean that's exactly if you were if you were making 90k a year and spending all of it uh each month without saving anything that's and not paying your taxes like that's how much it is untaxed right because these are illegal migrants by definition and so people in that town and by the way this, this is far left, supposedly far left territory, hard Democratic stronghold, not a place where Republican politicians go. Frankly, not even a place where many Democrat politicians go, who were probably more strongly in favor of closing the border than even many traditional Republican donors who I meet with on a given basis.

And that's interesting to me because that's an America first principle, right? It doesn't fit in the Democratic or Republican boundaries, but they're asking a legitimate question, which goes back to that earlier conversation we were having. Why are we taking care of somebody else first instead of starting right here at home? Yep. And so their question was look i had trouble getting baby formula or sneakers you've got sneakers and baby formula for people who are showing up illegally into this country breaking the law they're getting seven thousand dollar checks what am i getting which i think is not an unreasonable question to ask and so anyway this

issue around border security i think there is far more consensus in this country across traditional boundaries than the media would have you believe traditional media would have you believe certainly i think that most americans who i've met support the idea that i've advanced which is that building the wall isn't enough i mean look you want to talk about how fentanyl gets into this country there's cartel financed tunnels underneath those walls now. Much of what people think they're buying is Percocet or weed or whatever is often even laced now with fentanyl. But the way we solve that problem and the migrant crisis along with it is use our military to secure that southern border. We're now using our military equipment

and resources to secure somebody else's border halfway around the world. Let's use our own military to secure our own southern border. I think we do it for our northern border, too. That's how you address the actual crisis. And I think that there's broad consensus around that because just walk down the list. Do you believe that nations should have borders? Some people haven't. It's not a nation without borders. It's not a nation without borders.

That's certainly my belief but there are certain people who will say we shouldn't have borders and whatever okay fine let's smoke that out and get that on the table but that's a tiny fringe minority of people yeah most people in this country say they want borders but then if you want borders then okay if you believe in a border then have a border yep and if we can't use our own military to secure our own border that means we don't believe in the existence of the importance of that border in the first place which is why i said i would close that loop yeah absolutely would you end birthright citizenship i see birthright citizenship as a danger to the people who being

trapped across the border right this promise that if you are born in america you get to stay means that you're going to be uh willing to take huge risks to get here which we know are incredibly dangerous to everyone involved. Yeah. So I would end birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants. But not for legal immigrants? And the children of illegal immigrants. Well, what does it mean for everybody else? I mean, we're all citizens, whether sixth generation or first generation in my case. If you're born in this country, you have citizenship if you're born under legal circumstances. But I think that if somebody comes to this country illegally and has a child

while here i do think we have to end birthright citizenship but does that mean you deport like a one-year-old i think you would you do the family you take the whole family unit so so i'm strongly opposed to policies that would separate kids from their parents i think that that was discussed even in the trump administration and otherwise as a tactic for deterring people from coming. As a pro-family leader, I will not adopt such a policy, but we will send back the family unit as such. And I think that if you came to this country illegally, the right answer is you have to be sent back to your country of origin come back through the same legal means getting in the same line that everybody who's coming into this country legally is already pursuing i would tend to agree with that and what a lot of people will say is deportation

is so cruel it's so horrible when it happens all right yeah i would agree it's not the optimal solution or circumstance that's why we have to have strong border security to ensure people do not come here illegally so that we don't have to deport people. If you're against deportation, you should be in favor of having very strong borders. The crazy thing about borders and walls is they are not, that's not where you defend. The Romans knew that. That's why the Romans invaded their neighbors because you had to create a perimeter of defense. And I don't want to see, I don't want a war with Mexico, but if they're going to allow an invasion it's like what other choice have they left us with so i think there's a couple things that i would make as hardline policies here end any form of foreign aid to mexico or central america until the border crisis is dealt with period yeah right i think that they

have not yet borne the consequences of actually a border crisis that actually many of those illegal migrants crossing over aren't even originating in mexico they're originating countries the majority are not the majority of the border are not the overwhelming majority right and so mexico doesn't face any of that accountability yet they're still a recipient of that foreign aid and so i think we have to use economic levers in this, just turning off foreign aid unless and until they've solved that problem over there. I would end sanctuary cities and funding for sanctuary cities, driving the demand side of this here in the United States. I would use our military to literally station undeployed troops. We don't need to fight a war somewhere else on the other side of the world.

Station them along our own southern border. This is if we intended to solve that problem. And as president, I do. This is how we actually end that migrant crisis, the fentanyl crisis. Talk about the human trafficking crisis in this country. That's how we do it. When you say would you cap? Sorry, would you cap legal immigration?

Do you have any any feeling on restrictions for legal immigration? I think there should be restrictions. The restrictions are not a specific number that we want to fetishize. The restriction is twofold. Both are merit-based restrictions. Are you going to make a contribution to this country? And then crucially, there's a second element to this too for me. Do you actually know something about this country and demonstrate a desire to be a part of it?

And so this was where the question of birthright citizenship goes deeper for me. Is I don't think citizenship should be something that anybody automatically takes for granted, born here or not. should have to pass the same civics test that an immigrant has to pass in order to become a naturalized citizen in this country. I love that. I think you got to know something about the country if you want to actually call yourself a citizen of that nation. I think that ought to be true if you're an immigrant. I'd pull up that civics test, not just from the citizenship side. I'd pull up a version of that to the front end to even get into this country. It selects for people who have taken the time to learn something about the country, who have demonstrated themselves

to want to be part of the country. And then yes, to work hard and be an industrious member of our society, contributing to our country. And so I think that should be the limit. But I think that the idea of using a number, then we're just playing tug of war argument numbers, that misses the point.

This is the way we have to filter for the kind of people who should and should not be able to enter this country. And then just because you're born here doesn't mean that the act of just being born to die, you're born and happen to have arbitrarily been in the United experiment, which is to say that your citizenship in this country is not based on your ethnicity or your allegiance to a monarch or even your religion. That it's anybody who's born here can be a citizen. I would take that to the next level to say, it's not just about being born here, but anybody who truly makes contributions to this country and pledges allegiance to this country

and knows something about the country, they're the ones who actually are the true capital c citizens and that's i mean many people find that view radical maybe it is it's not i don't think that's radical at all i think i've heard you i've heard your plan i don't think radical is bad yeah well this is something i've heard you say in the past that you would you would have people who are over the age of 18 take a civics test before they're able to vote and And then once they get to 25, they can vote in general, but you would restrict voting between those, uh, or between that, that age gap. I actually happen to think that that's a good idea. I don't know that I'm saying I would specifically endorse that exact policy or how it would flesh out. But when I hear it, it sounds right to me because historically in this country,

the voting age was 21 years old. And this was at a time when you were expected to be on your own, taking care of yourself at the age of 16. So by the time you got to voting age, you knew a thing or two about the world. You'd survived on your own. You'd paid your rent, so to speak. You knew what life was like for other people. I remember when I was in high school, I graduated 10 years ago. I hadn't turned 18 by the time the election happened.

