Will Cain Country - Matt Taibbi: The Three Most Important Stories From Investigations By The Second Trump Administration

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Story #1: What will the three most important stories from investigations by President Trump's second administration be? A conversation with Investigative Journalist, Matt Taibbi. Story #2: Are the Kansas City Chiefs approaching the New England Patriots for the greatest dynasty in NFL history? Plus, 'New York Magazine' published an insanely misleading title and column from a young conservative influencers party inauguration weekend. Is the right now winning the culture war? A conversation with The Crew.  Story #3: National Review Sr. Writer, Noah Rothman published an article this weekend responding to Will's critique of his stance on birthright citizenship. Noah joins the show for a friendly and nuanced debate with Will on the issue.  Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing [e-mail] Subscribe to The Will Cain Show on YouTube here: Watch The Will Cain Show! Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One, top three stories to be investigated during the presidency on Donald Trump with investigative journalist Matt Taibi. Two, did the bills get host? Are the Kansas City Chiefs on the verge of being one of the NFL's greatest dynasties and is New York magazine deceptively editing photos to make you think that everybody that likes Donald Trump? is white. Three, we called out the other day, national review writer Noah Rothman. On his point of view on Donald Trump pursuing the repeal of birthright citizenship, he said he was wrong. He wrote something about it in National Review. So today, we will be joined by Noah Rothman. news YouTube channel and the Fox News Facebook page every Monday through Thursday at 12 o'clock Eastern Time on all of those same digital channels. Some almost three dozen markets on the radio

across this great United States of America, but always available as well by simply subscribing on Apple or on Spotify. We're going to be joined in a bit of a version of the accountability bowl. I like to hold my opinions accountable. I'd like to hear rebuttal, especially after I have offered up my opinion with someone who is not. present well then let's make sure if they have an objection that they can be welcomed into the will cane show and they can offer up their rebuttal so a little bit later in the show national reviews noah rothman is going to join us over a conversation we had last week i took him to task over his point of view of donald trump the politics and quite honestly as well the merits

of repealing birthright citizenship so two a days back in new york's going to put up a poll he wants to do it he's wondered this aloud because his brooklyn brunch crew is outraged about the potential for everybody's grandpa to be deported because they might not have been born in the United States. Absurd. Absurd on the level of even the New York magazine cover, but still, he wants to ask you. So two a days, put it up in the chat, put it up in the comments section. You can put up the poll on how people feel about whether or not we should continue as really honestly one of the few countries on the planet, mostly those in the Western Hemisphere that recognize the idea of birthright citizenship.

We want to hear what you have to say. But let's get to our big guest today. Let's get to the idea of what are the three stories that should be investigated under the presidency of Donald Trump, story number one. Matt Taeevi is an award-winning journalist, an investigative journalist at racket. dot news he's the author of hate ink of i can't breathe many other bestselling books and it looks to me one never knows when they travel and release big episodes of podcasts but it looks to me like he just returned from at least a trip to florida or main where he sat down for an hour and a half

with tucker carlson was that uh florida was that main it was in a barn and it wasn't Florida, yeah, although the weather like, the weather was main like, I would say, it was cold even down there. Well, when we get the full studio build-out, which is in progress here in Dallas, Texas, Matt, will hopefully be able to fly you down at some point. You can hang out with us on this show and the new 4 o'clock show. Are you going to have a competing man cave, like basically? I don't think I'm going to get to go full-on man cave, but I'll get to put some personality, you know, somewhere between my fake background, your red background, and Tucker's full-on man cave, we'll strike some kind of middle ground. You know, it was a fascinating conversation you had, Matt, with Tucker. You guys

talked a lot about accountability. What's going to be revealed over the next, I hope, not just a couple of years, but maybe the next couple of months. What's happened? Even during the first presidency of Donald Trump, but certainly during Joe Biden's term, what's happened? What's been covered up? What lies have been told? what crimes, quite honestly, committed by people in the United States government. But I want to maybe kind of force this false sports-like frame on you, Matt, but you've probably thought about it. You know, here you're starting a new four-year period with Donald Trump as the president. And as we go forward, what do you think are the top three stories you're interested as an investigative journalist and paying attention to and investigating?

I mean, I think number one for me is just who was president when Joe Biden was in competitive. fascinated. How was, what were the mechanics of the last presidency who was making decisions, who was signing documents? Um, we know, was it bifurcated? What were there people in charge or foreign policy and then other people in charge of domestic policy? Clearly, I don't think he was really the president in a traditional sense. Uh, and I think that has to be investigated, although there, um, of all the things that Tucker and I discussed, that's the one thing that there is not a formal probe already underway toward unless you might call that part of the intelligence community probe, which I don't think you can. So that for me, I think, is the

outstanding mystery of the last, you know, eight-year period is how did they pull that off? And then how has he moved out of off his own ticket? It's a substantial question. Yeah, so let's stick with number one here for a minute. I would actually think, Matt, you could have the most optimism that you will get answers to that question, because it may not need to be part of, you know, a congressional senatorial or intelligence agency investigation. This is the one story that I would think you might be able to give some credibility to the mainstream media in expressing curiosity. Because there was such a fallout on the left, because he was pushed out because there's not unity you'll have you know songbirds you'll have people talking to

your traditional outlets the new york times you know whatever it may be and as the democratic party moves forward into whoever it comes next they won't be tethered to protecting the legacy of joe so i i think you might have some real optimism grounded in reality that you could get an answer to that question, I think. I think you might. I think there could be stories, and it might not even take you, Matt. This could be the kind of thing that they actually write about in the New York Times. I think it's possible for sure. I mean, you saw right after the election, you know, there was an episode of Pod Save America, which is sort of like, you know, where you go if you're a Democratic Party operative and you want to begin a messaging campaign. And right after the election, a bunch of the people

who were staffers for the Harris campaign, got on and issued a whole bunch of revelations, things that had not been made public previously. They said that there was never at any time a poll internally that showed that Harris was in the lead, which I thought was striking, given that we were publicly told something quite different for months on end. But that's the kind of thing where, yes, once the dust settles a little bit, you will get insiders coming out, you will get people who have access to grind, who are upset about decisions made by superiors, people who are moved out of positions they were promised, and they will start

talking to reporters. And hopefully, you know, just the, as you say, the age-old curiosity kicks in and somebody at these big newspapers, like the Times of the Washington Post, decides to actually commit resources to that story. It's shocking to me that they haven't already done it, But you're right. I think it could organically happen. But they haven't yet, except in those small instances that you just pointed out. I mean, you have sources. If this is the number one curiosity for you, if that's the number one story, I have to ask,

do you have any sense of it? Do you know the answer to your own question? Who was running the White House? Well, I asked around the extent that I have any sources at all, and there aren't many, you know, they're all third and fourth hand at this point. We know roughly who was in charge of the day-to-day business of the White House under Joe Biden. The central figure for the first couple of years in the Biden White House was Ron Clayne, who was the chief of staff of that White House.

