Will Cain Country - Who Was The First Deep State President?

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Story #1: Something's not right and we can all feel it. Government has never been more disconnected from the people. So, when did we lose the Republic? Who was the first deep state president? Story #2: The Shohei Ohtani gambling story doesn't add up. Plus, The Crew's picks for March Madness.  Story #3: Is banning TikTok a victory for the United States over China or is it a trojan horse to censor Americans? A conversation with the President of Free The People, Matt Kibbe.   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

For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for $5.5 plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. One, something's not right. I think we can all feel it. Government has never felt more disconnected from the people. So, when did we lose the Republic?

Two, is banning TikTok a victory for the United States over China, or is it a Trojan horse to censor Americans? A conversation with the president of Free the People, Matt Kibby. And three, the Shohei Otani gambling story doesn't pass the smell test. It doesn't add up. Plus our picks for March Madness. It is the Will Kane show streaming live at Fox News.com and on the Fox News YouTube channel, the Fox News Facebook page, and always on demand in audio format at Apple, Spotify, or at Fox News podcast.

Just hit subscribe. And you can watch the Will Cane podcast whenever you like on YouTube in shorts or in exclusive interviews by hitting subscribe to the Will Kane show. The link is right in this live stream. In the description, you just hit subscribe to the Will Kane Show. It is March Madness. You will be forgiven if up in the corner of your room you have on the tip-off of the NCAA tournament. Game start at 1215 Eastern Time today. They will be streaming all day long.

And so in one of your many television sets or picture-in-picture boxes, hopefully you've made it so that we can hang out together here on the Will Cain show. It is the best two days in sports. We were talking about that with the staff a little bit earlier. We were talking about rules for men. We were talking about our picks for the NCAA tournament. And we'll reveal those here at the end of today's episode of the Will Kane show. Who are our final four picks? Who are my final four picks?

Who's my national champion? And who among the show staff wins in our competition to pick the biggest dog and the biggest favorite to go the furthest in the CAA tournament. But in the course of that conversation, as I was giving young establishment, James Laverty, a hard time about his fashion choices, loafers and pastels, short shorts, and collared golf shirts. I said, not everything in life is about impressing Judge Smales. I didn't know if that comment would land. Would he know at the age of 25 about Judge Smales?

Judge Smales, of course, the anti-hero, the villain in Caddyshack. Caddyshack, of course, one of the greatest movies of all time, from the 1980s. I didn't know if Caddyshack would remain a rite of passage. Does it hold up? Like, does a dude in his 20s, even a guy in his 30s? Does he go through a moment in his life in high school or in a college dorm room where all his buddies go, hey, you know what we should do? We should watch Caddyshack.

That was definitely the case for me in the 90s. and I think Caddyshack holds up. For that matter, I think the big Lobowski holds up. And then it made us think about what are right-of-passage movies that regardless of generation men must watch. Men do watch at some point because they understand that it's a cultural right-of-passage or peer pressure among their buddies say,

hey, have you seen and they felt left out when they can't quote lines from the movie. And it is my contention that Caddyshack has surpassed the godfather as a rite of passage. I don't think you're going to meet many 20-year-olds who've actually sat down to watch the Godfather. And I think a movie from the 1970s actually feels a lot

older than a movie from the 1980s. Maybe drama is harder to translate across generations than comedy. And to my shock, yes, of course, young James Laverty had heard of John Smales. He had watched Caddyshack. In fact, he had watched Animal House. That was

to my shock. So what are the movies that are mainstays? to stand the test of time, that remain a right of passage. Godfather, Caddyshack, Napoleon Dynamite, Big Lobowski, let me know on Twitter at Will Cain. Email us at Wilcane Show at Fox.com. Big show today, we're going to discuss whether or not TikTok is a Trojan horse or a victory in the U.S. fight against China.

And we're going to break down the gambling story that suggests Shohei Otani, or his interpreter, have gambled over $4.5 million. and are in debt to a bookie. Again, plus our picks for March Maddust, but let us start with story number one. When did we lose the Republic? I think regardless of where you exist on the political spectrum, whether or not your left or whether or not you're right, we can acknowledge that something is off. Something's not quite right.

Now, perhaps if you're on the left, you can always chalk that up to Donald Trump. much of our modern-day condition for the conditioned to mine is laid at the altar or the feet of Donald Trump. But I think that we can all acknowledge there's something wrong that exists in a much broader time frame than simply the last eight years of the U.S. presidency. You could argue for the past several decades, the bandwidth of variance between a Democrat and a Republican has been incredibly narrow. The expectation of change from the United States government, very low.