But I remember a friend of mine went out and he voted for Obama, why? because he didn't know anything about Obama he didn't really listen to any of his speeches but I think he's the guy who wants to legalize weed so I'm voting for him, I'm sorry 18 year olds are not in a position where they know enough about the world where they're qualified to vote and if they are in that position they are a minority

and we should have a kind of test to vet for those people I think that's perfectly legitimate and it's the exact same test I'm not making up some new test from scratch. It's the exact same test we've decided that an immigrant has to pass in order to become a voting citizen of this country. I'll give you examples of what they ask in the test.

I mean, how many branches of government are there? What are they? What branch of government does the U.S. president lead? Is it so objectionable to say if you're voting for U.S. president that you know what branch of government the U.S. president lead is it so objectionable to say if you're voting for u.s president that you know what branch of government the u.s president actually leads i think it is not no and so so the implementation of this proposal it's been a little while since i talked about it and it wasn't i i believe me i think people will believe me when i say this i was not

doing this to score political points this did not poll particularly well as an idea. My job is to persuade people that this is what we need to revive in our country. So right now, I'll remind you of something that a lot of people forget. We have a selective service requirement in the US. That's right. Men between the age of 18 and 25 have to on pain of criminal penalty that means potentially going to jail register for selective service that's the draft we don't have an active draft but if you don't register between the age of 18 to 25 you're doing so at behest of criminal penalties i would

decriminalize that i don't think that that should be the way we do things here but in replacement of that i say you're. You're not going to jail whether or not you register for selective service. But if you want the ultimate civic privilege in this country of voting before the age of 25,

then pass the darn civics test. And if tests aren't for you, then serve the country for six months, either in the military or in a first responder role. And I think that is an absolutely fair thing to ask.

But it's also, and I'm going to make a prediction on this voting rates in this country amongst young people which are already really low will skyrocket skyrocket after you actually make the act of voting mean something yeah it's been a long time since we've done that i completely agree agree with you. And one thing that I find particularly suspicious about the democratic establishment today is that so many of their efforts are catered towards people they know are going to be uninformed voters. So for example, you see these get out and vote commercials on television where a celebrity tells you that you should go select a certain candidate and they won't necessarily tell you to vote for the Democrat.

But the question is, if a person wasn't going to vote until Will Ferrell told them to, is this really someone we want voting in our elections? And I think the answer to that question is genuinely no. If you're only going to vote because a celebrity told you to, you probably don't know or care enough to be in the voting booth. So we're constantly hearing about the civic duty to vote. Well, what about the civic duty to be informed? I think that exists as well. And I think it's a really good idea to have a test that tries to select for people on the basis of how much they actually know about the system. Yeah. And I think studies bear out that when people are bought into something, when they have to govern it and protect it, they have to participate through civic participation. They have to take a test

to show that they are part of the system. They are more likely to feel the sense of duty. And that's so important. We've talked earlier about sort of reinvigorating our culture to feel a sense of patriotism, to feel a sense of purpose. And this is one of the ways we do it. We have to institute,

I mean, obviously this isn't a micro change, but we have to institute these changes that ultimately direct the young people in America towards a more purpose-filled life. I got just to clarify, are you saying that in order to vote at the age of 18, you'd either take a test or join the selective service? I say that if you want to vote between the ages of 18 and 25, you either have to pass the same civics test that every immigrant has to pass

in order to become a voting citizen of this country, or else serve for six months either in a military or first responder role okay because there's like a i don't want to call them an underclass but there's people with low nutrition that the parents have been very poor race the descendants of slaves for instance that didn't have access to money wealth education and nutrition and the iq i mean it that can affect IQ, you know, not having good nutrition. And we should fix that. But here's one standard, so I believe in consistency. So there is actually a particular schedule of exceptions, even for immigrants who come to this country to be naturalized citizens.

So, you know, there are mental handicaps or otherwise that stop someone from being able to take a test. So I would apply that same framework. I'm a big fan of not reinventing wheels when they don't need to take a test. So I would apply that same framework. I'm a big fan of not reinventing wheels when they don't need to be reinvented. We've already had a process. It's one that's active in place today to say that if you're an immigrant to the country, even if you pay taxes for 10 years or whatever, there's a process required to go through being a voting citizen of this country. For 99.9% of people, it means taking that test and passing it. Are there 0.1% exceptions, you know, handicapped of various kinds? Of course there are. Follow the same rubric that you do for immigrants. But my point is at the age of 18, you shouldn't just passively age

into citizenship, just like someone who comes to this country doesn't passively get to enjoy the privileges of citizenship. And I want to use that to just raise a deeper point. I haven't brought this up before in conversations about this, but I like this format. We're actually having a real conversation, and this is not like a two-minute TV hit where we're just checking off boxes. Those are awful. You know, I mean, there's a time and place for everything.

He likes us better. Take that, mainstream media. You hear that, Don Lemon? Just kidding. I love you. No, man, I think this is good. This is good. I think this is good. This is good.

I think this is the direction of where we're going to have to go if we're reviving the country to actually have open and unfiltered conversation. What you should do as president is have these things daily. Oh, I will do podcast. I will continue participating. Podcast from the Oval Office. Here we go. Why not, right? I would love it. We should have open with everyday with, with everyday citizens who are, it's like somebody's randomly selected, which it's like the old fireside chat,

right? It's a modern version of bringing that back. But the point I was going to make was this about citizenship, right? Such an interesting concept to ponder. What does it mean to be a citizen? The way we think about it today, I think it's a feature of the modern moment we live in. We're taught to think about it in terms of what do I get? What do I get if I'm a citizen? It's something that I go get. What do I enjoy? What does that give me?

I'm going to challenge that. It may be a little bit uncomfortable, but it should be more familiar than strange. What does it actually mean to be a citizen? For most of our history, for much of our history, women couldn't vote, right? So you may say being a citizen means you vote. I get this thing. I get this thing. I get to vote.

Well, for much of our history, you know, let's use the case of women. Women couldn't vote, but they were still citizens. So, huh. Maybe there's something else going on here with respect to citizenship that isn't entirely about or even mostly about what I get. Maybe, just maybe. Think about it for a second. Try it on. What I say to people who might disagree with me and I try to do practice what I preach too, is you get a new idea,

try it on like a set of clothes, see if it fits. If it doesn't fit, you can put it back on the rack, full refund policy, okay? But just try it on like a set of clothes for a second. Maybe citizenship is actually about obligation. I like that a lot. Maybe citizenship is actually about duty.