So he was the person who was kind of the intermediary between Joe Biden and everybody else. So he was, you know, his wingman at every meeting. He was sitting next to him at every national security, you know, confab. But, you know, you can't really draw too many conclusions from that. If you look at the reporting of people like Cy Hirsch, you're somebody I've known over in the past, he did a story suggesting that Biden was essentially forced out by a group of people who were loyal to Barack Obama,

that there was basically a threat that the 25th Amendment was going to be evoked. uh and that it was that caused him uh to change his mind because remember seven days before he dropped out of the race he was adamant that he was going to stay in um and something changed his mind so what happened there i think that's kind of the second question is how did that whole maneuver work out and another country we would call that a coup uh we just here for some reason we just called it a change of mind yeah that that move is just totally swept under the rug in terms of the meaning of it, the implication of it. It's just like, oh, yeah, well, he couldn't. You, you, you, by the way, the defenders of democracy who see

around every corner a threat to democracy totally undemocratically replaced one candidate with another. And yeah, it's business as usual. You brought up a name, Barack Obama. The other name I always think about, though, is Nancy Pelosi. Right. And this is, she was the figure whose name got leaked out very prominently. In the key period between July 13th and July 21st of last summer, there were a number of news stories that leaked out that suggested that Nancy Pelosi had called Joe Biden, and maybe along with Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, the three of them, may have approached Biden. There is a story that suggested that she put Biden's longtime aide, Mike Donnellan on the telephone and had Donald and essentially read him out the riot act about what the reality was with the poll situation.

I don't believe that story. The idea that Joe Biden would be told negative news about polls for the first time and say, oh, yeah, you're right. I'm going to drop out. That doesn't really scan for me, but you're right. She figures prominently in most of the kind of official versions of what happened. but still it's not sufficient to explain to the American people how an American president is removed from his own ticket, particularly after a primary process that was itself undemocratic. Most of those, or a lot of those primaries were one candidate slate elections where there were no competitors.

There were competitors were forced off the ticket. You know, people like Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, RFK, of course, was sort of bullied off the ticket early on. You know, these are important questions to work out, I think. I'm going to pursue our little framework of the top three stories that you want to pay attention to over the next four years, but I'm also going to indulge these tangents. Because you brought up RFK, I do want to ask what you think is the probability or the possibility of him getting confirmed. That starts tomorrow, his hearings. So I read in the Financial Times this morning, Matt, that he's,

probably going to lose this is not for sure right this is speculation but he's probably going to lose the three votes that were lost by heggsett so Collins Murkowski and McConnell but then there's a whole host of other Republican senators Langford is hugely pro-choice and then Tillis I believe is directly connected or heavily invested in or receiving support from the pharmaceutical industry there's other senators whose names aren't at the top tip of my tongue who are also heavily supported by the agricultural industry. So when I hear all that, Matt, I'm just like, you know, just trying to play the chess of this, I don't know how he gets to 50.

I think they will have to call in a lot of markers, but my understanding is that he does have the votes. Now, that's just a rumor. But that's kind of the word within the Trump community, is that they think they feel pretty good about his chances. Chelsea Gabbard is another story. I think there's a little bit of pessimism about whether or not she's going to get through. The ex-intelligence officials are putting on a pretty hardcore full court press to try to prevent her from getting the DNI job. But you look at RFK, you think about all the different lobbying interests

that will throw everything they have at preventing somebody like that from getting into the becoming the secretary of the HHS. it's extraordinary right and the only thing that you can imagine is that there have to be huge reassurances given by the trump administration to all these republican senators who might be on the fence that they're going to get what they want about other things i yeah there's got to be a lot of horse trading going on right now so to your point i think the betting markets reflect what you just shared with us the sentiment within within trump world i don't care about betting markets i always tell people i have to tell my friends this bedding markets

are a picture of your current present tense reality. They have no ability to look into the future. Heggseth was at 10%. But that didn't tell you what events could change or how reality could be shaped in those ensuing months. So your 10% meant that's where you were today. But RFK is at 80%. So you would have to think, to your point, exactly, if he's going to pick up those Republican senators that are tied to ag and tied to pharmacy, pharmaceutical industry, there must be being promises made, in which case you're like, okay, then has RFK been neutered? Has he been defanged going into HHS? I haven't heard that yet either. And that's one of the kind of big mysteries about how to cover Donald Trump. You know, is he going to live up to all those promises? Yes, he's going

to put all these people in office who, you know, frankly, just the fact that he chose these folks is extraordinary to begin with. You think about somebody like, Gabbard. Gabbard, just six months ago, was in the, in the middle of a, you know, a, you know, fairly major controversy about being put on a terror watch list by the TSA and ends up as the, you know, the nominated to head the DNI. We have another person in Kennedy and Jay Batacharya. These are both heavily censored figures who are now, you know, going through these nomination processes. So it would be a huge reversal for them to actually get into office. But at what cost? right like are they going to get in and then not be able to do a whole lot you know the american

government is a it's the mother of all super tankers it doesn't change easily uh but they're certainly making in an effort to to do new things and to take big swings of the axe at this thing i i think it's fascinating to watch yeah by the way that's going to be the nature of a conversation i have coming up a little bit later here today on the will cane show this maximalist approach by Trump, you know, doesn't mean he gets everything, but I think it means he gets more, you know, and Jonathan Turley, you know, law professor at, I think he's at George Washington, I said that. He's like, if he gets half of the executive orders that he's put in, that's like a massive change in American governance, you know, he may not get birthright citizenship.

He may not get half of these, but if he does get the other half, you're just talking about a massive turn of the supertanker. And I think it's the same thing. And I don't, I'm not, I'm not debating with myself. I'm just saying like Robert F. Kenny Jr. is head as HHS, even if he has some handcuffs on him because of deals made with senators who are tied to certain industries, is still a massive change from who you might

alternatively have at HHS. Absolutely. I mean, I think as we've seen, all of the different health agencies have essentially become proxies for, you know, corporate

health services, right? Whether it's insurance, or the pharmaceutical industry, you know, private equity companies that own hospital groups. They've given so much money to both parties over the years that it's become very, very difficult to really make significant change, any significant change in policy. Really, they've advanced kind of slowly and decisions are made as a collective over periods of years or decades. Now they want to come in and just sort of drastically do new things, that would be really, really interesting if that happened.

But they might go back to some other things that aren't so great. I mean, my understanding is that they're thinking about rolling back, negotiating for Medicare prices, for the government, bulk pharmaceutical deals. It took a while to get to there. But other things might come in their place, which would be great. Um, okay, if I asked you for a second story, you gave me Joe Biden and who was running the White House over the past four years.

