TRIGGERnometry - The Most Important Election in History - Michael Moynihan

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Michael Moynihan is an American journalist, former National Correspondent for Vice News and co-host of The Fifth Column podcast. Follow Michael on X: https://x.com/mcmoynihan Check out his Substack: https://substack.com/@michaelmoynihan Sponsor: Ground News. Go to https://ground.news/triggernometry to see through media bias and get the full story. Use our link to save 40% on the Ground News unlimited access Vantage plan this month. Sponsor: Verso. Try Verso’s incredible longevity products and get 15% off by using code: TRIGGER at https://buy.ver.so/trigger   Verso Scientific References: 1. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2022.868640/full 2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35844164/ 3. https://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/10/6/456 Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] 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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See full terms at mintmobile.com. What are his major deficiencies? Because for me, I see it as temperament. You know, it's funny that in 2020, I interviewed Steve Bannon in October, and he told me he's not going to concede. Before the election, Steve Bannon told me this. The idea that you cannot concede the election is terrifying to me.

The Democrats keep putting people up. It's like, we're in trouble now when they're in front of a camera. How is this happening? I'm a Brit. I'm not the smartest person in the world. I'm not as Ophay with... with your ways of government. You have a lot in common with Trouble Harris. And I'm looking at the scales, and they're kind of like this,

and you're going, it's very close. But if I've listened to the hour conversation we've just had. You really want me to vote for Donald Trump, don't you? Michael, every election cycle we get told, this is the most important election of all time. But you're looking at this one, and I'm kind of thinking, They might have a point. They might have a point.

It depends on who you listen to. I mean, if you've been paying attention to American politics in the past week, by the way, not in the past year, but in the past week, it is between democracy and fascism, democracy in darkness. Of course, remember that the Washington Post said democracy dies in darkness. That was in 2016. I believe they still have it on the masthead there. It didn't die in which, by the way, it's interesting because someone was talking to me about

this this morning. And we were talking about how much of an effect this has on voters. And I realized when I talked to voters about this, and I've talked about this very issue before, that Trump is an authoritarian. He's a dictator and waiting. He's a fascist. And the response now is that, wait, didn't we have him for four years? What kind of dictator takes this long?

Pretty lazy dictators, and he's like, I'm just waiting for the right moment. So it doesn't really, I mean, you see this last ditch effort about not only this being the most important election. And that's usually something like, you know, it's important for, you know, the purse of the government or your pocketbook. This is something that is kind of refashioned that it's the most important thing because America might end. And I find it kind of a, not an anti-American thing, but somebody who doesn't believe in America in the way that I do in the sense that I believe in the robustness of the institutions and I believe in the people themselves. And I don't believe that if Donald Trump, for instance, was reelected in to society. that he wanted to stage an actual coup, which is typically done by, you know, taking control

of the army and actually not a bunch of Yahoo's running around the Capitol. I don't think that would happen here, you know, and I just, and the people who say this, this is the most important election ever, are now framing it in that way, which kind of offends me. Well, there is the other side argument, which people like Elon have been advancing, which is this is the last election the Reich can win because if Kamala wins again, they will import millions, more immigrants who will then vote for the Democrats, and then you're forever in California, basically?

No. So both sides are making. Yeah, both sides are wrong. I mean, we have this, I went to Texas to shoot a documentary in Star County, which is the most Hispanic county in America. It's not a big county, it's 20,000 people, but it's like 98%. There's like three white guys left who are just trying to find their way out of there, but no one speaks English.

So this is a very Hispanic guy. And I went there for the purpose of talking about this swing, right? So 2016, it was like 45 points. I'm just off the top of my head, 45 points for Hillary. So like a plus 50 kind of thing. Now, the Democrats won again in 2020. It was like plus five for Biden, six. And so I went there, and these are Tejano's, you know,

multi-generation Mexican Americans and recent immigrants. And I talk to these people, you know, if they think importing people means that these people are going to just become Democrats, if anyone actually has that idea, just go to Texas and talk to Hispanics. I mean, the idea of Hispanic drives me crazy, too. I mean, this is something that's very... I quite agree. It's Latinx. Yeah, yeah, exactly, because I mean, I don't want to include everyone here. But, I mean, you can't talk to a Nicaraguan who has a positive view of a Venezuelan, who has a positive view of a Honduran who has a positive view of Mexican. So, I mean, all the people that I talked to were big Trump supporters, and you would ask them this question. You know, like, he said this, he said that, you know, the rapist line, which I think is people often misunderstand. But they are like, look, we don't want more immigrants ourselves.

All these is kind of bring up the drawbridge immigrants. They're like, we should be the last ones. So the idea that this is going to import people in ultimately over time, there'll be an amnesty and then they'll vote for us would be very short-sighted. and wrong. I just, I don't think that's true. Isn't that what happened to California? That's Ceylon's argument. Well, I think there's a lot of things that happen to California. I mean, the collapse of California, I don't think when you go to L.A. or you go to San Francisco is migration is the first thing on your mind. If you're in the tender line of San Francisco, you think maybe the border is the issue of fentanyl and, you know, drugs. But I don't think

that immigration is number one what collapsed California. No, sorry, my argument is. Isn't that it collapsed California? The argument is that it was a play for state, which became a mono state politically because of mass illegal immigration? Yeah, I mean, I don't know the exact numbers on this, but it would surprise me if that was the factor, right? I mean, people go to California for a particular reason. I mean, look, you see in America we have this wonderful federal system where there's so

much competition, right? You can move. People move to Texas. I mean, you guys have been to Austin, the number of people. That used to be the big liberal place. I mean, now it's the home of Joe Rogan, right? And people are like, oh, they're changing. I mean, there's a t-shirts all over Texas, which I saw when I was last shooting something

there, and the expression was, don't California my Texas. All these people from California are coming. But the thing that that t-shirt misses is that they're leaving Texas because California is being Californian. They don't want to import that there. So I mean, look, you see that in Florida, Texas. Those are big immigrant states, and they're trending right. in so many ways.

And it also depends where you, where the people come from. For example, Venezuela, you're not going to get many Venezuelans who are like, ay, ay, yeah, the socialism. Yeah, I mean, there are three groups that you see very common in Miami. Of course, everybody knows Cubans, right? Yes, I have the right-wing Cubans. I think that's changing a little bit. But Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguan's, three countries of people that are refugees from socialism.

These are not people that are desperate to vote for Kamala Harris. And that was, I mean, I went and did a piece with this Cubanos con Biden, this like, and it was like this outcast group that they were supporting Biden. And they were upset that all the Spanish language radio was, you know, appealing to Venezuelans, Nicaraguan's and saying, this guy's a socialist. And they're saying, oh, he's not a socialist. It's like, it doesn't matter if he is. You are appealing to these people in a very particular right of center way. And it works. It works.