Maybe that's actually what the whole thing is about in the first place, is to say that, you know what? I live in a free society that allows me, people like me, a kid of parents

who came to this country as immigrants with no money in their pocket who goes on to found multi-billion dollar companies at the age of 37 and self-finance a presidential run

by putting tens of millions of dollars of my own hard-earned money to it. That's the American dream. That's what I get to, that's what i got to live but maybe citizenship is about something else yeah citizenship's about duty i mean that's the reagan quote right ask not what you what your country can do for you sorry yeah mixing up all my presidents probably said it too not in so many words but he said it right so yeah ask what you can do for your country and there is

a sense there is a lack of duty i think there is a culture that demands that it be given and it be allowed to take but it does not give back and i so i completely agree with everything that you just said there there's a conception of rights which was was i would say um much more common historically than it is today but it it's basically the idea that rights are a product of duties and not vice versa so today our understanding is basically as follows well you have rights and you just have them you can't explain how or why maybe we'll we'll reference god maybe you know if we don't believe in god but we do believe in rights it's like the invisible morality particles uh that float around us i have no, but we do believe in rights, it's like the invisible morality particles that float around us.

I have no clue, but we just have these rights. And then when you exercise your rights, sometimes you incur responsibilities. I believe it is the exact opposite. There are things you are made to do as a person. And because you are made to do these things, you have an obligation to do them. For example, a man has an obligation to care for his family because he has an obligation to care for his family financially and provide for them. That means he has a right to seek out licit methods of providing for them uninterfered with or a person has a duty to protect themselves. If you have a duty to protect yourselves, then you have a right to the best possible tool necessary for protecting yourself, which is why we have something like the Second Amendment.

But I find that almost everyone in politics gets this entirely backwards. They say you have the right and then the duty. But the truth is, no, you have the right because you have a yes. And that is so in a simple framework. That's what I'm saying is at the age of 18, you think about, OK, I have an obligation to at least serve or at least to know something about the country. And then I have an equal voice and vote in determining that direction. But that policy, like, you know, I've gotten into a lot of discussions

in the last few months about it. It's almost obsessing over the detail with false precision about one idea that's part of a broader worldview that I bring to the idea of citizenship in this country itself. I think we need to revive that idea of civic duty. And we've fallen into the trap of thinking that American identity is all about

individualism, right? That it's just about me, me, me. And I don't apologize, by the way, for free market capitalism. I'm an unapologetic embracer of free market capitalism, the best known system to man to lift people up from poverty. But i just don't think that's the whole story i think there's a separate and important equally co-equal story that we're also part of a nation that's bigger than the sum of its parts that we as citizens not as capitalists but as citizens owe a duty to that nation right so 1776 was the year of the birth of the nation that was the year of the wealth of nations that was adam smith's famous text it was also the year of the declaration of independence and i think that both of these are america's parents and the only other fine point

i wanted to put on this this actually relates to our earlier discussion about religion is that you hear a lot in this country people invoke this term the judeo-christian values that this nation was founded on it this nation was founded on judeo-christian values but nobody ever stops to talk about what are those values that's right exactly right and one of those values that's fundamental to this conversation is the idea of duty to have a to discharge duty it involves making a sacrifice amen god asked abraham to sacrifice his son isaac he didn't have to follow through with it it turned out yeah but he was willing to make that sacrifice and then in the new testament what god sacrifices his son for the people yeah christ gives himself up willingly to death for us.

And that idea is woven into the idea of citizenship itself, is that there's a certain sacrifice required to be a citizen. That's an example of a Judeo-Christian value woven into, not a direct democracy, but a constitutional republic, which involves those civic duties. Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. And you have mentioned capitalism here a few times. You've also mentioned spirituality. And I think something very insidious has happened here with a decoupling of markets from an understanding of what man is. The fact that man is is not merely matter. He is matter and spirit and he has spiritual needs. capitalism stripped of any reference to the supernatural to our creator to spirituality and communism both suffer from a massive flaw which is that they essentially promote the idea that if we just rearrange matter properly we will unlock utopia the physical world is just a combination lock. And if we can arrange things in the exact right matter, we're going to unlock the gates of heaven and everyone will be happy for the rest of history.

We'll reach this kind of Hegelian pseudo eschatonical end to everything. And of course, that's complete nonsense. If you ignore what man is and you only focus on production and moving forward raw economic forces without reference to what is good for man you end up in an a horribly unbearably spiritually impoverished environment environment and often a very materially poor environment as well because when people don't cultivate those virtues as it turns out they don't even end up retaining their ability to produce as well you talked about judeo-christian values i was thinking about the second commandment thou shall have no other fault no false idols yep and yet we have money first command money the obsession

with this false idol of money and so these international banks the bank for international settlements the federal reserves of bank of england bank of australia they've they're waving us around with like a carrot like you want a loan you want to play our game esg you want to be part of this false idol like they're dangling the false idol there so i've heard you talk about read redirecting our our investments away from indexes that play the the black rock game and into some sort of i don't know what you call a national index or something that is like a that values not christian values but just values like not even american values man values that incur freedom like natural american-born freedom what do you how would you do

that yeah so let me let me actually this is such an interesting topic here so that let's just pick up from adam smith's first book was actually about ethics the second book was actually about the wealth of nations and his view is there has to be a moral society for capitalism to be able to work its magic on. Yes. Right. And I believe the same thing, by the way. I think that capitalism is the best system known to organize a society's affairs if our – it's the perfect system – if our wants actually match our needs and the difference the little daylight between our wants and our needs

might be a crude definition of this thing we call virtue okay so i think i think capitalism against the backdrop of a virtuous society for organizing stuff you know things tangible material goods it's a perfect system for organizing the distribution of goods against the backdrop of a virtuous society where our wants match our needs. But modern social media or otherwise has called that bluff, that our wants, the modern pharmaceutical market, drug market, our wants don't always match our actual true needs as human beings. So then this is actually what temptingly led to the birth of a movement that i strongly disagree with but a movement that had an answer to that question nonetheless that was what gave birth to

the rise of stakeholder capitalism right i say this as someone who's a critic probably this the most unsparing critic of stakeholder capitalism in america in the last four years but i say this to give the best shake to the view is it says that capitalism was made for moral people. And so we need to re-infuse the morality into capitalism itself to say that when we're allocating dollars, we're taking environmental or social factors into account, not just the fetishization of green pieces of paper, that there's more to the story. I'm giving as charitable and truly empathetic account as I can. I have a different worldview of how to deal with it, right? My view is let the green pieces of paper be the green pieces of paper, right? That's okay if it's just about stuff but there's a separate sphere of our lives in our body politic in the civic sphere of our lives or the spiritual sphere

of our lives where that money ought to have no influence whatsoever that's right right and so i'm one of these people who resists the idea of infusing those moral judgments into how the dollars are allocated, but instead to make sure the allocation of dollars my objection to stakeholder capitalism is that it wrongfully marries our body politic with our system of allocating goods and services and stuff. When in fact, I don't think we need capitalism and democracy to share the same bed. What I think we actually need is a clean divorce. And both of those are part of what it means to be American. So anyway, to your question, what was happening with these index funds, BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard, what they said is, not only are we going to use your money to buy stocks in the overall stock market, but we're also going to use your money to vote for certain

environmental and social agendas that it turns out many people, most people in this country do not agree with. Racial equity audits, we could go down the list, quota systems on boards. And that's commingling a social agenda into capitalism, where you're supposed to, your investment dollars are supposed to go to the best investments they could find and vote for the best policies they can to maximize profit. So actually what I started was a separate way of creating index funds, a company called Strive that said the same investments

but with a different philosophy of voting, focusing on excellence over political agendas. We define excellence. Yeah, so this is an important question. So at the individual level, I think excellence or meritocracy refers to any system in which you are free to realize your maximal potential without anybody standing in your way. Whatever your God-given potential is, maybe it's on the basketball court, maybe it's as a musician, maybe it's in the classroom or in mathematics, that you're able to achieve your maximal potential. That's what excellence means at the individual level.