And the connection to the American people with Washington, D.C., so very, very tenuous. And it makes you wonder what went wrong, what happened? When did we lose our republic? I think it's undeniable that the United States government has gone through various phases. Of course, in the origins of our country, we truly embraced the concept of federalism, a constitutional republic where states were empowered and the federal government was restrained. That changed over times. It was the creation of the United States Federal Reserve. The Civil War rearranged the relationship between the states and the federal government.

We've gone through various iterations, various moments where we have transitioned into new eras. We are not constant. We have not been, as is often said from the left, we have not been simply a pure democracy. And for those that understand the true nature of the United States government, we haven't been a consistent constitutional republic. And it's worth asking if today we have arrived at the Nadir, like the lowest point in the responsiveness of the United States government to the people, when did we lose our republic? Well, I would point to a couple of different moments in our history that show a turning point for the United States. In the late 1800s, extending into the early 1900s, there was an era on the Supreme Court of the United States that's defined as the Lochner area. The Lochner era was a series, decades of decisions from the United States Supreme Court that all seemed to buy into a concept called substantive due process.

This substantive due process was a new right, a new relationship, where the federal government became the protector of the individuals against the states. Specifically, Lochner v. New York was the Supreme Court of the United States making law to strike down a state law that regulated economics, that regulated minimum wage. The Supreme Court of the United States then protecting economic liberty. They might have had a judicial activism bent, but they were, were doing it in pursuit of a politically conservative or capitalist mindset said states don't have the right to regulate minimum wage. This began an era of changing the relationship between the federal governments and the states. This is a big change for the United States. The Lochner era ended with another Supreme Court decision that I think shows a huge turning point where you

could argue this is when we lost our republic. The 1930s, the New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as we've talked about in past episodes of the Will Kane show, was at the very least a socialist and had a lot of sympathies for, I think, communist ideology. He envisioned a second bill of rights and economic bill of rights. He wanted to rewrite the United States Constitution. In it, largely what his presentation represented was The same kind of rights you've seen enshrined in the Constitution of South Africa. And before that, the USSR, this is where a citizen would have positive rights, a right to vacation, a right to leisure, a right to a home, a right to health care. Of course, these are not the kind of rights that grow on trees.

And in order to create those positive rights, you'd have to intrude upon the philosophical foundation of the United States Constitution, which is the protection of negative rights. freedom from interference, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of property. FDR threatened to upend that nature of the relationship between the individual and the state. But during the FDR administration, there was a case before the United States Supreme Court called Wickard v. Philburn. Wickard v. Philburn is a seminal moment in the United States Republic. The Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution is one of the most tortured and utilized phrases in the Constitution to empower the federal government. But it began with decisions like Wickard v. Philburn, wherein the United States Supreme Court said that the federal government had the ability to regulate the economic of activity of a farmer who's growing crops on his own private land, for his own private use, for his own private consumption.

Why? Because his consumption, his use, and his farming could impact the greater farming industry, the farming trade, and interstate commerce. And interstate commerce was regulated through the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. This is a massive moment in American history. This gave the federal government essentially unfettered power. to regulate human activity, individual activity, to limit the ability of states based upon Lochner, and then, in turn, take up the mantle of regulating citizens of individuals under

Wickard v. Filburn. From that moment, you have the constitutional justification for almost all economic regulation and most criminal regulation. You know that the United States Criminal Code at this point is unquantifiable? They've literally put United States Congressional committees together to try to count the number of laws under the United States Criminal Code. We can't. We don't know. It's a mystery. Of course, as anything would remain with an investigation from the United States Congress. It gave the federal government the power to enact the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which, by the way, while laudatory and something to be praised in what it accomplished for America also was a big change in the role of the federal government in telling citizens and businesses and states how they could behave. But the answer to when we lost our republic was also addressed recently by Tucker Carlson interviewing former Congressman Ron Paul.

They were discussing the deep state. Now, the deep state is a fascinating concept, one that just a few weeks ago, perhaps, even the utterance of deep state would have earned sneers and dismissals as a conspiracy theorist. But just a few days ago, the New York Times wrote an article saying, the deep state exists and it's kind of awesome. They went around the country in a video essay interviewing federal government employees, public servants, who, in their estimates, and their estimates. in their estimation, make up the deep state. And they're there to praise the existence of the deep state. Discussing the deep state with Ron Paul, Tucker Carlson, asked a similar question to Ron Paul.

