TRIGGERnometry - Progressive Activist Speaks Out Against Woke Madness - Brianna Wu

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Brianna Wu is a lifelong progressive and the Executive Director of Rebellion PAC (a political action committee) who has previously run for Congress in Massachusetts. A video game developer and computer programmer, Brianna co-founded Giant Spacekat, an independent video game development studio and was the subject of a great deal of harassment during the ‘Gamergate’ anti-leftist backlash around 2014/2015. Brianna has recently been the subject of a cancellation campaign following statements made in defence of Israel in the wake of the October 7th terrorist attacks. SPONSOR: Shopify - sign up for a £1 per month trial at https://www.shopify.co.uk/trigger/ Join our Premium Membership for early access, extended and ad-free content: https://triggernometry.supercast.com OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I used to think you were completely full of shit when you talked about cancel culture, and now they've run this playbook on me. The fact that the progressive fringe is now standing with the literal fucking terrorists, like, what the hell are we thinking? Look at what we're doing with the trans children debate. What is the progressive left's answer to any parent that has a question on any of that? It is shut the fuck up. We've got to move back to science and

back to reality. People perceive progressives as assholes. A decade ago during GamerGate, people thought the white male gamers were the assholes. I've got news for you. Today, it's trans Twitter, it's socialist Twitter, it's terrorist sympathizer Twitter. It's us. Brown, welcome to Trigonometry. We've been working on listening to you. We've got a bunch of questions to ask you, but first of all, lots of people told you not to come on the show. Oh my God. I announced this, what was it, two days ago? And my DMs have been nothing, but people calling you transphobes and Nazis and racist.

And I'm always like, can you show me a clip of what they've said to, like, make you feel that way? It's always the most silly thing. It is, I don't know. Just me doing a Hitler salute. Yes, exactly bad. The KKK costume, I think, was a little much. It was a nice party.

What can you say? But anyway, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's great to have you. I've been following a lot of the things you've been saying recently. And it was very interesting for us to get you on the show to talk about them. Because I don't know if you saw, I wrote an article very shortly after October 7th for the free press called The Day the Delusions died.

Wow. And my argument was that I thought that it was no longer possible for a lot of good people on the left to pretend that the extremes of the left were not going off the rails. And you are someone who is outright progressive, Democrat progressive, raising money to fight Trump and all the rest of it. My literal job is to get Democrats elected. Right. Like, I'm on the team. Yes, you're on the team. And I see you now being one of the very few people who's willing to stand up against the anti-Semitic extremes on your own side. Not just anti-Semitic, but there's also large elements of anti-whiteness and all sorts of

other stuff going on there. So why have you suddenly taken this position? I think the better question is, where the hell is everyone else? This is the most obvious moral position in the entire world to take, you know, like Hamas, these are not good people. Hezbollah, you know, the Houthis, these are not good people. So the fact that the progressive fringe is now standing with the literal fucking terrorists, like what the hell are we thinking? This is not very difficult. So for me, it's really been a realization because there have been so many things over the last decade, decade that I've just shut my mouth about and I've gone along with. And it's really at a point now

where it's it's gut check time. This is principles time. Whose team are you on? Are you on team democracy or are you on team burn everything down? And it's been really disillusioning to see just how few people on my own side have principles. I always thought that what we were doing was about making the world better. And it's been very eye-opening to see it's actually about personal power. Well, I'm going to ask you a question that will sort of sound a little bit like can I told you so or anything, but it's not intended in that way. I guess a lot of people who are in our position, Francis and I both always thought of ourselves as liberal and on the left and we worked in a very progressive comedy industry in the UK. And what happened with us is we said what you

were saying now six years ago. Yeah. And we became, you know, Nazi terror. And to be fair, I was part of the crowd who was shouting you down and calling you those names. Right. I'm sorry. No, no, well, you weren't shouting me down personally, but I'm talking about people like you saying that stuff. Right. So I guess I'm curious what you think is going to happen first of all with you now, because it's sort of, the way it has happened today is anyone who was willing to challenge that fringe that you're talking about, which is anti-Western, it's anti-male, it's anti-Jewish, etc. would say what you're saying, what we've been saying for years, and they would immediately become evil, right-wing, Nazi, far-right, etc.

And that's kind of it. And no one else would stand up and say anything as has happened. So what are you expecting to happen? Well, I've lost more friends than I can count, right? So I'm very much trying to make new friends. I think the long-term path of this is progressivism and socialism in the United States. cultural deadhift. This is not going to go anywhere. There's no universe where like progressives win power and manage to get a ton of Congress, you know, congressional seats and pass the legislation

that I believe in. It is devolved into exactly as you say, a bunch of culture war nonsense that is not about policy and now literally siding with terrorists. So, you know, what I've had so many conversations with friends about this because every single progressive activist that I know is really frustrated with this destructive tendency that we have. And all of us are going, what can we do? You know, your industry has audience capture where you kind of get into a lane and you can't challenge your own audience because your numbers will drop. I think in the progressive space, there's very much the same thing where there's this tendency to go lefter and lefter and left her and left her.

And now we're at a point where we can't even say things like trans women don't have periods without people getting really upset about that. Look at my mentions literally right now. So someone's got to stand up and go, this is not right. This is crazy town. I didn't get into progressive politics to talk about trans women having periods. I got into progressive politics to pass fucking health care. So we're either serious about course correcting,

on this cultural dead end, or Donald Trump and MAGA are going to win everything, and the pain for the Democratic Party is going to be extreme. We've got to start talking more to people in the middle, and we need to be reaching out to sane Republicans, in my view. Brianna, don't you think part of the problem is when it comes, look, and both sides suffer to this, suffer with this, but I think the left suffer with this more. It's this purity ritual that you have. You have to, you have to, you are. are not left unless you do A, B, C, D, F, G, D, D, D, D, D, D. And all of a sudden, the moment you challenge one of those tenants, you're out.

That's exactly right. I mean, again, look at my mention. She can see this firsthand. It's not enough to, like, I am as progressive as you can get. Universal health care. I want structural solutions to heal this gaping wound of racism that's existed in our country since slavery. You know, name of progressive policy. I'm very much in favor of it.