And there's no uniformity of Hispanic voters in this country. I look at Kamala and I think to myself, how can a woman like that have got to the top of the Democrat Party? When you look at the way she speaks with her ideas, with her rhetoric, you're like, this is really scraping the barrel here. What's going on in the Democrat Party? It's being very generous in calling it rhetoric. I don't know what it is. I don't know what she's saying 95% of the time. I don't think she does either.

Should we be honest about this? How is a person who, you know, is running in 2020 and drops out before she competes in her own state in California? Because all the polls suggested that she wouldn't even come close to winning her own state. She got zero delegates. And of course, zero delegates this time around too. So what is this? Who is this person and why are they at the top? Well, I think Joe Biden was quite clear about why she was chosen.

And I think that there's this weird thing in American politics where people are, argue like these vociferous arguments about affirmative action. And they say, we need this for X, Y, and Z reason. Okay, that's an argument you can make. When you point out what it is in action, people are deeply offended by it. So I was like, no, but this is the thing you want and the thing that you like, fine, I disagree with you on this. But when we talk about it, you say, how could you dare you say that?

You're undermining her credibility, you're saying that she has no qualifications. And I say, you're making my argument now about why affirmative action I think is poisonous so many ways. But I think that's it, right? And then you have the argument that, and this is one that they're going to have to really revisit if Donald Trump wins this election, is that how would it look? And you talk to all the Democratic Party grandees when they're pushing Joe Biden out the door. How will it look if the first black female vice president is not anointed? If we don't have a coronation, how does that look for us? Well, it might look like you lost, because that's kind of what's going to happen. I think.

I mean, we have no idea. But, I mean, these polls are too close to tell. But you have a candidate who I think should really be winning in this situation now, because there's a lot of inputs here that would suggest, you know, it's a good time for a sensible Democrat who's not Joe Biden. Look at the town hall. I don't know if you watch this town hall with her and Anderson Cooper. She does one answer in which she studied it, right? She knows what she's doing.

She's got this one back to front. anything a little off and she's looking around confused. I mean, word salad, David Axelrod, you know, I mean, is there any more of a Democrat than David Axelrod? They come back to CNN to the panel, David Axelrod, use the phrase word salad. David Axelrod, about the woman who he wants to be president. And people got nervous. There was a couple of stories about this. After that, people in the party were like, okay, we're in trouble now, which is precisely what happened when Joe Biden went for his debate.

The Democrats keep putting people up. It's like we're in trouble now when they're in front of a camera. How is this happening? Well, and even more- The voters didn't choose, that's what- Voters didn't choose, interesting. I get, what's interesting to me about your answer is before we started. Yeah.

You were saying you're not going to vote an election. I will vote, but yeah. Not for president, sorry, you're not going to vote for president. No. However, I asked you, who would you vote for if you did vote? And you were like, it would be really tough. It'd be really tough. But listen to what you just said about Kamala, and he would be really tough.

Well, I could do a similar kind of thing about Trump. Yeah, like, what's wrong with Trump? Look, I mean, there's a lot. It's a very long list. I am. You're a lot. I actually think it's an important question. Yeah, no, I totally agree.

The reason I ask it, by the way, is I'm aware that, like, this is all coming off as very pro-Trump. Yeah. I want to hear the other side. Yeah, well, the other side is. If Kamala can't speak and can't think and can't run anything and is totally incompetent and is basically what you've said, which is an affirmative action hire who doesn't deserve to be there, for it to be difficult to make a choice, Donald Trump must be really awful in some way. I mean, he's really awful in a lot of ways.

I mean, look, where does one begin with Donald Trump? I think, and I want to move out of rhetoric, too, because the rhetoric bothers me. And I think it's, I don't like, you know, hearing the things like poisoning the blood of America, which I think is deeply discomforting in a lot of ways. But as far as facts, I mean, I don't like that Donald Trump doesn't have a core ideology, right? And I think that's the one thing that so many Republicans and you talk to them are very upset about is that MAGA-ism is vibes in a lot of ways too, right? 20% tariff on anything that comes into the country. Everybody that I talk to who is supporting him, and I know a lot of people, and I respect a lot of them too, say the same thing.

They've been saying it since 2015. Watch what he does, not what he says. I don't love that in a president. I love somebody who says, this is what I'm going to do. No, no, I'm just threatening. You're threatening what? You're threatening who? The voters?

In saying that this is not a tax on the, like a 20% tariff on everything coming into the country is madness. And if you ask any economist and then people say, well, yeah, the economists have been wrong about everything. They haven't been wrong about this, and this is a pretty basic thing. So that kind of thing, which I suspect would be like, you know, sort of free market conservatism, a more libertarian view of the world, and more Milton Friedman, and that's kind of where I like. He's not in that universe at all. Does it mean that she's better? Well, I mean, she's kind of better on tariffs, I would say, which is bizarre because

nobody in the media gets a chance to question her when they do. they don't usually follow up in say, well, you know, the Biden administration kept so many of those things because they want to keep labor happy, right? But look, that kind of thing really bothers me. That, for instance, I don't believe that he is this kind of isolationist candidate that so many people say that he is. I worry about Ukraine. I don't worry. Flesh that out. You don't believe he's an isolationist meaning what? I don't mean he's not. Look, he's, there's so much wishcasting. with Trump, right? There's so many people on the kind of, you know, I would say isolationist, right, that's like an old American isolationist, a libertarian right, who are isolationists,

who say, well, he didn't start any new foreign wars. There's a lot, I mean, he killed Soleimani, there was a 75 missile strike into Syria, a lot of operations in Iraq, new, okay, we can parse those words and everything, but I don't think he's somebody that is going to withdraw from the world as everybody on that kind of edge of politics thinks he will. So I think that that's probably a good thing that that's not going to happen. I do wonder about something like Ukraine. I mean, you can hear somebody say it would never have happened under my watch. Okay, we'll write a novel about it.

It already did happen. What are you going to do? I'm not getting anything that gives me confidence. Well, when I come in there, two days it'll all be solved. I didn't believe that, right? Israel. On Ukraine, sorry, let's just explore this. On Ukraine, my understanding is he's going to do a deal, which is Ukraine gives away land.

And the only question is, and this is where I agree that there's, it's important to understand what that plan is or whatever, is what is the deal going to be? Yes, Ukraine gives away land. What does it get? That's the question. And Mike, if I had a worry about that aspect, I think he would be much better on Ukraine than Kamala, by the way, because she will just. keep the war going without helping Ukraine win, which...

That has been the problem of the Biden administration. Yeah. Which as a big supporter of Ukraine's stand for independence, I think, is the worst thing that Ukrainians could possibly have. Yeah. Simultaneously being told to keep fighting and then not being given the help to actually win. And again, we're going to stay in Ukraine, but Israel is the same way with the Biden administration, yeah.