When did we lose the Republic? And he pointed back largely to the assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr., the 1960s. A seminal moment in the history of America. There are those that have theorized since that moment. The United States government has been run by caretakers sitting as presidents, that they all have been servants of the deep state, the intelligence community. They have been run by the military industrial complex. They've been run by the system that, in my estimation, seems to be on autopilot in Washington, D.C. As long as the system is on autopilot, you can afford to have clowns as politicians, clowns.

as leaders. And I think he had a great display of that this week when Tony Bob Balinski testified before the United States Congress on the potential corruption of Joe Biden. And he was met with this exchange from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Did you witness the president commit a crime? Is it your testimony today? Yes. And what crime do you have you witness? How much time do I have to go through it? It is simple. You name the crime. Did you watch him steal something? Corruption statutes, RICO and conspiracy. What is it? What is the crime, sir?

Specifically. You asked me to answer the question. I answered the question. Rico, you're obviously not familiar with. Corruption statutes. Excuse me, sir. Excuse me, sir. Excuse me, sir.

Rico is not a crime. Rico is not a crime. We'll tell that to the mafia. And by the way, tell that to Donald Trump, where you should have an immediate case, dismissal in Georgia where he's facing charges for RICO violations. What you just saw was not a cross-examination. What you just saw was not an intellectual display.

What you just saw was a clown act, a performance. And perhaps a successful performance for AOC for a base that is too stupid to realize that that, in fact, is stupid. But that's what you get with a government that is on autopilot. You get a clown show. you get you get politics as entertainment you get politics as character assassination take a look at this tweet this is from i believe an msnbc producer who said now that baron trump has turned 18 he's fair game this is treating leadership as a reality television show always wanted to attack baron trump but now that he's 18 we can at least get away with it to mind that he's still the child of a president, a child who's never put himself in the public eye, who's not offered up any political opinions or any activism. He's not Chelsea Clinton. He doesn't have an agenda or a

platform. He's not Hunter Biden. He's not interested in profiting off his father's name. He's simply a character in the drama. And Mike Singson's ready to turn that character, that individual, into a villain in his melodrama, his reality television show. Also, he's personally, not baron trump but anyone who'd buy into that idea personally despicable but this is what you get with a government that is on autopilot i don't know when we lost the republic but i do know that what we have today is not the way that this was envisioned by the founders of america that a government is responsive to the people that it's there in service of the people that i know we've arrived at a moment where the New York Times celebrates the kind of awesomeness, kind of cool, deep state.

You know, Matt Taibi, who's done incredible work on the government and its desire to censor American citizens, said that the intelligence community has moved from counterterrorism to counter-populism. What their efforts now are not to stop the next big terrorist attack from an Islamic radical, but to protect from a populist uprising in America, among Americans. And then you have to ask yourself, protect what? Not protect the American people. See, what's changed is a government that's not responsive to the people that doesn't serve the people,

that's not there to protect the people, but a government that is there to protect the government. There are many on the left that think what is special about America is the government. This is why you see so much about our democracy. It's not the people. It's not our culture. It's not our ingenuity. It's not our risk tolerance. It's not our morality. It's our government. In order to protect America, then we have to protect our government. And the intelligence communities need to protect it from populism. And the people need to be separated from the elites, from the deep state. I don't know when we lost the Republic, but I believe that it is on autopilot. I don't believe there is a Wizard of Oz. I believe that we're looking at something dispassionate. I think that we're looking at something not unlike artificial intelligence, diversified authoritarianism, systematic authoritarianism, people that simply do their

jobs, like the man before them did his job, and the man before him did his job. And budgets being what they are, you always have to grow your job. It's self-preservation, it's self-interest, it is protection of the government, because in their minds, government, is America. Should we celebrate potentially banning TikTok as a victory of the United States over China, or is it a Trojan horse that allows the government to next simply censor Americans? That's coming up next with Matt Kibby on The Will Kane Show. Book Club on Monday.

Jim on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in on Friday. It's good to have a routine. And it's good for your eyes too, because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are.

Visit Spexavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam. Eye exams provided by independent optometrists. The show, Hey, Otani Gambling story doesn't pass the smell test. It doesn't add up. Plus, our picks for the NCAA tournament. Who makes the final four? Who's your underdog? And who is your favorite?