But when it comes to the optics, right, we've got to start having more serious conversations about how people perceive us. People perceive progressives as assholes. That's just the truth. A decade ago during GamerGate, people thought the white male gamers were the assholes. I've got news for you.

Today, it's trans Twitter, it's socialist Twitter, it's terrorist sympathizer Twitter. It's us. We're the ones doxing people. We're the one sending death threats. We're canceling everyone in sight. And at the end of the day, people are not going to trust assholes with power. I'm sorry.

It's just the truth. And you said at the start of this conversation is something that I found very interesting. You basically said that you had reservations about things that had happened before October 7th. What were those things that you shut your mouth over? And the second part of that question is, do you regret it now, seeing what it's become? I definitely do. So let me give you a really specific example. When I was running for Congress in 2018, right, you had the women's march and you had elements of the women's march that were out there with this pro-Palestine, anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic nonsense, very anti-Israel and veering into the most

anti-Semitic language that you could possibly have. That was wrong. I made the decision to keep my mouth shut, which was a tremendous error in judgment. And because people like me shut up in those years, it kept getting worse. And those seeds kept growing. And now it's basically taken over the entire progressive movement. I don't know if it can be saved in time. And you can go into any number of issues, like self-ID with trans people or, you know, I remember during GamerGate, you know, there was this expansionist thing that it wasn't enough to talk about the number of women we were hiring in the game industry. Now we had to obliterate whiteness as something that we were featuring in games. And I'm like, it's a little bit extreme, but we'll go along with it.

So it was just one more step after another. And now it's 10 years later. Look at where we are. We are completely unelectable. This strategy is failing. I suppose the question that I'm curious about, And I hear people on left and right saying this often, and I don't understand why they say it. And you did say it.

So I'm curious to explore this. You called the culture war nonsense. It is. Well, you say it is. And I suppose it depends. What exactly do you mean by that, first of all, before I jump in with my opinion? So we have different jobs, right? You are a public advocate and a public figure, and you have a very specific agenda that is pro-free speech, one I agree with.

But my job is different. My job is public policy. My job is to get candidates elected, and my job is to back channel specific bills to get them passed. So in my view, as soon as you get something like family medical leave and you turn it into a right versus left culture war, you have automatically lost the conversation. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I agree with you about it. I guess the reason I ask you, Brown, is that the way I see what's going on, and I'll lay it out for you the way that I see it, feel free to pick away at a challenge, whatever, is here's my conception of the culture war as it happens.

I feel that there is a determined, organized attempt to undermine the basic building blocks of our civilization. And those of us who are willing to, A, see that and B say something about it, are called culture warriors. That's what people say about me, for example. Oh, he's just a culture warrior. And my view is our culture is really important. Our culture is why we are where we are. Our culture is why we're successful. Our culture is why our civilization is rich and powerful and dominant around the world.

Sure. Because of our culture. Yeah. So if people on the progressive left, then it is people on the progressive left. There are someone the right now, too, in response, I think. If there are people who want to say that those building blocks are evil or wrong or bad, I think it's important to push back against that and to prevent them from succeeding. That's how I see the culture war.

So to me, defending our culture isn't nonsense. Does that make sense? So if you're defining it that way, I'm a thousand percent on board with you. I think there's a growing tendency on the progressive side to try to burn everything inside down. They're the mirror image of MAGA. They are accelerationist. They want to burn democracy, like our institutions, our news, everything inside to the ground, right? They want to burn the idea of gender to the ground itself.

This is not a way for a culture to survive. Like, they think the United States is the biggest evil in the world. Like, they just don't, do they not know what has happened in Syria over the last decade? Like, they just have so little information. So I fully agree with you there. What I'm saying is if we are serious about public policy, it makes a lot of sense to stop treating everyone on the other fucking side like they're your enemy. We've got to get buy-in for more people. I think my theory of change from here is I think there are a lot of Republicans and moderates out there that think that the corporations are screwing over normal people and they will pass, they will stand with you on policies that address their actual.

lives. They're not going to do that if they've got to pretend all this crazy stuff is true at the same time. We've got to get buy-in from them. I think part of the problem, Biana, and look, I'm going to be absolutely honest with you when my frustrations with the left is that I see the crazies on the left. Yeah. And I see the moderates, the people who I would listen to, the people I think, actually, you've got a real point here, particularly when it comes to economics. And then I'd see them not do anything with the nutters over there. And I'm like, well, here's the thing, mate. If you're not going to deal with the nutters over here, how are you going to deal with Apple?

And we did this to Mag. Right? You had the Nazis marching in Charlottesville. My side said every single Republican is exactly the same as the Nazi marching on Charlottesville. That's exactly how we treated them. Why does the right have to keep their crazies in line? And we don't have to do that. You're completely right.

This is a double standard. I need help pulling this around, and I can't. I can't do this by myself. But I guess my point is, why is there not more, why is there not more backbone within the left to be able to come and stand out? Is it because they're scared of them? Is it because these people actually have a disproportionate sense of power? Is there something else going on?

And this is a genuine question on my behalf, because I don't understand why. Do you want the real answer or do you want the political answer? I want the real answer. I used to think you were completely full of shit. When you talked about cancel culture, I was like, just get over it. You've got every privilege in the world, and now they've run this playbook on me. I understand what happens when they go after your livelihood and your friends, and they make a price to just speak your mind and stand up to them. These are cultural bullies, and the truth is there's every incentive to keep your mouth shut and just let the movement get crazier and crazier.

So this is hard choice time. This is gut check time. We either stand up to these crazies. We get back to basics. That means liberalism in the sense, if you want to make an offensive joke, God bless. That's what the First Amendment is about. We've got to be willing to talk to people we disagree with.

We can't just, every time someone has a different opinion than us, load it up with moralistic language, so we win the argument and they're a terrible person and call it a day and never like having discussion about anything. There's no incentive to do this. Look at what's happened to my reputation since October 7th. It's been brutal. Like, I think it's almost a character flow.

But there comes a point, Brianna, where you either let this kind of nonsense continue and you see the decimation of everything that you believe in, or you stand up. There's got to be a time, because you can't keep being supine about these issues and expecting them to go away. I completely agree.