So that's bad. With Trump, the concern is he comes in, he tries to do a deal, and because he's promised to do a deal on day one, that means that he's given Putin leverage over him because he can keep the negotiations running for a long time. Yes. And then Trump's elector is going to be like, well, you said you'd end it on day one. And it's been two weeks. And then he's going to give them way more than otherwise in a deal he should.

That would be my concern. That's one of my concerns. Okay. What about Israel? Objectively, Trump was one of the most pro-Israel presence in American history. Yeah, 100%. And I think that on Israel, it's a slightly different thing. I mean, that's another one of these things where you, you know, you stop in your tracks when

someone's calling the fascist, right? I mean, fascism is, it's supposed to be redolent of Nazism. It's not like a corporatist Mussolini. It's saying you're Hitler, right? No, they just mean out-group. Yeah, they just mean out-group, right? And so you see what, if you look at these polls in Israel, 75-25 for Trump, over time, I mean, I was up in the Golan and we were driving by a village named after Donald Trump.

There's a don't it called it's called Trump Heights It's literally it's in the go on and it is I was like kind of hilarious I'm like Trump Heights But yeah that doesn't bother me as much I mean it's funny this guy who's an anti-Semite and he's a You know hitlerian who has a son-in-law who's Jewish who he entrusted with you know Getting the Abraham Accords were very impressive that is great I don't trust Kamala Harris on me. I mean you saw the other day There's a protest

at a Harris rally, yelling about Gaza and is pushed out by security. And before he can leave the building, she says, well, he has a point. He has a point. He's yelling about genocide, right? He has a point. He's not wrong about this. That's why we need somebody who's decent to actually sit in front of her and interviewer and gets, I don't know what she believes about this, because of course she's trying to

be everything to everybody at all times. In this, the Democrats think is the strategy, right? I'm for fracking, I'm against fracking, I'm for it, and I'm against it. This has happened. It's like watching a ping pong match in the past couple months. The same thing is true of Israel that question is always answered that Israel has a right to exist. It's not, and no other countries have this as the first instinct. I agree that you can exist. Let's start with that, and then I won't answer the question. I think Trump is good on that. Every American president said, we're going to move the embassy to Jerusalem. He did it, right? From an Israeli perspective, and I think that I think that I would

prefer him on that issue, but by a lot, yeah. But let's focus again on his weaknesses. So we've, because we then start to talk about, look, he's going to be better on geopolitics, by and large, than Kamler. What are his major deficiencies? Because for me, I see it as temperament. I see it almost in the way that I look at an addict and I go, he can't help himself. Yes.

He can't help himself. His advisors say the same thing. People who are close to him say the same thing. People have told me that. I mean, I, you know, it's funny that in 2020, I interviewed Steve Bannon in October, and he told me he's not going to concede. Before the election, Steve Bannon told me this. The fact that people like that know things like this, that is dangerous, right?

The idea that you cannot concede the election is terrifying to me. It's unacceptable to me, and I think that is hugely disqualifying to say, you lost, and there are people in his orbit that has been reported, that he knew he lost, that he knew it, and that he was keeping this myth up for his audience, which does believe it. And I don't like the cultish nature of the MAGA universe, but I think that the election stuff, it's hard because you have to separate yourself because so many people who I hate just really bang on about this issue.

But it is true. The fact that Donald Trump said, I won this election, stuck to it without any evidence, the number of judges who threw these things out, 70, 80 judges, a majority of them, I think, were Trump appointed judges. I mean, there is no basis to this whatsoever. They've shifted the goldposts on this, by the way. I talked to somebody the other night at dinner who's a big Trump supporter, and he said, well, the Hunter Biden laptop.

I said, well, that's a different thing. That was election interference. I mean, it is the media doing what it does to try to get a candidate to win. Election interference is... No, no, I mean, the banning of that story. Sure, I mean, as... You know, as different than election is stolen. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the media's interfering all the time in these ways. But the fact, like, that stuff is, and it gets to the temperament issue. That is, I mean, economic stuff bothers me. Temperament stuff bothers me more than anything. There's, yeah, the list is long, but I think those two things are putting up. But didn't you say the American institutions are strong enough to deal with them? Yeah, but I don't want them test it. I mean, the fact that they can withstand this stuff doesn't mean they should all the time.

But yeah, I think the American institutions are strong. I know a lot of Republicans who worked with him and don't trust him and think that he's bad for the country for a variety of reasons. I mean, you can look up people like, you know, not even just Millie and Kelly and H.R. McMaster and Bolton and these people who just say, look, this is not a guy who should be behind the wheel here. And a lot of it is temperamental stuff. But that is a really dangerous position for a country to find itself in. And it's an incredibly dangerous position for the United States to find itself.

in and because of that, the world. When you have somebody who is temperamentally unsuited to be president, to put it moldy. Let me put, before you answer, let me put a counter argument to that. I'm not saying I necessarily hold this view, but I think it's worth discussing as part of this conversation about temperament. So I was having lunch with somebody here in New York a couple of days ago who used to work with Trump in the real estate business. And he is, I think, undecided about how to work.

about how to work, probably leans towards Trump, I think. It doesn't matter. My point is he's fairly kind of, he's not, his experiences with Trump did not radicalize him in either direction. And he was like, well, you know, the thing about Trump is, if he owes you a million dollars, you'll call you up and you'll say, I'll give you 300 grand or sue me. Yeah. And it'll cost you a million to sue him, so you will take the 300 grand.

And two thoughts simultaneously entered my head at this point. Number one, what a douchebag. Number two. The type of douchebag you want in Washington. Not in Washington, but in the negotiation with the greatest douchebags in history who now lead other countries. The Putin-style douchebags, the Xi-style, who only care about one thing, which is getting something for themselves and their country, right? So I understand people's temperament idea, and I think it's really important that the person in the White House embodies a certain moral. code that you can see from a mile away. And that would be the ideal. I don't think we have a choice

of those candidates on either side. No. So wouldn't we want the very best douchebag we have? Well, that's presuming that he is. I mean, I think the temperament and the negotiation stuff intersects in one way. I mean, the number of people who have been in negotiations with him in a political sense, not a real estate sense, slightly different, that say he is so vulnerable to flattery, That why did he go from little rocket man, you know, the sort of horrible Stalinist dictatorship of the Hermit Kingdom, to saying, you know, we trade letters. And Kim Jong-un and I are our friends. And if you see the letters, it's just the flattery of Donald Trump.

Putin did the same thing. I think that the Russiagate stuff is an absolute, like a hoax is probably too mild for some of this stuff we saw coming out of MSNBC from 2017 to 21. Well, actually, still to this day. But I don't get the sense that he's an amazing negotiator. If I did, he talks about negotiations. He talks about dealmaking. What are those deals?