If I gave you a second story that you're really focused on in investigating, what would it be? Well, this is a little bit more because I'm personally invested in the question, and I spent years on this issue. But the free speech and ending federal censorship executive order mandates a sweeping review of the entire federal government. and orders that a report be delivered about every federal agency that was involved in activities that might be contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment, essentially. Now, when I worked on the Twitter file story, which was, you know, the internal files at Twitter that Elon Musk released, we saw just in a little corner of a few documents that there was a fairly enormous kind of informal bureaucracy that was.

that had been built, where agencies like the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence were constantly in contact with these big Internet platforms and building a kind of an informal censorship system modeled after the formal one that is now in place in Europe called the Digital Services Act. And I'm fascinated to see how far along they went towards getting there. I think we only saw a little tiny bit of that. my guess is that they were aiming quite high and that a lot of those programs are still in place and need to be extracted because that was a huge question because it gets into all sorts of things like, you know, what kinds of things are we seeing not only on the news or on social

media, but, you know, are there changes in AI decisions, right? Like when you call up searches on Google, what are you seeing, you know, what are you not seeing? Probably there are content massaging efforts that have gone, been built into kind of the American government bureaucracy at many levels that, you know, that are going to be fascinating to uncover. That one I'm less optimistic on. And I'm curious what you think about this. I'm less optimistic on it, Matt, because, and you wrote about this, like, I think this was an article up you have at racket. com news where you said, you know, how do you cover the Trump administration? Because standing there with Donald Trump at the inauguration was all of these guys, Sundar Pitchai, you know, YouTube censorship, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, Jeff Bezos, Amazon, you know, on and on.

So I don't know, it doesn't mean it can't happen. It means on that one, that's going to take a lot of work from you because it seems like, those guys are in the family now, you know. So I don't know how much, you know, the Trump administration appetite will be to aim their missiles at those guys now. Well, we saw beginning in August, Mark Zuckerberg was really one of the first of those CEOs who had been, you know, heavily involved in these backdoor censorship efforts. He was really the first one to jump ship and send a public letter and say, you know, aside from Elon, obviously, right? But he issued a letter saying that he had been pressured to censor.

He used the word censor, which I think was important. And essentially what his message was, was we're under a lot of pressure to comply with these increasingly draconian laws that exist all around the world. Europe has become an extremely difficult market for all of these American companies. companies, and we can't push back against any of that if we're getting the same thing under the table from the United States government. We need the U.S. government to stand behind us and push back against laws like, you know, the Online Harms Act in the UK or the Digital Services Act in Europe. So the most optimistic read of what that was at the inauguration was, you know, Google, Facebook, Apple, and all of these companies.

hoping that they can count on the Trump administration to stand behind them if they decide to defy some of these orders. Like you, I'm less optimistic. Or I would think, Matt, or they don't like it. They don't like the government manipulation of their content. They did it for four years in order to protect their liability, you know, indemnity and so forth. So the question is like, okay, going forward we'd rather not operate under this type of coercion so what we're willing to do is seeing like are they canaries on the previous government officials that that um pressured them so much so trump and his DOJ or whoever it is that does the investigation is like okay we're not going to go after the social media companies because they were really under the coercion of the government and here are the bad guys

behind the scenes within the government if that's the case that's a beautiful thing and again there are already the structures to do that kind of investigation and to take down their depositions if they want to give them, it's already basically in place. The executive order mandates the investigation. There is a Senate committee that is raring to go to staff up, basically Rand Paul's committee, I think would be very pleased to do a wide-ranging probe into the entire censorship regime. They've already issued a whole bunch of subpoenas of. about COVID origins, but I think that's another issue that they're willing to take on. This is the Homeland Security and Government Oversight Committee. So there's going to be a

big investigation into the censorship business. If those folks are willing to talk, and Zuckerberg already has in a limited way, not only verbally, but he's also turned over quite a lot of material to the House in the last couple of years. But the other companies haven't. That's what we, we really need to see, you know, YouTube, you know, and obviously related companies like Google, Wikipedia, other firms. We need to find out what their communications were. It's not enough to have the Twitter files and basically a handful of documents from Facebook. I think we need a much bigger array of stuff to get a handle on what was going on. And it's not in the past, right? It's not over. All those same tech companies

today are exerting some type of censorship over content, YouTube, even Facebook. Like, I don't think it's unfettered free speech right now on any of those platforms. Not even close. I mean, it's ridiculous. And it's gotten worse over the years, too. Even simple things like using search engines, you know, it's so obvious what they want you to read about almost any topic now. And this is why I think a lot of the people on Mark Andreessen talked about this in the Joe Rogan

show. This was one of the alarming things for a lot of the guys who are these CEOs in Silicon Valley is when they found out that the government basically wanted to do the same thing with emerging AI technologies that they had done with social media content. The thing with that is that now you wouldn't even need to have Twitter files back and forth or emails back and forth from the White House to Facebook, you know, please take this down ASAP. With AI, you can just tell it some general ideas. We would like you to stress this and deemphasize that. And, you know, presto, it's done. So that's why it's so scary. Like, have they started, have they already implemented kind of AI-based algorithmic censorship? If that's the case, then it's going to be very, very

to unwind that and a huge technical problem. But I'm curious where you are on this. I want to move to your third story in a second. So I'm kind of focused on this deep seek story. I can't profess expertise whatsoever, right? But the Chinese AI platform that is reportedly, we don't know what's true and what's not, but reportedly doing really advanced AI processing

at 1.20th of the cost with like one-tenth of the chips, you know, something like that. They built Deep Seek for like $6 million and they have to build these other AI large language models for like a hundred million bucks. And it takes, you know, GROC, Elon's one like, I don't know, let's call it 20,000 chips and it took, you know, Deep Seek like 2,000 chips. The point is they just got better, cheaper, faster. But what that means is what Silicon Valley was selling to everybody was AI is going to be dominated by the existing players because they're the only ones with the infrastructure to be able to do. this, right? The money it takes. So, you know, Open AI and Microsoft and Google, they were going to be the winners. They were saying that. We will be the winners because no one else can afford to win.

And so we need to do this. And that's what's thrown this whole thing into the chaos is it it shouldn't be, but it's a surprise. Oh, guess what? Another guy in a garage just totally disrupted you. You know, Facebook in a garage to MySpace and, you know, on and on. It's the story of tech. And it just happened when it comes to AI. My point of saying that entire. story. If it's true that that's what Deep Seek did, well, then anybody trying to monopolize AI and control the way it does output and therefore our minds has to deal with the guy in the garage. That's actually good for free speech. Maybe not deep speak in particular because of China, but if people can do this, that's good for free speech. I hope so. I mean, certainly

that technology will make it easier to detect, you know, what they're doing, why they're, you know, what the emphasis is, what the narratives are. I mean, I think that that's, that's one of the good things about AI. I have actually even used some of my own AI programs to try to, try to figure out what the companies are doing or what they're, what they're up ranking and down ranking. But, yeah, I'm still scared of it. I think there's, you know, we already saw that these companies, turned over 98% of their content management operations

to algorithms. And if you can fully mechanize that process through AI, even if it's a lousy AI, that's a little disturbing. So I hope that's not what they're planning on doing. And again, a number of them have claimed that they revolted and gave all their money to Trump because they were worried about the presentation they heard from the Biden administration last April on this subject.