Look at what we're doing with the trans children debate. This is such a good example. Okay. Y'all may not agree with me. I think there are some children that need access to health care to transition. I don't think the system is working well now, but I think some need to get through.

We need to look at the system and patch the holes. What is the progressive left's answer to any parent that has a question on any of that? It is shut the fuck up. is don't ask those questions. These questions hurt our feelings. We're talking about public health care policy. We've got to move back to science and back to reality.

And I guess, like, from your point of view, what is wrong with progressives that we're not doing this? Why do you think I'm one of like five? Well, I think you put your finger on it when you talk about the consequences. By the way, this happens on the right increasingly too. I wrote an article about my critique of, I praised him for some things, but also critiqued his comments about Russia and Ukraine,

Tucker Carson, I wrote an article called Tucker Carson and the work right. And someone disinvited me from a party, though. And you're just going, you're just a mirror image. You don't believe in diversity of opinion. Right. You just want your opinion regurgitated. So tribes generally enforce the whatever rules of the tribe through any means necessary in order to do that. So I understand that.

The question I wanted to ask you, I guess, is you mentioned that six years ago or ten years ago, it's one or two questions I want to ask you. People like you would have been criticizing people like us at the time or whatever. And would have said cancel culture doesn't exist until you personally experienced. And I've heard that from a lot of people who have the switch that you're going through. What was it back then that drove you to behave in that way? I think I thought that people like you had all the power and I thought that we had no power and I thought that it was the way to get to a better world. You know what? We've tried my version of the progressive playbook for 10 years telling comedians, telling jokes we don't like to shut up. That doesn't work. The left has had, like look at what's happened to feminism. Do you know how guilty I feel about this? We've lost Roe in the United States and access to abortion.

Feminism should be a very strong public force right now. And it's not. It's never been weaker. Why is feminism so unappealing to so many people? It's because rather than talking about real policy that will affect people's lives, like daycare for children or working wages or reproductive health care or access to a gynecologist, we've defined it to these boutique, like luxury nonsense culture war stuff. So normal women are out there going, this is just not relevant to me.

So it's just a, it's a failure. And the other thing feminism did as well is it some, feminism is such a broad church. It's a hard word to use accurately. But once you start trying to convince at least some women that they're supposed to hate men, you're going to lose the audience very quickly because women generally don't hate men. That's right. They want to build a life with a man and have kids and then blah, blah, blah. I'm fond of my husband.

Right. As am I, even though I'm not a woman. Second question I wanted to ask you, and this sounds like a therapy session for me and Francis, and we've earned it after what you've done. I'm sorry. After six years of, no, but I will tell you the moment I realized that the left stopped caring about reality.

That's right. It was 2016, no, it was 2017. And I saw Steve Bannon go from talk show to talk show, to talk show, to talk show, to talk show. And all he did was explain how they won the election. Okay. And nobody listened. Nobody listened to what he was saying.

Because the agenda was the only way these people could win is by because they're racist and because they're evil and whatever. And nobody listened to what he was saying. And what he was saying is, this country is in deep trouble. This country is a place where people feel so alien, from the economic opportunities that used to be available to them and their families. They feel so alienated from, you know, the general narrative about their country has now become negative, which is why the phrase, Make America Great Again, works, even if you don't like it.

And I was listening to what he was saying, not from a perspective of, like, oh, I'm so enthusiastic about this guy and his political leader being elected, but from the point of view of, like, maybe there's something he's saying having just won an election that nobody expected him to win, that people on the left need to take into account so that by the time the next election comes round, you've learned the lessons, you're addressing people's concerns, and now you can come in with your message of, you know, how do we make America work for the working person? Like, that's to me the left-doing message.

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Watch remarkably bright creatures with your remarkable moms this Mother's Day weekend. Only on Netflix May 8th. We learned all the wrong lessons from the Trump years, right? The correct lesson that the left should have learned from Donald Trump was normal Americans that don't follow politics as closely as people like I do, you know, have five newspaper subscriptions, look at the polls every day, talk to donors, all that kind of stuff. Normal people don't think the system is working for them and they want to break it if you really want to get down to it.

And instead, we took this, we believe this really comforting lie that, half the country was lost and not worth talking to, and they were all racists, and they were disposable, and we stopped even imagining a way to live with one another. There's no future for the Democratic Party where we don't get goddamn serious about listening to the people that don't have faith in the system in earning their trust. And so much of that starts with the conversation, and we are failing. This is why Biden is losing. It's not that Biden himself, does not stand for this stuff. I actually think he's been a really good president.

But the culture of the Democratic Party is so elitist and arrogant and unwilling to listen to ideas that we don't agree with and treating half the country like they are assholes. Like this is not a formula for democracy to survive. Do you know, I was reading this. I think it might have been you that said it all

came up in conversation that the number one predictor for a marriage failing is not infidelity, it's not arguments. It's none of those things. It's contempt. That's right. And when I see, and it's not just progressives here, but also progressives in the UK, the contempt that they have for working class people, and let's be blunt about it, particularly in the UK, and I'm sure over here, white working class people, the way they talk about them, the way they address them, they're rednecks, they're stupid, they're racist, and then they go, oh, why didn't you vote for us? Like, there's some dumb animal to manipulative,

It's insulting. So let me tell you what changed my mind on this like the big reason the thing that changed my paradigm on this Was running for office because it gets you off a fucking Twitter and out there in the real world where you've got to go knock on doors and just talk to normal people as like oh shit the stuff we're talking about on Twitter is not what they believe So I think there's I think there is a lot of theory crafting in progressive spaces where they've got a lot of academic ideas about how elections and how power works. And I think it's fundamentally divorced from reality. Now, to be fair, the Democratic Party has been really poor at bringing younger people in and showing them how our system works, how NGP works, how canvassing works, how data works, how, you know, get out the vote works, like bread and butter election stuff. And that is very much a generational institutional failure. But at the same time,

like these people are not showing up. There's every single opportunity to do that. So go out there in the real world, actually talk to the voters you want to represent. And I think we can move forward. Because I think what a lot of people are frustrated about with the left and progressives in general is focusing on culture. That's right. And actually not talking about the things like you touched on before, that actually really matter, which is economics. That's right. The fact that people, the gap between rich and poor is widening. It seems that, you know, corporations are becoming particularly big multinational corporations are becoming more and more powerful. Governments are more in hock to these corporations. This is what the left should be doing. They should be

challenging these. 100%. I think we don't understand how easy we could have it on the left. If we stopped this nonsense and we were a party that unapologetically stopped. for all those things for working class people, I think we would take the country for two generations. And we just can't. So do you think part of the reason for that, Brianna, is, and please correct me if I'm wrong, this is just stuff people say. I don't know if it's true. I'm just curious to explore it with you.