I mean, look, that is, I mean, do I think that that's him or do I actually think that that's Jared Kushner? I think it's probably Jared Kushner, to be honest. I actually hold him in higher esteem than most people do. But I think that that, for instance, you know, getting NATO to pay up, I mean, Obama said the same thing. He said the same thing. maybe he performed well on that.

People debate about the numbers on these things, too. But yeah, I don't see all these, you know, amazing wins. I mean, in the United States, in the U.S., I mean, like American politics in the House, polarized enough that I, you know, there's not a lot of bipartisan legislation in the U.S. anymore. It's not like there was so much recently anyway. But no, I think that's sort of done. Do you think, as well, age is going to be a factor?

I mean, Trump is how old now? 78 by the time he gets out, it's 82. I mean, regardless of how fit you for an active, you keep yourself, at 82 years old, you do not have the capacity to run a country. Yes, we need a cap on how old you can be to run for president. I think that's true, yeah. But that must be a serious concern as well. It's a concern. I mean, it's a serious concern. I do think that the media reporting on this recently, and you see all these desperate moves that come from media of like the polls are narrowing. I mean, Harris had about a four-point jump at the beginning,

and that's narrowed to almost nothing, and it looks like it's going in Trump's favor. So now we have all this reporting, or observational reporting, that Trump is losing it. He doesn't have, watch him on Andrew Schultz's podcast. Doesn't look like a guy who's losing it to me. No. I don't know what these people are talking about.

At the moment, I think he's fine. Do I worry four years down there? Hell yes. And do we want a guy who's sort of default temperament is that to be kind of going over the edge at 82, 83, 84? I would say no.

But yeah, I mean, this is a problem that we have a bare minimum age for running for president and we don't have a ceiling. And I think that watching Joe Biden and watching, I mean, nobody has asked Kamala Harris the question, one person didn't get an answer

of when did you notice this? When did you notice that Joe Biden was no longer, you know, able to do this job? He's still the president. People don't forget this. He's non-compensitist right now, but he's still the president. And that's another factor when it comes into talking about the Democrat Party is that they lied to, look, all political parties lie, all politicians lie. But they lied about something as egregious as that consistently. To the point he was, Joe Biden was bringing.

Vlorima Zelensky to the stage as Vladimir Putin. Yeah, I mean, that was probably one of the lighter, more hilarious ones. I mean, the stuff, if you look in the background, is really crazy. And people have been saying this internally, I think since it's mid-2020. But if you look at polls in 2000, what was it, 2020? We were on Bill Maher together, and I remember the poll because I was talking to the booker before this, and we had this conversation that a majority of Democrats, 65 almost, I think it was almost 70% said that their candidate was too old to be president.

Two years ago. This was not something in the last six months. This has been obvious to everybody. They have been lying to us, but I think the only people it harmed was the ever-diminishing credibility of the mainstream media because it's like, who are you going to believe me or your lying eyes? Everyone saw this. Everyone knew this was happening.

They can lie to you endlessly. I mean, this is ultimately the problem with something like Pravda, you know, the same of you know, I mean, the hilarious nature of it being called truth, which is almost a joke, like nudge, nudge. Did people believe that? No, they got used to it being whatever was in that was probably the opposite of it was true. And I think Americans have really come to, I mean, you look at the trust in the media is down in the toilet. But when everyone is saying that, you know, the Robert Hur's report where he said, you know, he couldn't remember when his son died, he couldn't remember. He couldn't remember X, Y, and Z. The attacks were led by Kamala Harris, who said, this is a political hit job.

This is a guy doing a civil service job in producing this report, and he's defamed by the woman who ultimately replaces Joe Biden because he's too damn old. So I don't believe in conspiracies usually, but there is kind of a silent conspiracy for a long time that we don't want the other guy to win. So we might as well just pretend that everyone who's saying this, I mean, we've seen this over and over and over again. The COVID stuff was misinformation to say it was in a lab, that it was escaped from a lab, the mass stuff was misinformation, the Biden's age stuff was misinformation. At what point do the American people just say, hang on, I think we're well past that point. And that's where Trump's temperament and inability to control his compulsions, which again,

I use the term addict-like behavior because it is. He just can't do it. In a way, that becomes a strength because people look at him and go, well, at least he's honest. And then you get a point, which to add to the litany of things where I think he's, he's, you know, unsuited for the presidency. He says a couple of things after the 60 Minutes interview where they release. a kind of cut up version of it, you know, release the transcript. Why not?

I totally agree. I think it was the debate questions to, I also CBS. And he says we should revoke their broadcast license. I mean, conservatives think this is okay? I mean, this is Chavismo. This is what Chavez did. I mean, they didn't, he always said, you know, RCTV, we didn't take it, we didn't really do its license.

It couldn't meet all these standards. It was a regulatory thing. that kind of language terrifies me in the fact that he does that as an extension of like the enemy of the people stuff doesn't bother me I've been in a number of Trump rallies but I'm sitting in the press pen

and people turn around and boo you and it's the least threatening thing in the world if anyone tells you what is they're lying to you you walk out and people say oh hey I saw you on this and they just take a picture of stuff it's wrestling it's professional wrestling it's part of the whole thing the man's in the wrestling Hall of Fame

he actually is so that stuff doesn't bother me saying the press, oh, they're liars, they're lying about me all the time, because they prove it pretty consistently. But when he goes that extra step and says, and that is the kind of wannabe authoritarian in him, he has those instincts. And so he's correct about that in a broad sense. And it's very helpful to him.

It's been very helpful to the Republican Party that the press who thinks they're doing something, what does it matter that Taylor Swift says, I'm going to support Kamala? When you're out on the road with Bruce Springsteen, which she was the other day, no one cares. These are people that don't have that much money in their pocket. And they're saying these billionaires support me, these rich people support me. It's like, really?

This, and the media is attacking and being on her sign. It's like this bifurcation of Americans, I think that the Democratic Party is, you know, complicit in it. I think the media is ultimately responsible for it. A text says, you're on my mind. A bouquet from 1-800 Flowers says, You're my everything. Heartfelt moments belong in the real world, not just your phone.

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That's 1-800flowers.com slash Spotify. One of the big shift that's happening, I don't think it's quite complete. I think by the time of the next election, it will have been completed, is the move away from the mainstream media to the point where our space becomes the dominant space for actually where these conversations are happening. It's starting to happen. Donald Trump has been more in the lead, I would say, in terms of doing podcasts and doing stuff like this.

Kamala has done a couple. I know for a fact that she was in negotiations with Joe Rogan about going on her show. We learned today that she's not going. Why do you think that is? The first interview she did where she said, okay, I'll sit down and it's not going to be a softball interview from somebody from MSNBC like Stephanie Ruhl. I believe it's 20 minutes, 25 minutes, something like that. The next one was in that universe, too. So you have presumably a lead-up, some questions, some niceties, and you're probably talking about 15 minutes of actual substance.