So, again, how do we read the presence of all those people at the inauguration? Are they there because they're going to be implementing a different government-slash-AI program? Or is it going to be sort of less aggressive? What's the deal exactly? I don't know that we're going to find out. I hope we will. Okay, I want to ask you quickly, your third story you're going to focus on. You already covered a couple of things I wanted to talk about, including, you know, how you cover the Trump administration.

But one of the things you talked in depth with Tucker is about, you know, the opportunity here for accountability, specifically when it comes to some very high-ranking people like John Brennan, James Clapper, Leon Panetta, and so forth, the intelligence agency apparatus that we know, for example, lied about Hunter Biden's laptop, has now had their security clearances revoked. that's interesting to me. I'm curious, though, would that be your number three, or do you have another story you're really focused on here over the next four years? Absolutely, it is.

Trump's weaponization of government order, executive order, mandates two different sweeping reviews of the intelligence community, one that would be headed up by the Attorney General, another one that would be headed up by the DNI, who again, theoretically, is Tulsi Gabbard, who, you know, has been a primary focus of some of those people that you mentioned, particularly John Brennan.

So there are going to be highly motivated people looking at these actors like Brennan Clapper, you know, Mike Morel, John McLaughlin, you know, all the people who are on that 51 spies list, you know, the letter that was saying that the Hunter Biden laptop story, you had the earmarks of a Russian information operation or whatever. But there's so much stuff that they're going to be able to look at from the origins of the Russia Gate story to mass surveillance, to the illegal use of leaks of signal intelligence, to create fake news stories. I mean, there's to censorship, frankly, and intersects with that as well.

So I think, you know, There's an opportunity here to do something like a second church committee, which happened in 1975 when Idaho Senator Frank Church. Basically, to help America out of its post-Watergate funk, decided to air all the dirty laundry or a lot of the dirty laundry of the NSA, the CIA, the FBI. And a lot of those programs, by the way, were very similar to the stuff that we're talking about now. It was about censorship. It was mass surveillance, you know, fake news stories that were that were put into the public. And the public was shocked and it led to kind of a period of reform after which there was less political investigation and snooping. And I hope that's what we get.

Really quickly on that one, Matt. Are you hopeful on that? You just said it would be under the direction and the motivation, therefore, of you said the AG, right? So Pam Bondi and DNI, but also in conjunction with Congress. Right. And so do you feel optimistic? I mean, this is why, in part, there's going to be a lot of resistance to Tulsi. There's other reasons, but that's in part. Do you feel optimistic about all of them? Like, it's all kind of come back to Trump and his desire to do it. That's just the way it is under Trump, but that there is some. And by the way, he will be motivated because they all

investigated him, you know, and planted fake stories about him. He was the target. That's why normally when you talk about probes of the intelligence community, it's like, okay, at best, they're going to give us one thing and it'll be for show. In this case, you had the entire intelligence community sort of working for a period of eight years to crawl up the backside of a sitting president, an angry sitting president, who has nominated people who were specifically put there to, to kind of enact payback on those folks.

I mean, it's very conspicuous that he nominated both Tulsi and Cash Patel, who is another big decision this week. You know, if he gets that job at the FBI, if Tulsi gets the DNI job, that's going to have a heavy impact on these investigations. But I've already heard that there is already sort of unprecedented cooperation going on between congressional investigators and agencies like the CIA and Homeland Security, where they already have the

leadership in place, then the other actors, we're going to find out. But if the pattern holds, we're going to, at the very minimum, we're going to be getting a whole lot of documents about things that should be fascinating, which is interesting to me. I know, it might not be enough for you, but I don't know. Oh, I think it's enough for me. That's pretty interesting. You know, and the thing about you, Matt, is you're not a partisan. You're not on the right. You are historically on the left, and I think I don't even feel comfortable using those terms anymore. I really don't. I don't think they actually describe any of us, nor the debate in our public sphere anymore. I don't think the bipolar spectrum is useful. But there will be times when you'll have to cover this administration

and you will for things that you think are worthy to be investigated of, and I want to keep talking to you. And clearly as well, you're going to be looking at the stuff that this administration actually exposes about the last eight years. So racket. News is going to be a place you have to keep up with because, yeah, I share your passion for that last one, especially, all of them. And then I would throw in JFK as well. And everything else. All that's fascinating. You know, how is no presidential candidate thought of this before? The public wants to know all this stuff. Why not just give it to them? And what this tells you is that these forces are so powerful that we couldn't even release information that's sort of basic to know for the American public. It's amazing to me. It's just

just from a spectator's point of view to see all this happening. So I'm really interested and whichever way it goes, it's going to be fascinating to cover, I think. And I'm glad we're going to be able to talk about it. Yeah, absolutely. And he's going to be covering it at racquetot news. So make sure you go over there and check it out. Matt, thanks so much for giving me so much time today. Good to see you, man. Thanks, Will. Take care. Okay, there you goes. Matt Taiibi here on the Will King show. We've got to get Matt. on the 4 o'clock Fox News Channel show as well. Let's take a quick break.

We'll talk about the conference championship games. Are the refs in the pocket of the Kansas City Chiefs? Are the Chiefs one of the greatest dynasties of all time? I've got to show you this cover from New York Magazine. It's really funny, but also cynical. That's coming up on the Will Kane Show. This is Jason Chaffetz from the Jason in the House podcast. Join me every Monday to dive deeper into the latest political headlines

and chat with remarkable guests. Listen and follow now at Fox Newspodcast.com. Or wherever you download podcasts. The Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers, the Dallas Cowboys, the New England Patriots, now the Kansas City Chief, some of the biggest dynasties in the history. of the NFL but have they gotten there without the help of the NFL it is the will cane show streaming live at fox news.com on the fox news youtube channel and the fox news facebook page hit subscribe at apple spotify or go over to youtube and set a reminder so you'll remember to be with us here every

Monday through Thursday at 12 o'clock at fox news YouTube um let's bring in the boys in new york I want to talk about the conference championship games for just a moment uh three times if the Kansas Chiefs win the Super Bowl three times in a row, never been done in the NFL. You don't even need to weigh in, James. I did this morning on Twitter already. The only one that really matters in this is Tenfoil Pat, because he's the only one of the four of us that can claim no historical dynasty. And you know, we all played that game.