The elite of the Democratic Party, it's probably true of the Republican Party to a large extent, but you'd expect that more, is in hoc to the big corporations, the big tech. They're all working colluding together. So I guess what incentives do they have to take the correct position on all of this? I think that's, I mean, this is the problem with power. I can tell you when I ran for Congress, I spent eight hours a day in a chair fundraising, like basically calling for money for my campaign. And, you know, it's, you are very beholden to the donors that bring you money.

This is why a policy I believe in is public financing of elections. We have that in the UK. Does it work for y'all? Better than here, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's like something's got to change. You're right.

The incentive structure is just not there. And there's a lot of incentives for Democrats to say the right things, but when the votes come up on the House floor to not do the right things. So I, in my estimation, y'all may not agree with it. I still think we're better than the Republicans. But I think until that changes, people are not going to change their assessment of us. And Brianna, you said that you think, Joe, Biden has been a good president.

And I know there's going to be a lot of people in the comments who are going to be, should we say politely disagreeing? Sure. Okay. Why is it that you think he's been a good president? So you talked about the value of institutions. I think at the end of the day, something I really value is our Justice Department working normally.

You know, I value our military having a clear chain of command. You know, I don't know if you remember, but the State Department was changing hands Rex Tillerson saying he had no faith, you had generals resigning under Trump. You had Trump trying to blow up NATO, something I assume you don't agree with. You know, there is a path to normalcy for the United States. And liberalism, like lowercase liberalism and democracy, then my estimation I think Joe Biden stands better for than the competition. I don't mean to offend anyone in the audience, but it's really scary to me how much

some of the Republican rhetoric is reflecting Vladimir Putin's talking points. Now, party side, my left versus right politics end at the United States border. I'm an American. And I think Joe Biden has been so much better for our national security than Trump has been. Well, that's interesting because I was actually, maybe it's a good opportunity before I jump in for you to lay out some more of the domestic policies that you're happy about. Because my personal view, and we can get into this, particularly what you said, about NATO, I actually don't think that that's what Donald Trump was doing. I think he was trying

to get NATO to pay its own way. You don't think Trump will blow out NATO if he's reelected? My sense of what he was doing, you mentioned about the past, was he was trying to get the NATO member countries to pay their fair share so that NATO would be stronger, so that NATO would not be so reliant on the United States. I thought that was, he warned Germany about taking Russian energy, he warned them about paying their fair share, and I think he's been proven entirely right. So the one area of this that I feel that I do understand somewhat is the geopolitical dimension. I think Joe Biden has been a disaster. Really? His pullout from Afghanistan signaled tremendous weakness, which is, I think, why you end up with Ukraine being invaded afterwards as well.

So on the geopolitics, I wouldn't agree with you, actually. I think Joe Biden has been very... Can we get one at a time through the East? So Afghanistan, how long have we been in Afghanistan for 20 years, Right. And I'm not going to do the thing. I know a lot of people on the left like to say, oh, Donald Trump agreed to this and then Joe Biden just executed. Fuck that. Joe Biden's our president. He made the call. Are we supposed to like I did not support us invading Afghanistan the way that George Bush did it. I literally led protests for years. That was a situation with the Taliban there poised to take over. We had United States troops there for what, 20 years basically keeping this? Are we supposed to keep? them there forever? I mean, what are the alternatives? So what I'm saying is not so much, I agree with you, which the United States would have been better off destroying al-Qaeda without staying there forever, right? The Taliban would always come back anyway. However, the way the pull-out was done is the issue. Sure. It signaled that

America, it wasn't that America left. It's that America abandoned its allies. I hear what you're saying. And that sent a message. Yeah. It sent a message. It sent a message. that resonated around the world. The word that America gives you is not worth the paper that it's written on. That is very fair question. And when you pull out on that basis, what you signal to others is, well, are we Taiwan's ally? Are we Ukraine's ally? Or are we just saying that? And do we have the resolve to back our allies when push comes to shove? And what's happened consistently has been,

whether that's Afghanistan, whether that's Ukraine, probably Taiwan also, is the United States talks a good game. That's right. But it doesn't actually do the things it needs to do. So on the geopolitics of it, my own view. Can I respond to that actually? Yeah, of course. So I really, I think that is a very fair criticism. It broke my heart to see the Taliban flag flying over a United States airstrip as that happened. Anyone that loves our country and loves democracy and loves Western values, that was a really hard day. At the same time, you know, I think if you're talking why is the United States perceived as weaker than we were? There have been a lot of really good democratic policies.

I think Operation Infinite Resolve in the fight against ISIS in the Obama years was excellent. We've never had a national conversation about how aggressive and excellent Obama was at taking on ISIS and pushing back on this. So I think if you look at things like Ukraine directionally, what in my view makes this week is when the Republicans are holding up these bills to provide them arms. I think that is a massive error in judgment. So you look at who voted for what.

And I think the Democrats, like I don't have these numbers memorized, overwhelmingly voted for this and barely passed with Republican support. Oh, sure, but that, Brianna, that isn't my argument. Sure. Since we're on this, let's just close this. Let's do it.

I, as you know, a big supporter of us supporting Ukraine, at least in the beginning. As am I. Right. Right. What we're doing now is not supporting Ukraine. How do you feel? What do you mean? What we're doing now is giving them just enough support so they can continue fighting.