Joe Rogan does two hours, two and a half hours. Donald Trump to do four and a half, right? I mean, is it going to be substantive? Is it going to be making sense the whole time? Absolutely not. Is it going to be funny? Absolutely. I cannot imagine what she would be like over a 45-minute period, an hour period, an hour and a half.

And especially of somebody who is not. not on one side or the other and is going to ask kind of curious questions and probing questions. And Joe Rogan is not somebody who's going to, from watching him over the years, is going to allow a bunch of bluster and nonsense to like pretend it's an answer. And she gets away with that. I mean, Anderson Cooper, I don't hate Anderson Cooper. There were a couple of answers about the economy. That I, I mean, word salad is being generous.

I had no idea what she was talking about. And she loops back and they say, you know, like, what are you going to do on taxes? And she says, you know, I grew up in a middle class family. And it's like, here we go. That is the indicator that everything that's going to come after is absolute fluff. When you're sitting in front of somebody for two hours who is not a professional journalist, who just wants to know the answer of questions, right?

Is not trying to please a constituency? You know, was, I think it was the biggest media deal in the past decade, maybe, probably in history, with that single deal for Spotify. He doesn't need you. He doesn't need your money. He doesn't express fealty to any party. And you think he's going to let you get away with this stuff? It will be interesting to see what he does with Trump.

I don't think he's going to take it easy on Trump. Well, we'll find out by the time this interview comes out. It's interesting. I have two things to say. I think Joe is great. And one of the things I would say, he's one of the most open-minded people I've ever met. Yes.

But he will push back if you talk about something that he knows about. and he doesn't agree. Correct. And then he's like a pit bull and he will not let you get away with any bullshit. But I actually think he probably would have been very generous to her, letting her set her views out and whatever. And then if she said something dumb, then he would push back. Yeah. But it's not Pierce Morgan. In all respect to Pierce Morgan, but Pierce Morgan, you come on to have a fist fight. And that's what you expect. And he creates the guess that way and the combinations that way. Whereas Rogan Cho, you're right. I mean, I've seen. seen him with people. I know he disagrees with. You can kind of sense it, but there's a generosity

of spirit there, and he allows people to actually respond. So I actually think it would be a good venue for her, and at this point, with the polls turning in the wrong direction, for her, she has nothing to lose. Well, that's what I thought. But then, and this is the other point I was going to make, because I listened to you, and you're a friend and you're smart, and I go, and then I sort of like look down on the situation. And I go, here's a guy who's saying what many people believe, which is that one of the two candidates for president, who has a good chance of winning, it may not be, you may not be 50%, even maybe 40%, that's a pretty good chance of winning.

Can't hold a conversation for two hours about her views about the direction of the country she wants to lead. What the fuck is it? How is that possible? Well, I mean, I would add a little addendum to that is how is it possible, especially considering she's been the vice president for four years? And what you see with her is in, you know, depending on what the subject is, she is the all-powerful vice president. There's never been a vice president more.

She says, you know, we did this. I did this. I didn't do that as vice president. I didn't ban fracking as vice president. We don't have that power, but no. But then when she's asked a question in the debate about Afghanistan, she's like, well, President Biden's policy. It's like she's running away from this all the time. She has no record to speak of, right?

But her record in the Senate, she's a cipher in the Senate too. And, you know, as vice president, you would imagine she would have some accomplishments, number one. And number two, have some fluency with government, some fluency with how to deal with these issues when you're being pressed on them. When she's asked about the economy,

look, I think that there's something that is both her and the advice she's getting. I think there was a concerted effort to do two things. It happened with Joe Biden. They got used to this as a strategy, which they literally called Operation Bubble Wrap. Keep Joe Biden in the basement. Don't let him out. He's going to embarrass himself. They just continued that with her for different reasons. She's not, you know, non-Copus mentis. She's just not very bright, and she's very bad at this. So they keep her under wraps and make sure she doesn't give you an answer on anything. The American people aren't that stupid. They start noticing when you say nothing and when you say both things. Michael, but wasn't she like this ruthless prosecutor had an illustrious career, which is what propelled her into politics? I mean, that's why I hear Democrats saying.

It is amazing to me because there was a story a couple days ago. It's amazing that it's taken this long. Now, granted, it's a very short campaign, a short campaign for her, is that she actually prosecuted a handful of cases, 10, 20, something like, in the courtroom. That this is not what she actually doesn't have a ton of courtroom experience. And this was, look, I just read this the other day. I don't know if it's true or not. It strikes me as watching her on stage

that probably is true because she doesn't seem to have that ruthless killer instinct that you need to be to be a DA. So she was chief prosecutor. Yeah. And she only was in court, prosecuting people 10 or 12.

That's what I, there's been some reporting on this recently that in actual, in the actual courtroom, she was not often there. She was not often present. You can offload this stuff pretty easily. I'm a Brit.

I'm not the smartest person in the world. I'm not, as Ophay with your ways of government. This is mental. You have a lot in common with Cobble Harris. This, this, all,

everything you're saying sounds insane. This, it just sounds like someone who has failed upwards continually until they get the chance to be the most powerful person in the world. Or to be the ultimate failure, right? I mean, which, I mean,

November 6th, she might have, like, just put the Democrats back in the wilderness for a very long time. Look, I think this is ultimately an indictment in some way of identity politics and just prising someone's identity, which tells you nothing about a person, over somebody who can actually do this job. I mean, there were people that wanted to have like a real compressed primary

so we could actually have other options. That didn't happen. And the Democratic Party grantees, like ask Bernie Sanders what the Democratic Party is like as far as an institution. right? I mean, they waged war on him in 2016 when he was gaining neck and neck on somebody who is the literal definition of the establishment. Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, Bernie Sanders coming up, and I interviewed him after this, and yeah, it was like, they knifed me. And that's what they will do to anyone who's going to step up to Kamala Harris.

That is going to reflect poorly on the Democratic Party in the long run, and they're going to have to reform this process because, you know, the same thing is true of Republicans, too, by the way. They lost the 2020 election, did not win the popular vote in 2016, not in 2020. My, I suspect they won't do it again, right? The 2022 midterms, they ran a bunch of these dopey MAGA candidates who fed the base, the Herschel walkers of the world, the Memmette Oz's and people like this, and they got steamrolled in elections they could have won. So I think there's a lot of people that have to step back from kind of this social media way of running a party and realize that we have to kind of reconfigure how these things work. Because Kamala Harris,

they had a process in 2020, and she dropped out before a single delegate. That tells you a lot. Why do you want that person running against, and if it's between this and democracy, if democracy is on the ballot, and this is what you're prizing for your candidate and how the candidate is selected. This is an enormous problem, isn't there? There's a huge problem. So this is a question I've been thinking about a lot because we talk about all the different facets of this election and they're all important. But the most important one for me is who is going to be better for the regular American, the average American. The American who lives paycheck to paycheck, who just about makes it through every month, who doesn't have a lot of money in the bank,

a regular person, who should they vote for? Well, I think they'll be voting for Donald Trump as, you know, if we look at this, you know, just as a group, and this is kind of like talking about Hispanics. It's not one, I mean, you have to disaggregate people in it. But there is a thing about American politics for generations, and I remember nothing. but people talking about the middle class. We're going to strengthen the middle class. Hillary Clinton said that.