At the level of a company, I think it means that you have a mission, a worthy mission, and that your job is to exclusively excel at that mission. That doesn't mean that there aren't other worthy missions for other companies or institutions to pursue but let another company or another institution pursue it but your company your job is to achieve your mission and yes unapologetically create value for the people who back you in the process if their mission is to you know stop climate change like these vague or weird, like racist missions, do you still support the excellence of those? So those are very unlikely to survive in a system of capitalism, because the way capitalism works is you have to provide something of tangible value to someone that exceeds the cost of what it takes for you to provide it to them. So somebody is free to do that, right? And if they were able to provide it to them. So somebody is free to do that, right?

And if they were able to provide something of value in the process, then I have no problem with that being the mission. So wearing my hat of being, let's say when I was back when I was running Strive, my hat was, I'm not going to pass judgment on your mission. Maybe it's to be the world's most successful restaurant chain that delivers delicious food to people and brings them delight. Maybe your mission is to go to Mars. Whatever it is, if it's a worthy mission and you stick to your mission, great. That's how you actually maximize long-run value for shareholders. But my problem is you say your mission is to develop medicines to save people's lives or to develop notebooks that people can capture their thoughts in.

And yet you're also claiming to solve climate change and racial injustice at the same time. That is something other than what I would call the pursuit of corporate excellence. When you are looking for corporate excellence, like a bigger return than what you're putting into it, what's the time scale? Because a lot of people will argue, well, we're just going to put money in at a loss for 20 or 40 years until you see that the world is now better because there's less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Is it a year, one year? So I think each investor has to define for themselves what their time horizon is. But I believe that we're talking over long-term time horizons.

Now, this long-termism argument has become a cover, a smokescreen for effectively advancing agendas that had nothing to do with excellence or value creation. But in the guise of saying, but 500 years from now, when we and our kids and our grandkids are dead and gone, it will have created value. That becomes mythology. That becomes a new religion in its own right. So I reject the jujitsu and the falsehood of that. But in principle, I'm talking about long run value creation. Can I ask a question? Why do you think it's trendy among, I'm going to say young progressives, but maybe a lot of people to say that, you know, capitalism is bad?

Why is there so much antipathy towards capitalism? Yeah, I could give you a somewhat cynical and somewhat historical account here. Okay, I'm excited. So let's start with an old quote from, have you heard of, have any of you heard of Ludwig von Mises? Yeah. Okay, I'm excited. So let's start with an old quote from, have any of you heard of Ludwig von Mises? Yeah. Okay, got it, got it. Not everyone has.

We're a weird room. As he is called the Mac Daddy of like communicating Austrian theory. Yeah, yeah. He and Hayek are the Mac Daddies, I would say. Yeah. So I'm not going to get this exactly right, but I'll get you off the top of my head,

at least approximately right. He said, there's two ways for the son of a great man and, you know, man, woman, girl, doesn't matter,

whatever. I like the picture. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't matter. Very inclusive. The point, the point stands regardless,

but I'm talking to you. So the son of a great man can exceed his father in one of two ways. One of them is to exceed his father on his own terms, which by definition in the thought experiment of a great man is hard to do. The second is to exceed his father, not on his own terms, but on subjective terms of moral superiority. And that one's a lot easier because that morality is subjectively defined. Why did I bring up this random quote from Von Mises? I'm trying to explain why it's trendy

to say that we hate capitalism. Yes, yes. So we are now- That we hate our dads, basically. I'm at a deeper level. I'm mad at my dad. You got it. We are now in the middle

of the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in human history, from baby boomers to millennials and gen z that's what's happening right now so there's two ways to exceed your father one is on his own terms that's really hard because he's already set a hard bar high bar and that's hard work but the other is maybe let's just call the whole game immoral, and we're going to exceed him on morally superior terms. That's a big part of, I think, what's going on is a sort of psychic apologism as a substitute for achievement. Now, that's a cynical account. I think there are some real factors to it.

I got my first job in the fall of 2007 at a hedge fund in New York City on the eve of the 2008 financial crisis. Rough times. Right? I mean, I ended up getting, things worked out for me, but a lot of my peers who entered the workforce at the same time are jaded and cynical, saying that, hey, it was supposed to be that if you worked hard and you did your part, that you could get ahead through your own dedication. Well, that's not the way it worked out.

And the guys who got bailed out weren't the guys who did any of that at all. So I do think that there's a jaded generation that has good reason. I was told that I get a four-year college degree. I take on all this debt. I'm going to get that job, enter the workforce, pay that back through my unheard work. But then there's this 2008 financial crisis.

Oh, and the guys who get bailed out are the guys who actually made tens of millions of dollars to their drivers, drive them home from the 85 Broad Street downtown to Goldman Sachs or wherever it is, musing about how terrible the financial system is while they go to their penthouse on the Upper East Side in their car service while I'm still just joined with college debt and no money in the bank being told that if I work hard, I just got laid off. So I think that there's a version of this, that the sheer timing of when many millennials, I'm 37, right? People at my age entered the workforce. They were given good

reasons to be jaded because they were promised and told one thing about the American dream and what they actually lived was another. And so that's the charitable and sympathetic account. The cynical account is, well, we're still in this hating your prior generation of baby boomers that you're not going to stack up to. So you might as well claim to be morally superior to them. I think it's a little bit of both going on. My own philosophy, and I'm not tooting my own horn here. I'm just saying this in the small hope that this gives some inspiration to people who may be able to live the same dream that I have. Hardship is not a choice in life.

Hardship is something that happens to you. My parents actually encountered plenty of it as we were growing up. My dad faced, I think, a ruthless round of layoffs at GE under Jack Welch's tenure when my dad was 10 steps down the totem pole in their org chart. But what did he do? He went to night school at law school for four years.

I was in sixth grade. I used to go with him and sit with him in the back of the classroom because we didn't have childcare or anything else. Full day at work, 45-minute drive north of Kentucky. But he kept his job that way because they had a shortage of patent attorneys. I say this because I grew up in a household where that was the example that was set for me. So when I entered the workforce, yeah, 2008 financial crisis hit six months into my job. We had some problems.