Correct. But they're not going to win. They're not going to get the outcome they won. I agree. And America isn't going to get the outcome of Ukraine. I agree. What the situation needed and still needs is somebody who is prepared to simultaneously carry a big stick and do a deal at the same time. Ultimately, this is how this is going to end. And what you need is someone who's going to say, either we do a deal on the basis of what's happening on the ground right now, which means, sadly, Russia is going to get pieces of Ukraine that it didn't have before in exchange for Ukraine having long-term security. And if you Vladimir Putin are not going to sign this, then I am going to give the Ukrainians everything. That's what the president should be doing.

And I personally think Donald Trump is far more likely to say that than Joe Biden. However, let's just agree to disagree. Can I just agree with that? I think that's really well said. You know, we've gotten into this dynamic where we want to make Ukraine just strong enough that they can never lose, but not strong enough that they can never win. Now, I'm not a general. I can't appraise if, like, giving them air support is going to lead to World War III or not.

But I think that more needs to be done, like just giving them, what is it, the 132-millimeter meters shells to like hit Russian, you know, barricades. Like doing this forever is not going to let them win the war. We've just decided this lukewarm support. I think your assessment of this is dead on. I guess my point is on that issue is I don't think it's the Democrats are going all out for Ukraine and the Republicans are stopping it. It's more like Democrats are doing a terrible job.

And the Republicans are torn. There's a part of the Republican Party that wants Ukraine to win and would help much more than they're currently doing. Sure. And there's the other, you know, what I call the more woke right, so to speak, who are they're anti-Ukraine because they're anti-Western elites. That's kind of their worldview. Do you think they're compromised in some way by Russia?

No, I think they're compromised by the derangement. You know, they've been staring into the abyss. They've been looking into the progressive abyss for so long. They're now thinking like progressives in their head in many ways. I hear what you're saying. I mean, I guess I'm just... old enough to remember when we were able to stick together on national security issues. I hope that comes back.

I do too. Yeah. Okay. Let's park that because I feel like we're moving away from the core of the things we've been talking about. You go ahead. Yeah. So I was going to say the one thing moving towards domestic policy.

Sure. One of the major criticisms that Republicans and ordinary people are going to have, And please explode any myths is when it comes to the border. There's a lot of people in this country who are very upset, ordinary people, very angry. They're looking at things like people coming in undocumented. There's crime that's been spiraling. There's, you know, the fentanyl crisis. And they're thinking to themselves, what the hell is going on with my country?

I fully agree with you. I am a Democrat that wants the border taken far more seriously. Like, sex trafficking across our southern border is horrible. I urge you to go read stories about this. It is a nightmare. You cannot be a feminist and want the status quo on all this. Drugs coming through. You know, I'm sure you saw the video, the viral video, while back, the woman, like with her children under the barbed wire and all that.

It is completely normal for a country to need a secure border. And I don't understand why Democrats don't take this exponentially more serious. We can have a conversation about, you know, visas to let people in. We can have a very high number of people that we let in, but we've got to secure the border. I think it is eminently fair to say the Democrats have failed at this. And you say you don't know, but to me it seems utterly perplexing because it doesn't, you, I just look at it and I go, unless you've drunk the progressive Kool-Age, so we just say, for one of the a better word so much that you think open borders are racist.

Yeah, no human is illegal. Which was a piece in the Times, by the way. Like, oh, I couldn't believe that. But apart from that, how can you justify it? How can you justify it when you look at the number of fentanyl deaths in this country? Again, do you want the real answer or do you want the political answer? Here's the real answer. Democrats don't have balls to stand up to the nutjobs.

That's the real answer because you get called a racist and you're afraid about losing the Latino vote. And, you know, it is in my place. Can I just push back on that. As somebody who is half Latin American, who's mother is from Venezuela, I can guarantee you, Venezuelans in this country who came here legally, who pay their taxes, who work hard, just like Cubans, just like Puerto Ricans, they're even more pissed off about this because they're like, hang on a second, I jumped through all the hoops, I did all the paperwork, I paid my money, I paid my taxes,

and I could have just walked in? Sure. I'm not saying it's a crows. It's a deeply incorrect assessment, but that's the reason for the, for the fear there. I see. So, but isn't, wouldn't that be, if we're talking about Joe Biden being a good president? Sure. Wouldn't you agree if you disagree with what's happening on the border that, at least on that issue, he's been terrible?

We just tried to pass a bill that would have made Democrats extremely unhappy. The progressives were really upset about this bill because it gave the president things to do like close the border in an emergency and had some of the strictest, like, restrictions on this. And the Republicans are the ones that defeated that bill because they wanted it to be an election issue. Now, I don't mean to be, get all geeky and policy-oriented, but a huge part of this is also the lack of immigration judges. We have a huge... Are you aware that in Boston, we actually sent... We're Port City. We sent our immigration judges down to the border in an emergency capacity because they can't even try cases down there. I don't care if you're on the

right or the left or open borders there. We should all agree that if you come across the border, you should have a legal process to figure out where you need to go. We don't have the system for that. No, I don't agree with that. Do you not? No, I don't. I'm a first generation immigrant to the UK, and my view is nobody should be coming into the country illegally. Sure. Right? So we shouldn't, We shouldn't be sending Boston immigration judges to the South because they shouldn't be necessary because the border should be closed. That's what I'm saying. I think that's what most people expect, really.

Look, I want this situation handled. I would vote for any candidate that took that seriously. It's a mess. Democrats have our head on the sands on this. This could make us lose the election if we don't wake the fuck up and take it very seriously. And there's a leftist argument for this. There's a leftist argument for doing all of this. Like, there's so much crime and trauma that happens by these cartels doing this stuff.

The Fendell crisis is a billion times worse because of this. There's no excuse for this. Okay. So just carrying down the thread then, give us some things you think Joe Biden has done that have actually been good, domestically, let's say. I think the inflation situation, the United States, like every country in the United States, entire world is dealing with inflation. Yep, of course. And I think that we've actually gotten the United States economy much further back on track.