George W. Bush said that. John Kerry said that, et cetera. That is no longer the thing that people say in politics because of Donald Trump. They talk about the working class. We have a very different type of class politics in this country. In the class politics has been reintroduced

by Donald Trump. We had class politics in the beginning of the 20th century. I mean, like Robert LaFollett and the progressives and things. But now we actually have a class politics. It was introduced by Bernie Sanders and by Donald Trump.

Michael, this would be really useful. Sorry to jump in, for you to define working class and middle class in American terms because in Britain it's so different but the words are the same so everybody gets super confused. So this is a really interesting thing.

On the podcast that I do the fifth column, we had this conversation about how one defines this because it is a kind of nebulous concept in so many ways. If you look at the guy who's the head of the Longshoremen's Union was almost a crippling strike

from the Longshoreman's Union about a month ago, This guy has a big handlebar mustache. He looks like Lemmy from motorhead. And he has tattoos all over his arms. And he's got this out of borough's Brooklyn accent. And he has a Bentley. And he has a 60-foot yacht.

And he has a mansion in New Jersey. Is that person working class? I mean, culturally, people say, well, he's working class. And people were referring to him as working class. You know, he's the head of the union. And he makes a killing. So what is working class in America? You know, there's people that live in Indiana that have good, you know, union jobs who have far more in their pocket at the end of the month than I do.

So there's the cultural thing, right? The cultural elites that are in New York City, San Francisco, D.C., L.A., that have different kind of values. And then there's the working class who are just like actually, you know, but there's the ethnic divide to black working class, Hispanic working class, etc. How is it defined here? I mean, you could put monetary values on it. I tend to actually think that that cultural thing is important. Because in the UK, you have how many people, posh people and living in crumbling castles with the plummiest accents of anyone who have no money in their pocket?

I would say that they're probably upper class, right? There is that cultural element. Trump speaks to the working class in both an economic way, because he actually talked about globalization in a way that I think is wrong, but I think the premise is right. We did make a mistake when we talked about the endless benefits of globalization. And there were huge benefits, not only just the people in India, Vietnam, the people that have been pulled out of poverty at an insane raid. Also it's been benefited us in the products that we have, right?

We all have iPhones, we all this stuff. But we didn't pay attention to what that was doing to America's factories and its manufacturing base. We have more manufacturing in America than we ever had, but we do it with a lot fewer people, right? So those rust belt places, people ignored them, right? When you tie that together in a very kind of ingenious and partially devious way, when you tie that together with culture war politics, you've got an absolute home run, because that's what the left never did, right?

They talked about working class politics. And there's people who are doing this, you know, have tattoos and Che Guevar on their neck. And they're not talking about trans people in sports. They're not talking about immigration. Bernie Sanders used to talk about this. Nobody remembers this. He used to talk about immigration, illegal immigration, being a bad thing because it depressed working class wages, right?

A very simple argument. They stopped that because that was no longer the kind of culture of the Democratic Party. And that's where they went wrong. When you talk to people at Trump rallies, they feel like the kind of depression in 1930s. It's a great book about this by a woman named Amity Schlaez called The Forgotten man, the number of people they feel like they're the forgotten people. To them, it's just like they don't care if the guy from, you know, Gray's Anatomy TV show supports Kamala Harris. It is so distant from their life. And the things that remind them of that distance between

the people on the coast, the people controlling the media. I mean, I've had so many conversations with people about this and it's always the same thing. And I sat there and said, you know, I'm a journalists doing on the road stuff, which I didn't do really before 2016. Why were there nobody in sort of political consultancy that were out here saying, these people are like crying out for a candidate who speaks to them and what you never hear anymore, but you heard it in 2015. Oh, a billionaire Donald Trump from Manhattan is going to talk to the working class. Yeah, yeah, he is. And they could care less because it's not about him being a billionaire. What do they think about him being a billionaire? They're impressed by it.

He's like he worked hard. He had a little seed money from his father, but he worked hard. He's a great businessman. They respect that. It's not class warrior politics left that like, you know, eat the rich. It's like, we want to be the rich. We just want to have those opportunities. And Trump, will he manage to do that?

No, I don't think his economic policies are going to do what he promises that they will do. But it is an absolute earthquake in American politics to actually talk about class. We are not a class-based country. We have not, I mean, we are. It's never been a thing that has been the anchor of our politics in any way, and now I think it is. And I think one, that was a brilliant summation. I think there's one piece that you missed out, which was the contempt the elites have for the working class. I mean, it's particularly prevalent in the UK, but it's prevalent here as well.

And it was time after time, these people who had the absolute heart ripped out of their communities, the places that gave them work, structure, dignity, gone. And when they complained about it, and when they complained about things like immigration, they were told they were racist, stupid, rednecks, white trash, whatever else. Guess what? You do that to people. They're going to tell you where to go pretty quickly,

and they have every right to it. That, by the way, is, I think, the key. One of the things that I missed is that the idea of other rising people in a sense that they are racist, They are homophobic, they're transphobic, et cetera. You know, the UK version would be like, oh, you're like a BNP voter or something. You're a national front because you're in this working class community.

They close the pit in the 1985. The version of that here is people say, you know, there's always these shirts, and I swear to God, if you go to a Trump rally, this, you know, in Pennsylvania this week, you'll see people the shirt like, you know, call me a racist, blah, blah, blah, I don't give a shit. Like, that's the kind of message of the shirt. I think that there is a culture that changed

So it had no interest in bringing those people along with them because it was so alien. It's like we're in New York City, we're in L.A. making these things. 2020, it'd been happening before that in 2014 is really when it starts with Ferguson in this country. 2020 is the year that made me think that he's going to win again in 2004. The George Floyd stuff, the capitalizing black in newspapers for no reason whatsoever, just changing the weird rules because it felt right because it seemed right but it felt right for who you know I mean I will say this because I hope nobody will see this bit I went into a school in this city the other day it's true I was in a high school and I walked around and I was

like looking in here looking there and I have photos of this too I can show you I saw four or five trans flags okay you want that in your school it's a price private school, do whatever you want. There wasn't an American flag anywhere. But there wasn't one on the premises. I mean, I grew up Pledge of Allegiance and things like that. I think when people see stuff like that, they do the thing, which is not like, how do we correct this?