But I remember the example my parents set. Hardship is something that happens to you. It's not something you choose. But victimhood is a choice. We choose to be victims. You don't choose your hardship, but you do But victimhood is a choice. We choose to be victims. You don't choose your hardship, but you do choose victimhood. You can choose not to be a victim. And hardship is not the same thing as victimhood.

And I share that because there are legitimate grievances that many millennials and Gen Z members growing up in our American economy can have. But honestly, for most of human history, most people of any skin color or whatever, we all have some grievance we can latch onto. But I think a big part of where we landed in this case of self-loathing was this deeper psychic insecurity that we're actually afraid of trying to realize our full potential because if we fail, we're afraid of that failure. We're afraid to match up to the standards set by the great man, our baby boomer generation

that came before us. That's a long answer to your question, but- No, it's great. No, it's a good answer. It's a really good answer. I think the idea of choice is really important. I think, you know, I'm also a first generation American and I think about that regularly

when you have the choice to be here, when you have the choice to be in America and to live your life this way and to raise your family here. So I think that's such a good theme to close on. Where did your parents come from? Canada and England. So it's Anglo speaking for sure,

but definitely there are cultural differences. And I think growing up without family support, it's just a whole mindset that you chose to be here. And I remember this idea of young celebrities saying, well, if Trump wins, then I will move to Canada and being like, you have no idea what you were born into you guys are so privileged you can't see it and i don't use that word lightly i got one final question we're gonna go super chats pretty soon is it has this been like two hours already hour and a half dude this is not

so this is an hour and 30 yeah yes already yeah yeah this time flies yeah it's been great yeah dude it's been great having you again and again So are we even in a system of capitalism with fractional reserve banking and in March 2020, infinite reserve currency? Like, is that even capitalism? It's not. So that's a good question. You're asking the right questions. It is a hollowed out husk of this thing we call capitalism.

Is it capitalism? We're engaging in global free trade with a mercantilist actor in the form of the Chinese Communist Party that has non-financial political demands as a condition for expanding and doing business there? Is it capitalism for Airbnb to hand over the user data of American users as a condition for expanding into the Chinese market? It's not.

But let me answer your question. Is it capitalism when you have the Federal Reserve printing and raining money from on high like mana from heaven? It's like, is it really skiing if you're skiing on artificial snow? Well, you're not skiing anymore if they turn off the snow machine, which is what's happened now with tight monetary policy. So as a side note, and I think I'm the only – certainly on the Republican side, the only presidential candidate talking about this, I think we have to restore dollar stability as the sole mandate of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Cut the playing God game, managing inflation and unemployment, trying to hit two targets with one arrow, disastrously missing both. Cut that game out. We're done with it. And to say that we're restoring a single mandate of stabilizing the U.S. dollar.

You mentioned this earlier you know the context of a different storyline stabilize the dollar as a unit of measurement against commodities yes gold nickel silver bitcoin so i i think that bitcoin for me for a number of reasons does not yet meet that commodity basket i'm a bitcoin fan i spoke at the bitcoin conference i just want to stabilize the dollar against agriculture and farm commodities gold silver nickel and there could be a top point in time where bitcoin becomes part of that commodity basket there's some technical reasons why i wouldn't include that today but the main point is stabilize the dollar as a unit of measurement rather than trying to

actually play financial god from on high yeah no i massively appreciate that you made this uh analogy about it like raining down like manna from heaven. I guess the only caveat is if the manna was just less filling, the more of it rained down. It's really more like splitting the manna into smaller pieces. Shredding it. Yeah, the way I like to think of it is it's almost like we're running this casino, and then we're going, people aren't spending enough money at the casino. We'll make more chips.

It's like, no, that's not how this works at all. So in the fall of ancient Rome, right, there's some deep parallels to what we see in the United States today. So Septimius Severus, which is a fun story about Septimius Severus, he's weirdly an emperor that now in temporary modern contemporary Western history we've somehow decided to celebrate because HBO or I can't remember which network it was, created the series calling him the Black Emperor. He apparently had darker skin than the other Roman emperors. And so anyway, we remember him really well. They made the series that says, the first black man to walk on England soil came not as a slave, but as a conqueror. And so they glorified him.

But actually it turns out he was a disastrous emperor. As a side note, the Romans didn't see him as a black emperor. They just saw him as a guyor. And so they glorified him. But actually it turns out he was a disastrous emperor. As a side note, the Romans didn't see him as a black emperor. They just saw him as a guy who had slightly darker skin, just like, you know, we have different shades

of eye color today. That's the way they looked at people who had different skin colors. They were all Romans as citizens, by the way, to tie up our earlier conversation. But anyway, this guy, he was a terrible emperor.

One of the reasons he was terrible is he just kept diluting the value of silver in the denarius. He would just go on spending sprees for money they didn't have and it was like 160th and then it was like 1 600th of the amount of silver was left in the denarius but back in his day the way they would do it replenish it was the black emperor would go to northern africa and just plunder a bunch of silver, you know, rape and pillage and then come back. We don't do things that way anymore. And so in a certain sense, the parallels between the end of the Roman Empire or, you know, one of the many ends of the so-called ends of the Roman Empire and where we are today are somewhat striking.

But we don't even avail ourselves of the same tactics that Septimius Severus or others would have used in the ending days of the Roman empire today. So this is timeless principles is my point. It's not specific to America. It's timeless across nations. Well, in the spirit of getting more silver, let's move on over to super chats.

We have, that was a good transition. That was a really good transition. My transitions are incredible. They're all really good transition Somebody clip all of Sheamus' best transitions My transitions are incredible They're all really good And the audience loves them And they're ranting

And raving about them We're going to scare Rebecca away How does this work? So we just take questions? Yeah, yeah So we take some questions If you want to chime in with it You can

So if you don't want to You don't have to It's just whatever Is interesting to you And we usually Just kind of go around Christina H. says, Seamus, please tell Hannah Clare

that she was pronouncing Nevada wrong last night. Thank you. Sincerely, a lifelong Nevadan. I don't know how she's pronouncing it, but it's Nevada and not Nevada. I'm saying Nevada, but maybe you just say my accent. You like being wrong about things

and that's totally acceptable. That's your freedom. Did you get coached on how to say that state's name? How would you pronounce it? Nevada. Nevada, there we go. I just want to say something about Nevada. You're from you pronounce it? Nevada. Nevada. There we go. I just want to say something about Nevada. You're from East Ohio.

I'm from Ohio. Yeah, me too. That's right, Nevada. Yeah, Midwest. Yeah, we're all Midwesterners. I didn't know that. So I'm on the other side of the state from Cincinnati. Since he grew up.