I think our inflation has come down much better compared to the rest of the world. I think on coronavirus, I think people forget just how much like getting vaccines out to people was mismanaged under Donald Trump. He did an A-plus job at getting that system like in place and getting vaccines available for people. Reopening schools, I think he did a really good job. them. So I think there's a lot of domestic policies actually excelled at. So I'm going to ask you a question, which is not, it's not particularly pleasant, but it needs to be said.

Go for it. I very much admire you for coming on the show, Brianna. And I very much admire you for taking tough questions, fielding them and dealing with them in the spirit that they're meant. I'm going to be honest with you a lot of other people on maybe that side of the argument or the Democrats strike me as weak if I'm being blunt.

If your biggest fear is being called a racist or being said that you're whatever else then you shouldn't be anywhere near power. I'm sorry, you're a leader, you're there to make tough decisions and people are going to say nasty things about you. Tough. You want the position?

You've got to deal with that. This is why I've been in progressive politics for the last decade. I'm going to a Democratic Party with some balls that would stand up on all these things. The problem is the progressive power base has lost their goddamn minds. So where the fuck are you going to go? You've got the insurgent side of it that's trying to push the Democratic Party to actually get serious about public policy. I believe it, like universal health care.

The American health care system was completely broken. I had a theory of change that if we were out there, We pushed the traditional corporate Democrats hard from the progressive side that that would get us to better public policy. The problem is the progressive left is so crazy nowadays. They're worse than the corporate Democrats. So we've got to turn this whole ship around. And is that possible, though? I don't know.

I don't think it's likely to be really honest with you. So what does the future look like? My hope in speaking up is I see a lot. lot of people that are in my DMs and they say, Brianna, I agree with you. And my hope is enough people like me stand up and we'll start getting real about this stuff. We can start pushing the crazies out and get the Democrat Party on a path that makes sense. I don't think that's likely. I think there's a flip a coin. We're going to see who wins this election. Is it going to be Joe Biden or, you know, or Donald Trump? And from there, we are going to be in the

wilderness without power if we lose, and we're going to find a new version of the Democratic Party. I don't know if that's going to be a better version of the Democratic Party. Well, let me say something to you, but through you to some of the people that follow you that might be interested. I really believe, you know, I was in Australia recently, and I was invited to a dinner where there were a lot of people who were influential in Australia, and there were people from both side of politics there.

And the person who invited us, he said, look, I don't want the other party to be elected. That's right. But at some point they will be. Yeah. And I want them to be the very best possible party for Australia. That's right. Best possible government for Australia.

And in that spirit, my view is the only way that the left is actually going to start to have a good impact on society is when, if, when Donald Trump gets elected again, which I suspect you will be. You don't agree, and I may well be wrong. I think it's going to be close. I think I see data, and I think I have a perspective on the state efforts that probably informs. And you're probably much better informed about it than I'm just operating on a general sentiment

kind of basis. But I guess what I'm saying is the mistake that was made in 2016, which you articulated so well, was a failure to take seriously the concerns of the ordinary America. That's right. If Donald Trump is elected again, my greatest fear is that instead of doing that, instead of learning the lesson and going, okay, what are we not listening to? Is it immigrant? Okay, we've got to change our position in immigration. Is it foreign policy?

Okay, we've got to adjust. My worry, and I know this is Francis worry too, because we talk about it all this time, is if Donald Trump is reelected, you're going to see a progressive meltdown on the scale that's going to dwarf 2016, which will only make. The country worse and the left way more elected. Because they don't believe in democracy. Fundamentally, look at the fringe, free Palestine people. There's some people in that movement that genuinely see scenes of horror out of Gaza and they want to do something about it. I respect that.

At the same time, there are a lot of people in that movement that want democracy and America dead. Well, they hate America. Yeah. They do. They hate our own country. They do. When do it become, like, inappropriate

bring it to be on the left and say you love your country and you respect your police officers and your teachers. You respect someone. Well, it's not how I feel. Yeah. And, you know, it's, we've got to confront this illiberalism that is just strangling the Democratic Party. We've got to get more comfortable with free speech and talking people that disagree with this. We need to get much more serious about public policy.

because we're not. It's so true and it's it's genuinely sad to see what's happening yeah to the left yeah and there's a lot of people who I know and look I'm friends with some of them on the right they're like ha ha look at them blah blah blah aren't they this aren't they that and you go I don't think you understand what is happening to the very fabric of our society that's right that's right and if this side are going crazy as you're putting it what's happening to our society as a whole. That's right. And what's happening to your side?

Because I'm telling you something else. Your side isn't being great either. And the moral decay is happening in a similar, albeit different way at the same time. I agree. I mean, look, I feel like I have extreme problems with MAGA, right? I think in many ways this is an anti-democratic movement as well. So just because I'm talking about the left today,

this is my own side. Like, it's not surprising to you that I don't. like the Republicans and don't agree with their policies, right? But I think you're really right. This is about the fabric of the country coming apart. I think you're seeing this in the UK to a lesser degree, but, you know, like your politics tend to follow our own. So we've got to confront this head on.

We download your crap very, very readily in the UK. I suppose one of the things that I was interested in exploring Brianna with you as well is you mentioned when we were talking about you potentially coming on the show. show that there's probably a lot of areas that we disagree about. Sure. Not you disagree with the Republicans about we're obviously not Republicans. So what do you think that is? I'm keen to find that out.

Well, I want to be polite. You don't need to be polite. I think generally speaking, I think generally speaking when I watch your stuff, I think you hold the right and the left to two different standards. I think you're a little too tough on the left. But I understand it because I spend more time. But people are going to say that about you now. They do.

That's fine. The people will, the progressives will call you right wing or whatever. And they do. And they do, because you're criticizing the left. You're doing that out of a place of let's get our shit together, right? I want our society to get a shit together because the one unique experience that I have that most people don't have is I've lived outside of this society. I was born outside of this society and I can tell you people in Russia and people in China are not having debates on TV about fucking pronouns. That's right.

Right? And the more time we spend on that, the less time we spend realizing that we live in a geopolitical battle of civilizations and we are sliding backwards. That's right. Hey, sweetie. Your mother showed me this Carvana thing for selling the car. I'm going to give it a try. Wish me luck. Me again, I put in the license plate. It gave me an offer. Unbelievable. Okay, I accepted the offer. They're picking it up Tuesday from the driveway. I haven't even left my chair. It's done. The car is gone. I'm holding a check. Anyway, Carvana.