They say, where has my country gone? Yep. And that maybe is an alarmist vision or something because I think these things can be rolled back because I don't think the majority of people actually believe this stuff. And that was the thing about cancellation was that the that made people crazy about this was that you're being canceled for views that a majority of Americans have. That shouldn't happen.

Over 50% of people believe X, you say it in your job and you're never going to work again. That culture war stuff, which weirdly the Republicans have not hammered on much this time, not much. It's a little bit, Kamala Harris said she wants prisoners to have transition surgeries that taxpayers will pay for, which sounds so outrageous and weirdly is actually true. She actually didn't say that because that was the different Kamala Harris. Why is Kamala Harris and why is the Democratic Party not emphasizing that Kamala Harris? Why?

They're acknowledging that no one agrees with them. They're acknowledging that the voters that they need a majority of Americans thinks this stuff is crazy. You're saying we're past peak woke? I think that we are not past peak woke in the institutions because I think it's very hard to dislodge these people from the institutions. But I think people are getting to the point where companies, you know, right after the George Floyd thing, it was like, you know, Toys R Us is like, you know, it's saying, you know, give money to Black Lives Matter, all this stuff. That's gone. I don't think the outward facing stuff that we have to do this because we'll get in trouble if we don't. Someone said, hey, guys, do you guys realize that this is 25 people online in not America? And I think that what happened was Bud Light happened. And when the Bud Light thing happened, people say, well, it actually wasn't an ad campaign. It was just a sponsorship. It doesn't matter.

It seemed like that. And what happened was they lost, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. And then they hired Shane Gillis. Who wins? It's not them. It's not that worldview. Because that worldview is an academic worldview. It's the one, I mean, academic in the sense that it's within the academic institutions.

Those people matriculate. And then they gather in New York City in Brooklyn and Parks, in D.C., in L.A., San Francisco, and then they make believe that everybody in the country believes what they believe. So I told you guys a story about a MAGA hat, the guy that I ran into, and someone in dinner coming over and saying, how dare you wear that hat at this dinner? It's true. One of our mutual friends was there, too.

And the amazing thing is I wanted to look at this guy. I didn't say this because I was so caught by surprise. I want to look this guy and say, like, 65 million people voted for him. You're acting as if he has a swastika on, which would be a little alarming. But this is just like, yeah, there's people who have this point of view. I saw a clip of Kamala Harris and she was talking about staying woke. And the moment she said that, I immediately thought you have lost every white working class blue collar worker. Yeah.

And black male working class voter too. Yeah. Yeah. And it just seems to me that the fact that they're hammering. shows a complete disconnect. Yeah. Because you talk to anyone, white working class, mainly the people I talk to in the UK, they hate this stuff because they realize that when it comes to things like

wokeness, the ones who get discriminated against primarily are the white working class. Because the upper whites have their connections, their privilege, they know how to be able to work away around it, whatever. But if you've got no connections, if you're at the very bottom, economically compromised, and you struggle every single day of your life, and someone goes to you, hey, mate, you're privileged. That's when you reach for the gun. Would you see immigration in this country? I mean, Democrats for a long time, progressives for a long time, framed this as a race issue, more or less, you know, racism versus anti-racism, generosity versus, you know, a kind of scrooge-ish,

you know, eugenics. It's like crazy how these conversations happen to. You see it now, and I did a story with black men who are voting for Donald Trump or trending in that direction, not ideological people, not people that join a club, not people who've ever joined a party. And one of the things that you notice, and you see this in Chicago, especially, there was these city council meetings, you can find the videos online, where people were very upset about migrants, and they were all black. Why is this weird?

because we've been imbued with this identity politics that you're on that team this you guys are all the same you're black you're Hispanic you're shot no no the black voters that I talked to in Wisconsin I talked to Milwaukee and that you see in Chicago and you see here in New York City in New York City there are people that for a couple of years now have been getting hotel rooms $220 a night not like motels by the you know airport two 200 plus dollar a night hotels in Manhattan, which were actually making it hard to get hotels if you were a tourist, too, by the way. And then at some point they were giving swipe like a debit cards, which was so crazy and I thought must be untrue. And it turned it actually was true. I was like, this can't be real. Imagine you're a poor person in a really rough neighborhood in New York and you've been there

for generations. That neighborhood has never changed. It is people have promised you things for years. And then you see somebody who's just picked up a backpack. walked across the border, which they see as breaking the law, that's your first illegal act, and then they're getting rewarded for it where they've gotten nothing. Who did, like, I mean, if Donald Trump didn't do anything about the border, and he did a lot less than he promised, they're going to build the wall, Mexico's going to pay for it,

but he talked about it in a way that showed a sense of concern for these people. And it's not about whether he's a good guy or whether he'd be a better president or would be better at this issue in practice. It's the fact that nobody speaks to these people. they think of them as black. We have black voters. What is Kamala Harris, releasing these ads now to appeal to black men?

They never would have done this before. Why are they doing this? Because they believe the polls. They know the polls are true. That black men in particular are moving away from Democrats. Why? This guy said something to me.

He said, I've lived in this neighborhood, I think in North Milwaukee for my entire life. Nothing has changed. What do I have to lose? What do I have to lose? They're not going to put me in a camp. I mean, that's what people in TV say.

I have nothing to lose. I have lived in squalor, in penury for 45 years. At least he's talking about us and saying, you know, the migrants in here are getting free stuff and I'm not getting anything. And again, it doesn't matter if that's an accurate representation of what's happening. That is the perception from a number of working class voters, black, white, Hispanic, doesn't make a difference. And there is nothing more infuriating than if you're an immigrant to this country, you came here legally. Like I know, like my relatives come from Venezuela.

They come here legally. They struggle. They work. And then you see El Trennairagua come in, the gang, illegally, and causing mayhem and destruction. And you're thinking, I am barely afford, I can barely afford to live. And I have done everything correctly. Yeah. And then you have these criminals.

and they're allowed to do whatever they want. There's also a strange thing about that of refugees in that sense is that so many people that you talked to who have had Polish, you know, Russian, you know, Italian Irish, four fathers. I mean, this is true from, you know, just generational, it's not even country specific, that people came for a better life, you know,

people who said, I'm not going to speak Italian to my kids because I want them to be American. And then migrants that come and get, all these sort of benefits, and you know that they're waiting for the economic situation in their country to get better, for Chavez, I mean, for Maduro Chavez 2.0 to leave, for Castro or, you know, Danny Ortega and Nicaragua to Rieve and want to come back. And I think that also offends people, too, is that coming here is a commitment. Coming here to be American is that you leave that culture behind, you keep aspects of it,

you celebrate aspects of it, but you kind of become part of the whole. And that's changed a lot. I know that because I've had conversations with people about this who have told me pretty much the exact same thing. So we've been talking for an hour and right at the beginning we talked about the fact that

it's close in your mind and also the election is very close. But after that, but if I've listened to the hour conversation we've just had. You really want me to vote for Donald Trump, don't you? I don't know. It's actually not what I want.