We all protect our place, right? Cowboys win three Super Bowls in four years. I don't want that to happen. I don't want anybody, which the Patriots did as well, right? I don't want anyone else to address or come close to that record of achievement. I fully submit that the New England Patriots are the greatest dynasty in the history of the NFL. They have outpaced the Cowboys, they've outpaced the Niners now, and they've outpaced the 70s Steelers. Appreciate that.

Green Bay Packers, sorry, Dan, I'm going to let you protect your place, but nobody cares because it wasn't Super Bowls. That's true. It's sad. I'd be mad if I were a Packer fan, but it's true. Nobody cares. you didn't win Super Bowl but we're all protecting something right

the three of us so tinfoil pat who is a jaguar fan seems to be the perfect person to address this if they win three in a row where do they go in the dynasty rankings pat

well first of all Jacksonville has gone to three or four conference championship games 695 I want to clarify that Also, I don't think they go up there at one or two or three. I mean, like, I think they're behind a lot of the dynasties because we've kind of seen that things aren't really like on the up and up, I think. I mean, they get a lot of calls.

I mean, they're a good team. Are you blaming referees right now? We're in an age of parity in the NFL still, and there's no reason for them to be on this kind of run. I think you can do two things at the same time. I think you can really wonder about some of these calls, but still acknowledge the greatness of what's happening in Kansas City. And I don't think it's an overstatement to say that Mahomes is on a Michael Jordan type of run in the NFL.

Since he came into the league, his worst season is to lose in the AFC championship game, right? He's never done less than arrive at the AFC championship game. He's already won how many Super Bowls? Three? He's won three, right? and this would put him, like, what is that going to be? Four in six years?

Is that what it would be? Four and six if he won this year. Yeah. That's stunning in an age of parity. To your point, this is the age of parity, and he's doing that. Go ahead. I still put it behind the Patriots. I don't know.

I mean, those Cowboys of 4900 teams are still pretty good. You know, I think that they're, they might be on par with them, but, I mean. Is it just me, or does it, Do they not feel like those Patriots teams as much? I don't know why. No, but just like you're not at the end of this thing. And I'm not going to talk about the stats or the numbers of the amount. It's that the Chiefs kind of feel like a top 40 radio hit that's like kind of poppy,

TikToky and overplayed. And the Patriots kind of feel like they're like straight out of like a 1980s sports pure Americana like underdog story. I kind of understand where Sam, yeah. They feel different as teams. Is that just the Taylor Swift? There's a little tailor, but it's just like, it's just something grimy to it where the Pats were like, it's, you know, they're playing Sweet Caroline and Bon Jovi at the games, and it's like right outside of the town where the American Revolution took place and you got all these guys. Well, let's not forget. The Pats were hated. The Pats were hated. Let's not forget that. Okay. You were never close to someone suggesting you're America's team. No one liked you, and you got accused of cheating. Nobody, and you got accused of cheating, consistently.

Well, multiple different manners. Consistently, I don't know about that. From SpyGateGate, Gate, to Deflategate. DeflakeGate was proven wrong by the scientists. Trust the science. Brady literally changed the hitting a quarterback rule. Yeah, I mean, oh, man, you should have seen the clip on Twitter last night of if Patrick Mahomes was treated like this, people would be kicked out of the league,

and it's like a two-minute compilation of Brady just getting walloped time. after time after time in playoff games and no flags well the chiefs have got their the thing about the chiefs is nobody hates them the only thing that has inspired hate is Taylor Swift

she's the only thing that's inspired hate towards the chiefs they're pretty likable team otherwise I don't agree with that is really a lot come on I mean Travis Kelsey might be slightly controversial but who else I can't get a lot of guys on there with questionable pass. They've had Tyreek kill.

Cream Hunt's back. There's the running back now. Cream Hunt. It just came back. Cream Hunt. They've had a couple for sheep rise. Yeah, but everybody, you, the image of your team is filtered through your quarterback. And I, I don't know what

Patrick Mahomes' approval rating is, but it's got to be high. It's got to be really high. He's a likable dude. Like, what's there to do? I'll take a poll. He's a likable dude. So it's like Tebow with the Gators, like covering up the Gators problems? Yeah. Yes.

No doubt about it. Is that it? Yes. Although I don't think the Chiefs are on the same level of what was going on at Florida. But the Chiefs, this is where I'll put them in context. If they win the Super Bowl this year, I too will have them still behind the Patriots. I will, but I will surpass the Cowboys. And I have to look back at the Steelers, but I think it would surpass the Steelers as well. Similarly, Mahomes, he's already number two to Brady.

It wouldn't put him past Brady in my book yet. But it would mean it's real close. to happen real close real close yeah i think we also crazy which is crazy because brady such a goat accomplished such ridiculous things and now within a year or two of his retirement here's somebody attacking his legacy the only other part i'll add to where i think mohomes has to go a little further for brady is that if you take out the two manning brothers and the philly special um just how close Brady got to having more than seven Super Bowls. That's true.

Yeah, I know, but it's just a lot to take out. It's a lot to take out. Fair. Yeah. Really quick on the refs, to your point infoil, it's a bad spot for Josh Allen. It was a critical moment in the game. Everybody at this point, I think, has seen the thing

where they go forward on fourth down. It looks like Josh Allen gets it. He gets a bad spot. It's a turnover in downs on downs. And Kansas City goes and scores. And it really is the deciding moment. think in the game um technologically mike gunsleman over at outkick i think made a great argument it's like you can you can judge a tennis ball whether or not it's in and out you know as fast as they're

going 100 miles an hour but you can't get an accurate spot on a football and i saw people i did this yesterday on the will cane show at fnc and they were like look it's not that easy there is a chip in the football it's mid panel you got to know when the guy's knee is down there's a lot i don't buy any of that I think technology were well past where we could actually get this scientifically down on where the ball is. This was not a knee thing. Yeah, good point.

Well, I mean, he was still up. We can see. It doesn't matter where, yeah, it doesn't matter where his knee was because he was up in the pile. So we just need to know where the ball was. Right. But I think the people are making the argument as a general proposition.

But even still, you can really generally see when the knee is down and then you should have a scientific measurement of where the ball is at that given moment. We should be able to figure this out. in the NFL. Okay, finally, I want to share this with you. This is the New York Magazine cover. Let's put this up. This is after Trump's before.

Before. Inoguration, this is some of the balls that night. You were at this party, right, James? Yeah, this was the night before the inauguration. Okay, what parties is this? This was the TikTok under 30 party. It was hosted by a bunch of influencer, conservative, not even fully conservative, a lot of libertarian, independent, just not far left. Taylor Lorenz was even there doing a write-up on it.