There's my favorite restaurant in the country is in Nevada. It's called Bertha Miranda's in Reno. And it is the best Mexican food I've ever had. And that's all I'll say about Nevada wow Raymond G and it is Nevada not Nevada Raymond G Stanley Jr says Vivek thank you for coming if you win the presidency would you pardon Seamus if the truth was that he did in fact steal Tim's spoon so just so you know there's been an ugly lie going around a smear that i stole spoons from tim pool uh there's no evidence that this ever occurred you guys know me

you know i wouldn't do something like that i'm not that kind of guy uh but this person's question i think was more to cast doubt on my repeated denials of this crime but i guess the question is would you pardon me if i had done this yeah i gotta get to the truth of the matter man i i i was about to say i trusted you you're making eye contact oh my goodness but then you started looking straight at the camera i wouldn't do that doubt the vague i wouldn't do that i wouldn't i'm not that kind of person how do you know that i don't know if i know those things i don't know if i know that the vague i wouldn't do how do you feel we have to see how the trial bears out i'm telling you we got to count all the spoons and make a decision after that i kind of feel like mercy is upon us

we're at a time of like forgiveness how do you feel about mass pardons i'm talking about hillary clinton's emails joe biden's son donald trump just let the past go move so so you're asking a deep question uh moving we're getting back into serious mode. I love that you just break stuff. We're going light. You just get real serious real fast. So this is important. I take a lot of inspiration from Nelson Mandela.

Okay, Nelson Mandela was a guy who brought together a nation who was far more divided than ours is today. And one of the things, I mean, I've been very vocal about this in this presidential campaign. I've said that I would pardon Donald Trump if I'm elected president. I do not want to see my competition eliminated. I want to win this election by convincing the voters of this country that I'm best positioned to take the America First agenda forward, not by having the federal administrative state eliminate my competition. I think there will come a time when once we have spoken the truth, and I don't think we're there yet. I think there are truths that yet still need to be exposed where I would be willing to say that we go around the table 360 degrees. We acknowledge the truth.

We will not lie. We will not sweep it under a rug, but we will lay down arms and say we are moving forward as one nation. And I know a lot of people aren't going to be thrilled about me saying that, right? Because I think we're in a mood, a national mood right now to say that,

no, no, no, our goal, we are at war internally in the country and we want to pummel the other side of the ground using the same means that they've been exploiting in the other direction. And I understand that, and I am all in for exposing exactly how deep that rot runs. But there will come a time in this country where it will take a leader to say that we're done with that phase of our recent past. We're done with that chapter of our national life. We're done with the weaponization ping pong. Right now it's ping before it goes to the other side of pong.

We say we're done playing that game. And so in my journey, take office of January 2025, I'll be leading a nation and not a political party and that is an idea that i am very open to after we've gotten to the truth of the matter of all the ways in which the government has actually lied to us yeah good answer um t-rex pet shop says vivek your comments on trump's indictment were based we should not allow political persecution is your motivation to destroy three-letter agencies true stop supporting woke pet stores like pet smart pets go and chewy we're we are an anti-woke alternative now i don't think they're accusing you of supporting those woke pet stores just to be clear uh i think they're promoting their own brand but they're allowed to do yeah of course that is that is that is what the united states

is all about but uh yeah so did you have an answer to that um i i think you kind of addressed a lot of that during the show yeah i mean i i am fundamentally anti-government, but a limited government that we the people cause to come into existence, that's the bargain of its existence. And my problem today is that we tell ourselves we live in a three-branch constitutional republic when in fact the political power is exercised by that fourth branch of government. So actually I'm flying literally minutes after that we're done here to New Hampshire, where tomorrow I will be delivering a speech laying out exactly how I will shut down the administrative state on strong constitutional and legal authority. And I don't like to boast and brag and whatever,

but I'm just going to state something that I think is true. I don't believe in false humility either. I think I'm the single presidential candidate who has run in this country in either party in the last 30 years who has the best understanding of how to actually shut down that fourth branch, shut down the deep state, shut down those three-letter agencies. And that's what I'm going to be talking about in a pretty extensive speech in New Hampshire tomorrow night. We have – oh, i'm so sorry here um from alberto chipries um or chipress i'm sorry uh i'm still i'm still excuse me carrying up in episodes or i think they meant to say catching up yeah i'm still catching up in episodes from

last week and couldn't believe how surprised the crew was at the thought of Vivek running as VP. I'm still learning about him, but I see him as Trump's VP running mate. Well, I don't think you're running to be VP, but I'll let you speak for yourself here. Yeah, so I'm not running to be anything other than Vivek president. So maybe that's the VP they were talking about.

Oh, nice. How long did you rehearse that joke? Not at all. I just came to mind, actually, when he was saying VP. I was just kidding. Oh, nice. How long did you rehearse that joke? Not at all. I just came to mind, actually, when he was saying VP. I was like, all right, well. There we go. So the truth is not an ego thing.

I just don't do well in a number two position, right? And I think we've all got to each look ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves, how are we going to make a maximal contribution to this country? Believe me, there are meaningful ways, big, maybe even more meaningful ways of impacting this country than doing it through politics, including even through the presidency. I've written three books in the last two years. I've built businesses. I built Strive to compete against BlackRock. I've built other companies in the past, employed thousands of people in this country. There's many ways of driving change in this country. And there are actually a lot of other talented politicians in the Republican Party that, you know, I think has a deeper bench than it gets credit for. One of those people should take all of the cabinet slots if it's not me. I think that one of my unique gifts is the ability to be a successful builder

and executive and leader. And I can't do that from a position where I'm reporting into somebody else. I don't think Donald Trump would be particularly effective in a cabinet position either. I think certain people are just wired and cut out to do things in a certain way. And so when I think about how do I want to use my talents best to advance the interests of this nation, the conclusion I came to is I think I'm best positioned to reach the next generation, to deliver national pride, to as an outsider, but also somebody who understands the Constitution, shut down that deep state administrative state in a way that Trump didn't quite get to. I know how to do these things. I think it's going to take an outsider to do it. I'm independent financially.

I don't have to pay any heed to a donor class. I've put $15 million plus already of my hard-earned money, and we're going to stop at nothing to stay independent. But we're not doing that to go through the motions. Are you starting to think about who you would want in a vice president? What are you looking for? Yeah. So there's a couple different models, actually. I'm actually thinking a lot.

Well, first, we nailed the federal judges, which I released this last week. That's really important. Now I'm actually thinking more about cabinet level positions and then also who I'm going to put in positions like the Office of Personnel Management and who's going to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Those two, I don't want policy wonks. I want bulldogs who are going to not try to mediate between me and the administrative state. I think this is where some other Republican presidents have fallen short. They end up putting people who are ambassadors for the administrative state back to them. No, these people are going to be my bulldogs. They need to be fundamentally anti-government. I think to succeed in shutting down the administrative state, the person who runs the Office of Personnel Management, the person who runs the Office of Management and Budget, they need to be in their bones, fundamentally anti-government to be able to see that through unidirectionally. And I don't even want to hear what the administrative state has to say back and using them as a back channel to get back to me. That's what I think what happened to Trump, happened to Reagan, happened to many other presidents with the best of intentions.