What I really want is to explore something, which I think is very interesting, because I think there are actually quite a lot of people who say exactly what you say. I hear from these people. Yeah, yeah. The fact that I'm kind of torn, but then they list all these things, the terrible things the Democrats have done. And then they just go, but January the 6th, basically. Now, you've added, other than that, the only other things you've said is tariffs. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying... And I'm looking at the scales and they're kind of like this and you're going, it's very close.

I'm trying to kind of, you know, give my top top three or four or something. And I would say that not necessarily January 6th, I would say that lying about the election is very, very bad. Telling people lying to your supporters who really... I don't like the cultish nature of MAGA. And I've seen this up close. I mean, you've seen these maga churches that have. People are really, I mean, all these people at the Charlie Kirk thing touching Donald Trump and praying together.

That is terrifying to me. That's a bit of a like redland of Jonestown in a way. The problem I have with that more than anything is I don't like that people are being taken advantage of and lied to. And they're told that the election was stolen. There's all these wild theories. And I have asked people about this. I don't get mad at them.

I don't look. How do you think this? It's like they live in bubbles. They live in kind of echo chambers that we all kind of live in, like in their Facebook groups, a very Facebook-oriented, in these kind of media spheres. Donald Trump has perpetuated that lie, which I think is a lie that allows people to do crazy things. If you believe your government is occupied, if things have been stolen from you, this isn't even

a legitimate government. You know, you can't even fault people for saying, I want to pick up a rifle at this point Because this is a fake government That stuff I think is really bad particularly when I think I know he knows that it's not true He lies constantly, I mean, we know that and he makes things up all the time You know, I always said that the Donald Trump when he says the word sir You know, he's lying, it's like somebody came to me said sir When that happens like here comes the bullshit, right?

But that is not even really a January 6th I mean that's obviously related right And that's why that happened. But I think that the overstatement of that from some people, the armed insurrection was not armed. I mean, nobody. No, was it an insurrection, by the way? No, no. I mean, I don't think that either. I think that it was a disgusting, sickening riot that if somebody who is a conservative should think is everything about this is opposed to conservative principles from attacking the seat of government to beating up cops with, like the blue lines, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the.

cop flag, whatever they call it, a thin blue line flag, attacking them with the flag. I mean, good Lord. That stuff is sickening and almost every way. Where they lose it is over saying, come on Harris the other day, said people were killed during the January 6th uprising. She's not talking about Ashley Babb. It's talking about police officers were killed. That's not true.

I mean, it's not really not true. It's been disproven like, you are lying about this in a very sinister way of saying that this man is controlling this mob who goes and kills people in the capital. They did bad stuff. They didn't kill anyone. So, yeah, I think that stuff is bad. Where Trump loses me, look, I think it is, like rhetoric is so much of it. And, you know, I think it is probably true.

I don't like that this is true. You have to look at what Donald Trump does and not what he says. And as I said before, I want a president who does what he says. Full stop, you don't have to get the decoder. ring to see what's... But this is the issue, Michael. And I'm just stress testing your argument. Sure, sure, sure. This is the issues. Yeah. You don't have that choice. No, I don't. You don't have the choice. You do not have the choice of a president who does what they say and says what they're going to do. Yes. Right. You have a choice by your own description of a candidate who can't say what she's going to do. Correct. Because she can't

fucking talk. Yes, which objectively true. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. Right. And Donald Trump, who says a lot of bullshit. But if you actually look at his record did, did, do you. And he's, he's do a reasonable job the last time he was in. The count, one, two things about that. One counter argument is that the number of people that were there to check Donald Trump before have all gone. They've all written books.

They've all said, you know, Donald Trump is a fascist, which I think is, you know, John Kelly said the other day, which I think is crazy. But there are people that, you know, John Bolton was one of them, and they've all said, it's too difficult to work with him. He's too erratic. He shouldn't be president.

And you wonder who's going to staff the administration. That's a worry for me. Because- Doesn't the Heritage Foundation have this 30,000 list of people that they're gonna- Which is also terrifying because the Heritage Foundation used to be like a Reagan Republican thing and it's become a bit weird.

But I would say that's the first thing that concerns me. The second one is I wanna present another choice. And the other choice is voting for somebody else, a third party. They're not gonna win. Doesn't make a difference. My job as a citizen when voting is to express disgust, right? If you know, or pleasure, but I never have ever experienced that. I wanna re-elect this guy because he's so great.

It's never actually happened in my life. In one way of doing that is either not voting, which is a choice. If turnout is low, it tells you something about your political society. Or voting for somebody who's not these two people. And, you know, in a way is saying, try harder guys. You can do better than this. We want somebody who is actually, you know, relatively sane, is stable, is not going to act like a complete nut all the time, or can actually put a sentence together. And agrees with my fundamental values and is not going to lie people, lie to people to tell them what they want to hear, to get the votes, and then not do anything about it.

You know, I think that voting for whoever the libertarian, as I don't even know, I'm sorry to a libertarian candidate that I don't know. For me, that is also a choice, and that I think is a choice to show that you have utter contempt for where this two-party system has lent. What a fantastic uplifting note to wrap up there. So you're a silent Trump vote today. Yes, Magal all the way. Well, thanks for coming on, man.

Awesome. Thank you guys so much. The last question we always ask is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society, that we should be before we go to Substack and ask you questions from our supporters? Before Michael answers a final question, at the end of the interview,

make sure to click the link in the description where you'll see this. How do you think a win for either candidate will play out across the rest of the world? What will Trump do to bring about the demise of red, China and Russia, and what would Kamala do? What's the biggest single mistake that each candidates have made

so far in the campaign and what's the chances of another possible fatal one before the election and who of the two is more likely to commit it? What we're not talking about, I think we're talking about everything too much and in the wrong ways. My concern is that we talk about things

in the wrong ways, not that we're not talking about it. I'm trying to think if there's some underappreciated issue. I can't think of one offhand because I think the problem with this is having your own podcast, when you feel like there's something to talk about it, you talk about it, like, at infinitum and you think everyone else is talking about it.

So there's maybe something that we talk about in the fifth column podcast that America's not talking about. The fifth column, fifth column podcast is what you really want. I'm going to plug it. Yeah. You're so you should. Michael, here's an opportunity to talk about the things that really matter in the world.

My podcast. Yes. It's still a true statement. My thing's the only thing that matters. Head on over to Substack, where Michael will answer your question. by plugging his podcast again. Vote Trump.

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