She was actually a little more fair than this article was. See, look at this picture. It's a bunch of good-looking people. And the author wrote that it was a white party. It was all white people. The title is The Cruel Kids Table, the casual crulness of all these young conservatives in the new right, right? I don't know what about this picture, they think, is damning.

It's a bunch of good-looking people having a nice time with good-looking smiles on, wearing black tuxes but they used that picture to say they were all white do we have the other picture dan the uncropped photo yep look at this this is the photo before they cropped it for the cover of new york magazine literally just outside the frame three black dudes they cut them out they cut them out of the photo to fit the narrative they wanted to sell you about the american right in 2024 under donald trump it's that meme it's that famous meme where the they zoom in, and once they zoom in tight enough, you think the victim is actually the assailant. This is just horrible.

Well, maybe it's not horrible. Maybe it's very effective propaganda from New York Magazine. All right, let's get into birthright citizenship. Last week, we here, I criticized Noah Rothman of National Review. He responded at National Review, so today he's invited to be on the Will Kane Show. Next. Hey, I'm Trey Gowdy, host of the Trey Gatti podcast. I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday as we navigate life together

and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side. Listen and follow now at Fox News Podcast.com. From the Fox News Podcasts Network. Hey there, it's me. Kennedy, make sure to check out my podcast. Kennedy saves the world. It is five days a week, every week. Download and listen at Fox Newspodcast.com or wherever you.

listen to your favorite podcast. Should Donald Trump repeal birthright citizenship? Should it be not the United States is one of the few nations on the planet to extend citizenship to those born on its soil? It is the Will Kane Show streaming live at Fox News.com on the Fox News. YouTube channel in the Fox News Facebook page, hit subscribe and set a reminder and jump into the comment section, and that means you can jump into the debate. We do have a poll up about birthright citizenship, and I've got some of your comments here at the Will Kane Show Studios

in Dallas, which we'll get to in just a moment. But if you subscribe on YouTube, you can become a member of our community, delicious, or subscribe it, Apple or Spotify. Last week, I was watching newsroom, and I saw National Reviews, Noah Rothman, say this about Donald Trump's focus on birthright citizenship. Donald Trump does this at the expense of his other priorities. There's opportunity cost to everything you do. He has wide latitude to address illegal immigration. We are not talking about illegal immigration. We're talking about legal immigration. Think of the common sense that he evoked in his inaugural address. What do people think of when they think of illegal immigrants? Are they thinking of the infant child of a person here on a student or

work visa, which is what this CEO does? Or are they talking about the adult population with no prospects and will likely become a ward of the state. That's who they're thinking of, and that's what he's taking his eye off the ball. It's inauspicious. What did Joe Biden down? Joe Biden had a very narrow remit when he entered office, and he allowed his administration to be captured by wild-eyed ideologues with no sense of the world outside their own cohort, who directed his administration to muscle through programs that the public did not like. He lost his mandate and he lost his job. Donald Trump should take lessons from that. Okay. So in response to To that, we talked about it here on the Will Cain Show with Vince August and Rob Bluey on a panel.

Here's what I had to say. I think he's wrong. I think he's wrong on both fronts, intellectually and politically. So most of his argument was political. But let me just state intellectually for just one moment. I believe the United States of America is one of the only countries in the world that recognizes the concept of birthright citizenship. And what more, we don't recognize our citizens as being. foreigners when they're born on some other soil. So we have this asymmetrical relationship with

citizenship that nobody else in the world emulates. Donald Trump is not Joe Biden. And Donald Trump has shown a political instinct that has maximized opportunities over and over and over in pursuit and accomplishment of success in a way that the conservatives who lecture him have failed at for decades. All right. So in response to that criticism of Noah Rothman, he wrote then at National Review, here's the headline,

a brief response to Will Kane and Company. You can go check that out at National Review, where he lays out his argument about what I had to say. So we thought, hey, why don't we invite Noah Rothman of National Review here on to the Will Kane Show?

Welcome, Noah. Hey, Will, thanks very much for having me. You bet. All right. Without necessarily rehashing what you wrote at National Review, nor the argument that you made on America's Newsroom, which we did here, tell me what you think I got wrong. What's my biggest mistake in my criticism of you and birthright citizenship? Well, I made two points in that clip, one of which your panel addressed and the other you didn't. I'd like to get your take on it. But first, the ones that you did. I think your panel did a very good job of articulating the arguments on the right over this. And they are arguments, both of which have a lot of merit. You are the point that the United States is the only country with this kind of provision. It's perfectly outdated. It doesn't meet our current needs, and it's anathema to the rest of the world, and therefore it should be revised. There's a conservative argument against that proposition, which maintains that the birthright citizenship amendment, the originalist argument

is it was understood in 1866, 1868. It was perfectly reasonable to the founders, as the founders had a conception of English, the English concept of a natural-born citizen. It hasn't been expanded by a lot of courts that have reinterpreted it, create a lot of judicial precedent. So the activist proposition here is the EO, the activist proposition legislating from the Oval Office, is what Donald Trump is doing, which is something that conservatives look as can't set. Besides that, take the merits of birthright citizenship out of it, because I didn't really talk about that, as you say, on America's newsroom. The argument that you make in its favor as you made and your panelists made is that it's basically a bank shot. The idea here is that

Maybe the courts take it up. Maybe Congress trims around the edges of it. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But the EO is destined for failure. Just about everybody recognizes that. And failure incurs political costs. I heard the same thing about Lena Kant, Joe Biden's FTC head. She lost and lost and lost and lost in the courts.

But there was a moral victory behind it, right? Eventually, some future generation would pick up the baton and say, here's the legal predicate for changing the laws so we get Lena Khan's vision and in American law. Fine. In the here and now, you're losing and making a ton of enemies along the way. In Kahn's case, it meant alienating an entire generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, all of whom lined up behind Donald Trump. But Barack Obama incurred costs when DAPA failed, Joe Biden incurred costs, when the vaccine mandate failed, the eviction moratorium failed, the student loan stuff failed. Even Donald Trump incurred costs with the earlier iterations of

his travel ban. These things, you know, Donald Trump cannot defy the laws of political gravity. and honeymoons are short-lived things. I understand bold action. But stupid action and service to boldness is not rendered smart by virtue of its ambition. It could fail and fail on its merits and have no redeeming character. That was the first point. Oh, that was just the first point? Well, I want to deal with the two you just addressed.