Give it a whirl. Love you. So good, you'll want to leave a voicemail about it. Sell your car today on... Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. So, look, if I have a 5% disagree with you about pronouns, like, let's be really clear here. You are on the side of democracy and liberalism,

and I think something I appreciate about you is really talking about the threat of terrorism in very, very clear terms. I think that sometimes in this country, when we think about Islam, it's the westernized, like, liberal professor version of it, and I think you're not really thinking about it through, like, what is happening in Syria or what ISIS is doing, or, you know,

Iran and the Cold War with Saudi Arabia. So I think what I appreciate about you is I think you talk about this in really clear moral terms. and I wish we could have a better conversation about that in this country. I think speaking about learning the wrong lessons, I think America learned a lot of the wrong lessons for 9-11 and George Bush because we were attacked. That was something we needed to take seriously.

But the lesson we took from that is because his leadership and decisions were so poor and got us into two wars that did not address terrorism. It created terrorism. We have two generations of Americans now that don't think the United States military can accomplish anything. That is false. We need to be an arsenal of democracy for the world.

And I think I want to play my role in getting us there. Well, that's great. But come back with me to what you think we might disagree about because one of the things you mentioned was the trans issue. Sure. And obviously, we all think this about our own position, But my view is, Francis and I have taken a pretty sensible position on it. A, to have a broad range of perspectives on.

We had a trans woman on the show very early, the first person with whom a racist issue, who absolutely hates our guts now and whatever. Who is it? Can you say? Oh, okay. And we had... She's a friend. I like her a lot.

We had other people who had different perspectives, everyone from Buck Angel, who I know you know to people who are very critical of certain things. And I thought that their criticisms in some ways were, was excessive, but in other ways really important. Sure. And the place I think we've both landed in is the place kind of to some extent we started in, which is adults should be able to do what they want. Great. Children, however, are not capable of making informed decisions about the future because they're children. Sure. And should therefore be protected from medicalization. Sure. And there's quite a lot of evidence that a lot of children, who go down the transgender path are actually not transgender at all.

They're either gay or they're autistic or both or bullied or whatever. And I don't think cutting bits off those children is the right position. To be clear, you can't get surgery until you're 18, as I understand it. You can get on puberty block. Yeah, I'm puberty. Right? That's pretty mutilated. But that's not cutting that.

Correct. Fine. Fine. Let's take that. Medicalizing confused children is something I'm against. So look, this is going to get me canceled. by trans Twitter. But something has changed in the last 10 years is we've really redefined who is trans, right? It used to be people that medically transitioned. You went through the Benjamins and then there were the W-Path standards and some reasonable stuff. Go read it. Go to a therapist for three

months, get on hormones, have real-life experience out there, get surgery like a year later, right? Not a crazy, like, gauntlet to go down. We've expanded all of these things. in really extreme ways now. There are people in the trans movement that hand to God really believe in self-I-be. Like you should just be able to say, I'm this gender, and that has legal consequences for what spaces you can enter? Yeah. This is crazy, right? I don't understand this non-binary stuff.

I have friends that are non-binary. I think they're going through something real. They're in the W-Path, but they're going through something different than people who medically transition. So to come back to your point about children, if you are adding all of that onto who is considered trans, of course there are going to be some of those children. They're non-binary or just don't like the gender role or confused or gay. That transition is not going to serve them. So, you know, I personally have the opinion that if you look at the science here, it is not particularly conclusive one way or another. We need to double down on the studies we're doing.

We need to really make a better pathway to serve those children. And I do want more of them filtered out. So would you agree with me then that until we have the rock solid evidence, we shouldn't be transitioning kids? I think I wouldn't agree with you there because I personally know so many people that are such good friends of mine that this saved their life. But what I think would help is progressives are not having an honest conversation with parents, and I am not sure gender clinics are either.

They are saying things like, your child is going to suicide if you don't do this really life-altering thing. I don't think that's a good message. I think we need to be talking to parents with more respect about all of this. One of the things that I actually have a deep level of empathy for a lot of trans people. And trans people have spoken to both of us about it and me individually and all the rest of it is, you know, it's tough dealing with gender dysphoric for it. It's really hard.

It's really hard. You go through the processes. You take the meds, go through everywhere else. And then most people just want to get on with their lives. That's right. They just want to live their lives. They want to do their jobs. They want to have their friends, their families.

And that's it. And they've been politicized now. That's right. And, you know, every, like, one person said to me, like, I just feel like I'm being asked to represent all the trans people. I am just a person, that's right, and I just want you to leave me along. That's right. It was this way 10 years ago. It was this way 20 years ago. It's really been, in my view, a real disaster for trans rights to redefine it from a nonpartisan medical issue

to this leftist fringe identity issue where you're trying to destroy the idea of gender itself. Now, it wouldn't be really clear. Someone's non-binary, I will do my best, I will call them by the pronouns that they want because I'm not a jackass. But that doesn't mean I agree with this idea of destroying gender in the public comments. That's not something I support. So, you know, I think the truth is we need to be able to have a discussion. And I think a lot of trans people that actually transition have been ironically censored from their own civil rights movement.

The discussion is the important part. And this is where the progressive taboos, and they really are progressive. tabooes. They have to be broken apart. I agree. We have to be able to talk about the data, the evidence, without, you know, you're denying trans people existence and all of this other nonsense. I agree. Did you read Emily Blaslons, Blaslons, I don't know how you say it, it was a really great piece in the New York Times called The Battle for Gender Clinics or something was about children transitioning. I was so upset about this because it was such a deeply reported amazing piece that was overwhelmingly pro-trans and was talking out the history of children transitioning

and what the reality was in these gender clinics and the pros of it and the cons of it. And what did trans Twitter do from open discussion from a reporter that was very, very sympathetic to that cause that canceled her, they went after her in very personal ways. She had to step away from Twitter. it was absolute hell for her. If trans people cannot even let the New York Times write an article that is pro-trans health care and act like adults,

I don't know how they're going to win over normal people. Breanna, do they want to win over normal people? I think some do. I don't think a lot of the new ones do. No. No. And to me, that's a real problem. They're more interested in being right in winning people over.