These people are going to be bulldogs. They're going to go in there, intentionally break it. They're going there to break it. So I think a lot about those positions. I have some ideas. They're not going to be people with government experience. That's a good thing. And then the cabinet level appointments,

I have some good ideas of who are going to, those will be people with more government experience. Then I get to vice president. There's a couple of different models of the role. One is somebody who actually could give me a sense of, I don't want to say spiritual grounding, but centering, right? And there's a couple of people who would fit that description for me. You know, who's really good in this respect?

He wouldn't take this job, but I actually really respect my relationship with – every time I hear him speak, with Tucker Carlson. He's great. Deep insight. I may just happen to have seen him in Iowa a few days ago, but deep insight into what's really going on in the American psyche. And that's part of the psyche I share. And so, you know, I think that you could think of someone, anyway, like that, sort of a political priest style figure, right? You could then have somebody who's actually going to be

a supplement to the Office of Management and Budget or OPM, an executor. So you're just bringing additional muscle in. I think that's an appealing way to use that position because you're going to need, it's going to require more people who are actual muscle doers to shut down the federal government, the executive branch of it,

than people who are just pontificating about it. So I think that's the second model that I think I could use. And then the third model would be somebody who's just a domain expert in an area where I lack domain expertise the most.

And I think that's another model that's worked for me. What would that be for you? So for me, it's actually foreign policy in areas outside of the areas of foreign policy I have paid close attention.

I mean, on the foreign policy issues that matter most to the United States, starting with China, I'm deep. Very deep. I'm not going to be taking secondhand advice from China to how to end the war in Ukraine to rethinking our alliances with the UN or NATO, both of which I think have outlived their purposes there.

I'm good. But when you think about the other areas of foreign policy, our relations with South America, parts of the Middle East, These are just areas where no human being is going to have expertise in everything, but we might bring somebody who has a similar worldview but is able to channel that to other parts of the world. So those would be the three different models for vice president. But I want to staff out what the rest of the apparatus looks like because then it'll show which of those three is really the rate limiter that I need. And I think any one of those three is a viable choice for the type of person that I'd put in a VP role. We have from Joshua Braugh, the leftist cult worships at the altar of Planned Parenthood.

This is definitely something I agree with. I've been saying this for a while. I would not say that I'm the first person to have come up with this observation, but to the left abortion really is kind of their blessed sacrament it's the thing that they hold in highest esteem i think it it embodies a lot of these values of selfishness and rather than sacrificing one's own uh pleasure or or comfort or you know lack of desire to face adversity uh one simply throws another person into the flames or maybe a better

way of putting this is effectively fails to consider the well-being of another and particularly a person who they actually have a strong connection to on the basis of a parent-child relationship so they can pursue their own selfish ends to me that's kind of at the core of everything that leftism values. I don't think it's a coincidence that that's the issue that they seem to get most worked up about. Yeah. I get concerned about calling things leftist and rightist because that was a Maoist tactic, man. He talked about rightists. I just, we got to unify. I know what you mean. I know what you mean, but I don't like segmenting people into groups. Well, so, but then what about Maoists and and non-maoists because you're saying you don't want to be like a maoist mao was like the rightists are a problem and he divided his country to get people to go at each other

to either side so that it was easier to manipulate them but anyway you know i i i think there's something deep in what you say i mean i think that labels are confining actually and i think that we should if i'm getting your point your point is talk about the content of what your actual beliefs are don't use the labels to describe it because then you end up in a circular loop i mean it's that's a fair statement but understanding you know for sure but but i'm i'm like ref i'm like i'm talking about something concrete within that label and what left-wing thought stands for and like when we first get the term leftism it's it's from the french revolution and what

were they doing i mean they were slaughtering innocent people there's there's historic precedent for understanding leftism in this way yeah i think that it's always one of these interesting dilemmas where human beings we require language to communicate right and so would you rather take the existence of a word in that language that's 80 percent precise, but otherwise can actually be confining versus being true to actually, yes, every label in use of the word leftist, which I don't talk much about Republicans and Democrats. And I don't even usually use the word the left, although on occasion I do, because it's the most precise word available to describe it. It's always this trade-off between yes you can always be a little bit confining and a little less than precise when you use that label but i understand where yeah where seamus is coming from where he's crudely getting to a basic concept and so don't fixate on the use of the word leftist but of the people who have made a a fanatical movement around planned parenthood

as their golden calf it's an interesting observation to make and then as a crude heuristic we're going to call them leftist for the purposes of now even though we shouldn't let that label sink in too deep well i mean what i would say is the divide there a little bit yeah no term is perfect uh at least when you're dealing with politics in the United States where things change so quickly. And just because someone's on the right doesn't mean they're doing good things. I understand all of that. But it's still a label I believe applies there.

Noah Sanders says, Vivek, you're an outsider who is independently wealthy, making one of the hurdles that candidates have to leap that much easier. What advice do you have for average Americans who want to run for public office? God bless you and the great work you do. Yeah, so thank you for that. You know, it's something I struggle with because one of the main problems, and I've only seen this since I've entered this race, is what kind of chokehold the donor class, the mega donor class has over the Republican Party. I'm the only candidate in this race who certainly will be on that debate stage who is entirely independent of a class that views themselves as puppet masters for politicians who they view as their puppets. But then that leaves the option of limiting the people who are actually truly independent to being those who have actually succeeded at a scale that shouldn't be a

requirement for entering public service. So what advice do I have? I mean, I guess I'd had my advice on how to become a successful capitalist. We could have a couple hours on that. But if I was to offer simple advice in a nutshell, be contrarian, be right. It sounds simple in that it's not complex. It's hard in that it's not easy. It's. Whereas no amount of money is still going to substitute for the power of a message. And it has to be a message that you're uniquely delivering that nobody else is. And so in a certain sense, that's being contrarian, but it has to be a message that isn't false. It has to be a message that is true. So in some ways, I'd give you that general category of advice, whether it's to succeed as a capitalist, which then puts you in a position to maybe independently serve the country in many ways, philanthropically, politically, or otherwise. But even if you're not choosing the self-moneymaking track,

I think one of the ways of having an impact, period, including as somebody who may be an aspiring public servant, is to be contrarian and make sure you're right while you're doing it. No point in being contrarian and doing the wrong thing. But there's really no point in entering public service if you're just going to say the same thing that everybody else is saying, even if it is the right thing, because somebody else could do it instead. So that'd be my two-part advice. If the pack is running one way, run the other way. But when you do, make sure you're running actually to the right target.

Yeah, exactly. Good way of putting it. The letter A, just the letter A. The letter A has chatted in. VR, will you denounce the multi-billion dollar for-profit American family court system that separates children from parents? Yes, I actually need to do more homework on is what I can actually do about it, because a lot of that is actually at the state level. I'm running for U.S. president. I think part of running for U.S. president means there are certain problems that bad as badly as you want to to solve them. You have to because of the 10th Amendment in this country, the way we're set up.