Yeah, there's another one. Well, I'll conduct this with conversational OCD and remember there's a second point to be made. But I want to address the two that you've addressed, you've laid out for us so far. I totally disagree with you on the intellectual merits of birthright citizenship in which position is originalist and which position is activist. You know, I did point out, and we don't have to rehash it, I think there's like 30 countries in the world that recognize birthright citizenship, most of them in the Western Hemisphere. Most of those countries do it because they wanted their colonialist enterprises who those citizens

born, say in Colombia or Mexico or wherever it may be, to be citizens of that country and not just Spain. In the United States, when we did it, as you point out, in 18, what is it, 60s, 70s, roughly, 68. I think. It was about the slaves. It was about whether or not the slaves and the slave children retained citizenship. And the drafters of that, of the 14th Amendment at the time, which I believe it was a senator from, I think he was from Minnesota. There was two senators that were very fundamental in putting this together, said this is not supposed to be granting citizenship to people who are subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign government. And that phrase subject to the jurisdiction of is the key to the intellectual argument, right? You're born here,

you're a citizen as long as you're not subject to another foreign jurisdiction. So the slaves were unique in that situation. The slaves didn't have any other foreign jurisdiction that had oversight or could claim citizenship or governance over those people. So they fit the bill of what those drafters were thinking of when it comes to the 14th Amendment. But illegal immigrants or even, you know, tourists coming through the United States aren't what the founders of that amendment envisioned, nor would they ever have because there's direct quotes from them that say, this is not who we're talking about.

We're not talking about people who are citizens of a foreign country. We're not drafting this for them. So my only point there is, you know, this is like a, for those listening, like, originalist is a mantle that every conservative wants to claim, right? So Noah framed it as though you see the originalist side and I'm the activist side. I see it the opposite, Noah.

I think that I'm making an originalist argument. But whether or not we bogged down in that, I think it might have a shot at the Supreme Court. Now, I think that should they take up challenges to the CEO, and it arrives at the Supreme Court, I don't know. I don't know where John Roberts will land. I don't know.

But I think there's a real shot to revisit this issue. That's on the intellectual side of point number one you made. Then you made the political argument, but we can just address with the intellectual side of point one. Sure. And I'm generally agnostic on the notion that the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship's provision are integral to the notion of what it means to be an American. However, and while your quotes are accurate, the courts will look at the entirety of the process of the amendment and its adoption, the drafting of it, the approval of it by three-fourths of Congress and the approval of it by two-thirds of the states, all of whom have an understanding of what the language and the ratification means, whether or not one congressman said that, As well, my colleague over at National Review, Dan McLaughlin, has made a pretty airtight case. I think the jurisdiction thereof applies not just to birthright citizenship, but to the application of the Constitution to non-citizens in criminal terms as well.

So if you were to amend that, you'd have to amend a lot more than just that. But again, this is separate to the point that I'd spend a lot of time making on America's newsroom. Which is the political side. Sure. Sure. Can I do before you lay off the second one, I want to do this in order. Okay.

The second point of point one that you brought up is the political capital side of this. And this is where I accused you and others of being prisoners of the past. I just don't think that your analysis of Joe Biden is applicable to Donald Trump. I just don't. I just think he's a unique historical figure in American politics. That doesn't mean he's going to meet with success and everything he does, but doesn't pay the same political cost of Joe Biden and the failures of his overreach. I do think there's a maximalist position that maybe falls short.

But in the process of falling short, it's not necessarily that birthright citizenship gets taken up in a decade. but that he accomplishes all these other things. He accomplishes all, I mean, how many executive orders are we up to now? I don't know, 250, I don't know, executive orders and actions. You know, like Jonathan Turley's pointed out, if he gets half, we're talking about a massive change in American governments. Maybe he doesn't get birthright citizenship. But I think that my accusation of you, when I was having that conversation, it wasn't personal.

But it's a mindset of the past, what's that? I didn't take it personal. What did you say? I did not take it personally. Is a mindset, yeah, I got you, I got you. It's a mindset of the past that suggests you got to basically shoot a thousand, bad a thousand. You've got to make sure you meet success over and over again, otherwise you trip up your own momentum. I don't think that applies to Donald Trump.

I just don't. I don't know that there's an intellectual argument to be made other than he's built different, Noah. Well, I am unpersuaded by the notion that the similar behavior pattern notwithstanding, Donald Trump existing in an entirely different corporeal form than Joe Biden means that we have to re-evaluate him, even though he's making Joe Biden's mistakes. That's the subordination of an intellectual argument to something that's much more atavistic and much more reliant on the personality and the great man theory of history. I don't subscribe to it. Hold on real quick. Don't you look around right now?

No one go, does it everything feel impossible right now? Look at everything being done. No, because what Donald Trump is going to go for grainwood. Oh, my God, he's going to go for Panlon Canal. The vast majority of Donald Trump's CEO is cut with the grain of. the culture and indeed cut with the grain of conservative political thought in so far as they remove the government from trying to intervene in private decisions private decision making social engineering in ways that whoever's in power desires the vast majority of them not necessarily this one you'll

struggle to find a poll that says this is popular and that's where the opportunity to cause comes in Donald Trump and his solicitors and his subordinates are going to have to spend a lot of time arguing that not yes we've won the argument around illegal immigration Joe Biden's illegal immigration regime. We want that to be amended and some sanity restored to our illegal immigration regime. But also, we're going to create a whole new category of a legal immigrant, which contributes really modestly to the legal immigration in this country, to the tune of two or three million people a year, something like 30,000. To be clear, we're trimming around the margin. We don't know exactly. We don't know what the problem. What the real big question here is,

is is Donald Trump doing what Joe Biden did insofar as in trying to appeal to very, very important, very influential but unrepresentative pressure groups within his coalition and trying to appease them at the expense of his broader mandate. That's what Joe Biden did. He outsourced his administration

to progressive activists and he lost the plot. Okay, I got you. I understand. I don't think so. I agree with you on the polling. You know, I've seen the polling. It's not a majority position.

I disagree with you about conservative thought because I think he's actively changed the whole concept of conservative thought. This is where I pointed out to some of the instincts of some people at National Review is too caught in the past because he's actively changing it in a yes more populous direction but he's changing also was what what I thought when I think of what you said what what really struck me is even on what is possible I think that he is reshaping the concept of what is possible and I felt like you were caught in yesterday's

possibilities that being said I submit to you on the polling I really do by the way while we're sitting here together, I just want to share some of what people are saying. And I know where we are in our conversation. Don't fret. Uh, Enoch's debt, selfer, I don't know, on YouTube says, you don't need to repeal birthright citizenship if you just enforce the laws of legal entry. Well, that would take care of a lot of it. It's largely a problem of the people care about of illegal immigration. Yeah, right. Tourism visas is something that we used to talk about. Before we had a migration crisis, tourism visas, which contribute about 30,000 births in the United States. I have a guy where a bugbear of immigration reformers.

Yeah. Percentage-wise, I know it's small. 30,000 is more than I would have guessed. In years where we don't have a massive influx of illegal immigration, yeah. Yeah. Tony 2's even's tone says, I can't imagine my dad coming from Sicily, having me here, and then deport me at the age of 43 as a U.S. Marine with a small business in California that has employees and contributes to society, although my dad did come here legally.