I agree. There's a lot of that going around, to be fair. Yeah. And when you're in that position, I mean, that's a pretty terrible position to be in for everybody. I agree. It's so discouraging. I mean, it's, for me, I'm 46. I remember when trans was Jerry Springer in this country.

I don't know if you know who that was. think about that as... Jerry. Jerry. To think about that era as just a healthier discussion. It's terrifying to think about... It's amazing how we live in a world where Jerry Springer was a healthier discussion. Tell me I'm wrong.

Just bring about ten crazies onto the stage and make them fight. That was healthy. Yeah, and then it got broken up. This is what I was thinking about. Like in the Jerry Springer era, like a trans woman being married to a man, was salacious. And today it's boring because half of trans Twitter is in their polycule with five non-binary people. Like it's insane.

So you mentioned the election that's obviously looming in the future. You seem to think it's going to be close. You're not making a call either way. Well, let me tell you why. So elections do not come down to vibes. They come down to get out the vote. So what I mean by get out the vote is you build a relationship. database of contacts that you have from canvassing or relational organizing, which is you literally

pay people to go contact 100 of their friends on Facebook and make sure they'll get out and vote. And the Democrats' data strategy this time around has actually been pretty good. So when I'm looking at the infrastructure, we are building for the ground game in these swing states, I actually feel pretty positive about it. You know, our messaging, I think I would give a D-minus to. Joe Biden's ability to go out and make a coherent vision for the country, I would give an F-2. But these, like, bread and butter tools to win an election, I actually think we're doing much better than Trump is. Breonna, I've got to ask this question.

He's too old, isn't he? Yeah. This is why I didn't vote for him in the primary, like in 2020. What is going on when we have Trump or Biden? What is going on with the system? You've got this amazing country. I can defend this. One of my closest friends, Jank Yugar, ran for president

because he saw this and believes Biden can't win. So I can't defend it. I mean, I've been very open. I wish he had dropped out and let someone else be the standard pair. He didn't. And it's a really big risk. And now it's too late to do anything. Who would you rather have run?

So y'all probably don't like her, but Elizabeth Warren, she's my senator in Massachusetts. I think she is amazing. She's the best in-person politician I've ever seen, works a room, really good policy. I would love to see her as president. I don't know why you say we probably wouldn't like her. We're big fans of Native American rights. Well, I say that because... I had to say that.

It's very fair enough. She is, you know, she's gotten a... gender controversies, I think I would say. Yeah, no, I think that actually, if you listen to some of the stuff that she says about economics, some of it, I don't agree with it, some of it I agree with, you know. And she's not, she's definitely not one of these crazy. I'm not sure that she's the inspirational candidate that we'd all hope for. But no.

Okay, how about Roccona? Do you know Rocano? I'm familiar, yeah. Rocahn is a really good guy, really smart, really polo. policy focused, very focused. I would think he would be an excellent president. We've got talent in the party. I think the problem is, and the Republicans have this issue too, there's a seniority system. So it's like whose turn is it? You know, whose favors can I call in? So then you eventually end up with a bunch of old people. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, on that happy note, why don't we wrap up? We'll go to locals for questions from our audience, but before we do, Brandon, the last question, as you know, we always ask is.

What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? What's the one thing we're talking about that we should be? We're not talking about. I think that something really scary is going on with young men. I saw this during Gamergate, and one of the mistakes I feel I made during Gamergate was treating these young men as if there were monsters. And I think the truth is we have two generations of young men

that are looking for a path and they are lost and they're lonely and Andrew Tate is talking to them in terms they understand and the Democrats are not. So I think that, you know, just talking about the direct, we can get a chance to do this today, I think if the Democratic Party cannot figure out a way to, yes, talk about women's rights, talk about LGBT rights, but stop telling men that they don't matter. I don't think we're going to win elections. So I think we need to get extremely strong. serious about this. Yeah, if you want to understand the slide generationally, my generation's male role model in the public, on the internet, is Jordan Peterson. Yeah. Who I think is a great

guy. I've just been touring with him, so I would say that, but he is a great guy, a really, truly great man. And Gen Z's male role model is Andrew Tay. That's right. About whom I would definitely not say the same thing. That's right. I always find Jordan Peterson really interesting. You know, I've talked out this a million times, but, you know, I have been sober for 20 years. So a lot of his struggles with, you know, finding yourself addicted and trying to find a back. I really identify with that. I've always wanted to talk to him about it. Yeah.

He's great. And what he's doing now is he's not really talking about the culture, war, or politics or anything. And I'm glad he's not. I think it's a great thing that he's doing because he's talking to people about how to live a good life. Yeah. And he's telling them very powerful stories. about some of the ways to do that, you know, you don't have to believe in God or not or whatever. It's just a very powerful way of looking at the world and being constructive, productive,

creative, you know, passion and driven and living a good life and contributing to others. That's a good role model, but I think that the fact that the next generation is leaning in a different direction tells you quite a lot about what young men are dealing with, what they're being told about who they are, what their role is in the world, world and the way the economy is changing and all of that. So I think it's a great thing. I think it's a really hard time to be a young man. I was, you know, my husband, I've talked to him about this so much. Like, what it was like for him growing up and learning to be a man. Yeah, there were, there were culture, there were institutions there a generation ago. I don't think those exist

today. I think we're throwing our young men online. I think they're not learning to interact with people in the real world. I think they're lonely. I think they're horny. And I think they're lost. We've talked a lot about how democracy survives from here. How can any country survive without young men in a path? Like, it can't. So, you know, I really wish the Democrats would make it a project to find our public figures that can talk to those young men in honest ways and try to bring them in and come up with some public policy to make their lives better.

All right. Well, the three Democrats who were listening to the people are listening to Thank you for being around. Take that to heart. And head on over to locals where we ask Brianna your questions. Are you worried you'll never find a way to reach those on your own side that see you as a traitor? Or will you be comfortable remaining a dissident voice? My goal is to destroy those people.