The right thing to do is to leave it to the states to solve that problem. But in terms of calling attention to it and the question was denounce it. Yeah, I'm right there with you. Sanctuary cities was another one you mentioned earlier that I was like, are you going to federally knock out california's sanctuary city yeah so one of the things is again that has to be driven by the states however there you do have the federal purse power right these states are all receiving large block grants from the federal government i don't like that system but so long as we have the system i'm going to say that you're not going to get money as a municipality or state if you're propping up sanctuary cities.

I think that's fair game, especially because it relates to an issue the federal government ought to be concerned about, which is immigration at the southern border, which is a national crisis. And so any state that's using and creating the incentive for that national problem, that nationwide problem, that's a legitimate use of a practice that i also already just don't like block grants and using the power of the purse with respect to states to drive behavior i'm a generally a skeptic of that but that limited circumstance if there's a use case for doing it on proper authority that would be it does that make sense oh yeah yeah i was just thinking of other contrary ways to go about solving the problem as you were speaking totally i mean i think we might need a new gut we do need a new governor in California, too. And I think that'll be even much more effective at directly ending the sanctuary city problem there than what I'm going to do as president.

But I'll do my part. Do you also think that it'll help with immigration at the northern border? I've been so stunned to see the rapid increase of illegal immigration at the northern border through Canada. It's back to that hydraulic pump. You start squeezing in one place, it shows up in another. So I've done the math on this. I think when we look at the undeployed troops or troops that are deployed in places they shouldn't be, we absolutely have enough to be able to seal the Swiss cheese of a southern border and to secure most of the vulnerable parts of our northern border as well. And I actually think this is

one of the ways we revive pride in our military. It's one of the things we've lost is the purpose of that institution. Fought pointless wars for a long time. Young men and women going to die, spending hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Now, 25% of young people,

actually, young people don't want to serve the military. We have a 25% recruitment deficit in the U.S. military last year year part of the way we fix that problem is let's use our military to actually who would have ever thought protect the lives of americans starting here on american soil so i think that's also one of the ways we solve that crisis of purpose in our military when the military lacks purpose that's when when wokeism and gender ideology substitute and fill the void. In some ways, it's the Pentagon.

They blow woke smoke to deflect accountability for their own failure of mission. Over the last 25 years, fighting pointless wars, wokeness is a great deflection tactic, just like it is for the public schools. I mean, say math is racist. It's a great way to deflect attention from saying you're not actually teaching.

You can't actually teach them anything. Exactly. No, yeah. If you don't want to be involved with it, you don't want to do it. If you're failing at it, call it racist.

We're going to wrap up now. This has been an awesome conversation. I want to thank you so much for joining us and also just give you an opportunity to plug anything else you'd like to to the audience.

Let them know where they can find more of your work and what they can do to help you out. Yeah, I mean, the thing I'll plug is an idea. Actually, the idea that our diversity is not our strength. We've got, I'm glad I brought a different shade of melanin to this room. We have a couple different genders.

There's two genders, by the way. We have two genders in this room, right? Who cares? by the way we have two genders in this room right who cares we've grown so habituated to celebrating our diversity and our differences that we forgot all of the ways we're really just the same as americans bound by a common creed and so what's the parting pitch I want to leave with people? It is this. It is e pluribus unum.

The founding creed of this country, from many, one. And if you share that vision with me and you want to see that revived in our country and a national identity around it, then help me do it. I'm in this volunteer to do my part. My kids will be entering high school in January, 2033. When I'm leaving office after two terms, I'm ready to do it. We're going to stop at nothing, but help me get there. Go to the vet with the website is Vivek 2024.com. It's my first name, V I V E K 2024.com and do whatever suits you sign up as a volunteer

join the list hear more if you have some money donate it that's great we'll take that too for those who are able for those who aren't

help us in a different way but I think it's going to take each of us to do our part I'm not going to come from the White House on high to promise to save us like a messiah it's going to require

each of us to do our part and if you guys do yours I promise you I'll do mine and that's why I'm in this on high to promise to save us like a Messiah is going to require each of us to do our part. And if you guys do yours, I promise you I'll do mine. And that's why I'm in this. So cool. Well, I'm so glad you can be able to come out tonight and join us. It's been an awesome conversation as predicted. I'm Hannah Claire Brimlow. I'm a writer for timcast.com. You can follow at timcastnews on Twitter and Instagram if you want to follow me personally. I'm hannahclaire.b on Instagram and hcbrimlow on Twitter. Again, If you want to follow me personally, I'm at HannahClaire.B on Instagram and HCBremel on Twitter. Again, thank you so much for coming out.

Oh yeah, man. Pleasure, always. And come back when Tim's on. When Tim's back, come back. We'll do this again. This is great. Tell us what's up. Yo, dog.

And VR, yo, we didn't talk about virtual reality and the metaverse and what's coming in the next 15, 20 years. Maybe we'll talk about that next time. Yeah. Alphabetically comes after VP next is VR, right? Oh, wow, dude.

VQ VR. Yeah. I love it. So we'll do that. Catch you later, Vivek. I appreciate it, man. Yeah. Pleasure meeting you, my friend.

I didn't get to speak to you previously. I was really looking forward to it. So it's nice to finally close the loop, I guess you could say. Yes. It's good to see you, man. Yeah. Pleasure. I'm Serge.com on the

internet are you with me on twitter i love it guys uh yeah that was a good one seamus you did a good job oh thank you thank you well i had a an awesome guest uh my name is seamus coglin i have a youtube channel called freedom tunes where we do animated cartoons i think you guys will enjoy those we just got the keys returned to us by youtube there was a mistake we were locked out for a couple days but we're back in business if you enjoy comedy if you enjoy my perspective go check those cartoons out also if you enjoy what i have to say you uh like me as a podcaster i have a rumble channel called shamer we stream at least twice a week we're going to be uploading a lot of streams next week that'll be premiering live if you guys want to check that out um and also if you want to

support me financially become a member at freedom tunes.com and you'll get an extra cartoon each week as well as behind the scene content so what i want to ask you all to do is smash the like button on this video share the video if you enjoyed it and become a member at timcast.com timcast.com oh my gosh i almost nevada'd it it's cast, not cost. It's cast. Timcast.com. Go over to Timcast.com and join us for the after show, which is going to be live at about 1010. Thank you very much. We should say before full disclosure,

you may be bouncing out early. I know you've got a speech tomorrow. So if you guys, maybe we'll have an opportunity to take calls earlier or something. I don't know technically if you like that idea, if you're still around for five, 10 minutes. I can hang around for a few minutes. I really want to take a few calls.

All right. We'll see you at TimCast.com yeah see you there later give back those spoons Seamus you