Supports your argument, right? Although, we should point out, like, it's not like, Hey, Tony, you're getting deported. I mean, you could do this any number of ways, including the way Australia has done it. Like, if one of your parents is a permanent citizen or a legal resident, or if you live here 10 years, you know, then you can apply for your own citizenship. People are over hyperventilating about what it means about deporting a Marine and a small business owner. It doesn't necessarily mean that.

I just want to read one more here. I don't know. Jelly kitten says, I don't think he's trying to change it or get rid of it. I think he wants a more clear definition of who it relates to. I don't know. Yeah. And there's some arguments, even on conservatives, Andy McCarthy, my colleague, it looks favorably upon the notion that Congress, I'm not sure by it, but he's a very smart guy.

It looks favorably on the notion that Congress can amend, for example, the statute relating to tourists, do tourist visas, does this apply to tourist visas? And the courts might look favorably upon that. You could probably try that. I don't think this Congress will. The two-seat Republican majority in the House has probably precludes that. But nevertheless, it's the sort of thing that you can look forward and say, okay, well, we'll like Lena Kahn style will establish a predicate for future generations to take up this baton.

Maybe. And maybe that's very ambitious. But it also risks losing sight of the mandate that you got from voters, which is to address legal immigration. What people think of when they think of illegal immigration, an adult population, a menacing adult population, with no prospects for success here who is likely to become a ward of the state. That's John Donald Trump's very clear mandate. You don't disagree. There is a possibility as well that is taken up by the Supreme Court favorably. there is a possibility i would also not rule out the possibility the decline court the court declines

to grant cert because we're talking about precedents that have not been revisited since 1898 and 1982 respectively that have been pretty broadly interpreted and it's not a non possibility you know who knows we don't know uh and i'm i'm willing to say one way or the other who knows but i'm not arguing the merits of this i'm arguing i know you're saying there's a political cost anybody who tells you there are saying there's a political cost okay i'm selling you something. Two a days. You have a poll.

You have a poll up. Our audience, right? Just read me out. I don't know if you can pull yourself up on screen, Dan. But what is the audience saying about birthright citizenship right now of YouTube? Should birthright citizenship be repealed in the U.S.? 75% say yes, 25% say no. There's your first poll on my side, Noah.

Nah, it's YouTube. It's my audience. It's here. So I fully understand. that it may not be representative of where the American public is right now, which I think most of them are like 40% support. Is that fair in that range? 60% opposition, 40% support, something like that.

So before Donald Trump took this up, it was like a 30-70 proposition. I've seen only one poll since Donald Trump has issued the CEO is from Atlas Intel, which did very good during the elections. And it suggests the Republicans have polarized around this and joined Donald Trump's side. So it's more like a 45-55 proposition, which is battleground territory, sure. But it's also get it. That part's easy. Getting those last five percent is the hard part. Right. Okay. Your second point, which I've put you on hold with as we debated subcategory A and B of point number one, your second point you want to make here today with us. Well, because you're such a consummate broadcaster, you have also already addressed it because we talked about it earlier about the about Joe Biden outsourcing his administration to progressive activists and losing the thread. And I think that's a real live possibility. Donald Trump has a lot of activists around him who have been.

invested a lot of hopes in him for their boutique issues that don't necessarily reflect what voters really want, what their urgent priorities are. And when you take your eye off that ball, you lose the voters who invested trust in you. It's a sort of thing that a lot of politicians get into the Oval Office and people whisper into their ear, grandeur, greatness, and they begin to see themselves as bigger than their own mandates. And it always goes poorly for them. And there's lessons there if Donald Trump is willing to learn them. Okay. It's a good warning. And I'm always willing and interested in being self-aware it is something seriously i'd be honest with you that i haven't thought about are you caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment in the new seeming

world of possibility and you know your argument is you know time suggests over and over again yeah yeah that's right but i am a little swept up in the idea of a politics that is a new that isn't driven by the trends in the currents of the past but rather by the will of the people and I submit to you that this is a divided issue. But I do think that Donald Trump has the moment and that moment could redefine what all of us think is possible. It very well could. But as a conservative, I'm always skeptical of year zero mentalities. The predicates of the past, the lessons of the past always have something to teach us today. And if it's out of touch for me to say, well, we need to think strategically out here. I can't imagine that we will have a future in which

strategic thought is somehow outdated or outmoded it is always valuable the the thing that when you you know i feel like that's a a targeted shot at me suggesting that you guys are out of touch or you're out of touch or that you're a never trumper i guess um i guess i think that the problem with conservatism and and um i am a conservative at least in by instinct right um The problem with conservatism is very good. It's like a value investor. It's a little bit like Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett is very good at telling me the way that it is.

He's very good at interpreting reality. And you need that. It's a big skill. It's a real important skill because progressives live in a world that isn't real, and they attempt to shape it to their own reality. Conservatives live in a world clear-eyed and accurately diagnose reality, but sometimes that can cause them to be pessimists about what is possible. that's what I think.

And you have, you know, you're a National Review guy. I one time worked there. I think of it in high esteem. I have a lot of friends over there. And I think a lot of William F. Buckley who said that the purpose of National Review was to stand to thwart history yelling stop.

And I think there's more than just yelling stop. You know, I think there's more, and you have to see what is possible, not just diagnose reality. You have to see what is possible, and this feels like a moment of possibility. I mean, that has been the progressive critique of that Buckley quote since the 1915,

50s. And it's not as though he was saying, no progress, no change, no evolution. That was a misinterpretation of his remarks. He was saying, however, that the social compact, as it was envisioned by the founders, deserves to be preserved against those who would imagine a grand possibility of the future. If only society can be bent and shaped and redirected in ways we think are valuable. The individual and the individual aspiration should be the font from which political and economic activity flow in this country. yeah and you and i don't disagree on that and i don't think anybody does about about the social compact envisioned by the founders constraining what we envision is possible you have to live with it within

the bounds of the constitutional republic we don't disagree on that um we might disagree on practical politics i think that was the source of much of our disagreement perhaps all right no i appreciate you being a good sport coming on um going back and forth over what ended up a uh shadow boxing argument like Plato's shadows on the wall. We've got to do it really instead of through digital rumors. Thank you very much. Well, I appreciate the opportunity

and yeah, it's a good conversation. I think it's a productive conversation. I kind of wish we had more of these. Okay, maybe we will. Right here together on The Wilcane Show. Noah Rothman from National Review. Check him out. All right, that's going to do it for us today

here on the Wilcane show. Make sure you check us out again tomorrow, same time, 12 o'clock Eastern Time. Fox News, YouTube, Fox News, Facebook, Terrestrial Radio, Spotify, Apple. I'll see you in a couple of hours. 4 o'clock Eastern. Will Kencham.

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