That coming up in just moments here on The Will Cain Show. Plus, Matt Kibby, on banning TikTok, and whether or not we should regulate not simply illegal immigration, but legal immigration here in America. It's the Will Kane Show streaming live at Fox News.com on the Fox News YouTube channel, the Fox News Facebook page. Always available via subscription on YouTube. at Will Cain Show.

The NCAA tournament has tipped off. We are in the beginning moments of one of the best months, and certainly some of the best two weekdays in sports. So as we tip off, we want to put ourselves on the record and reveal our picks here on the Will Cain show. Mine, Tuday Dan, young establishment James, tinfoil pat, on one underdog and one favorite each.

who will go the furthest in the tournament. The rules for this competition are as follows. We each got to pick one, two through five seed. No one seeds were allowed to be chosen. And one, 10 through 13 seed, an underdog, a long shot, to go the furthest in the NCAA tournament. We'll have this competition amongst ourselves and see who's the best at picking dogs and favorites in the tournament. So let's start with you. Dan. Who is your

two through five seed to go to the furthest in NCAA tournament? So this was tough because I'm notoriously really bad at picking brackets. So I'm just going random instead of fan. I'm going number two, Tennessee. I like them. I like Tennessee.

You know, it's basketball, state. I love it. So that's my number two pick. My long shot is a close-to-home pick. A couple of people in my family went to the school. I'm going with number 11, Ducane. Ducane, Ducane I'm going with. That is my long shot.

Duquesne. Yeah, I don't know why I'm just going with them. I'm going with the heart this year. No chalk, just going on heart. I don't know. I don't know where Duquesne is. I don't know their mascot. Pittsburgh.

I don't know their colors. Huh? Pittsburgh. It's in Pittsburgh. It's in Pittsburgh? Yeah, good nursing school. You know, great academics. Good nursing school.

How do you know that? My cousin went there. Yeah, how do you know these things? I've partied there. It was fun. It was a good time. Shout out to Cain, you know. So I'm going with them. We should do that, by the way. We should have a little trivia quiz competition on who can name the mascots of these random schools. And you guys are going to have at least two days, Dan, and establishment James, an advantage over me. Because you got all these little schools up in the Northeast that make the tournament. I mean, it's not part of my culture or how I grew up. I didn't know of them.

and so that's going to be a real advantage, but we should see who can name the most mascots and the sort of lower seeds of the NCAA tournament. We'll do that. How about that tomorrow on the Friday episode, the sports-only episode of the Will Kane show? All right, Tinfoil, who is your favorite?

Who is your long shot? So I know nothing about basketball at all. I have no idea. I'm a big sports guy, but nothing about basketball. So I went with Marquette as my favorite and UAB is my underdog. And that's strictly just based off of mascots.

I think UAB is the Blazers. So there are mascots a dragon. I thought that's pretty badass. And then Marquette is a golden eagle. So we go with that. You're burning up our trivia quiz. Yeah, what the hell, man. I know.

I have a hand. Because you're paying attention to the mascots. I like both of those picks. I think UAB actually is a nice early-round upset pick. And I think Marquette's really good. Shaka Smart was the head coach at the University of Texas for some time. He didn't do so well. But I like his style.

It's havoc. And if he employs that well at Marquette. But I have to say both of you, you're kind of, I mean, okay, you both pick two seeds to go further. You can't pick a one seed. I know. So you both picked the two seats. It felt lame. It felt lame in the moment.

week. All right, establishment, James. Who's your favorite? Who's your dog? All right. So my dog is going to be New Mexico. They're an 11 seed. I think two reasons.

First, their path looked a little easier than some of the other dogs had. So I think a Sweet 16 is not really. Too out of the question, they have a couple of athletic bigs that can help them compete with some of the bigger schools. And then Donovan Dent's their guard is their stud. I don't care about your analysis. Break it down, boy. I'm sorry? Break it down, bud.

And then more importantly, for our big one. We went with Duke, kind of like a... Of course you did. Of course. I'm going to lean into it. Your new nickname is Duke James. Duke James. Yikes.

You fit right in. You can just cruise around Duke with your loafers on with the metal bars that run across the top. No socks. Take it until you make it. Quarter zip. All right. Here you got well. All right.

Here's my dog. My dog is McNeese State. I like it. I don't even know their mascot, Patrick. I don't know where they are. I think they're south. I'm already ahead on you. I'm going to beat you so bad in this quiz.

Are they in Tennessee? All right. We'll see. I think they are in Tennessee. I think McNee's States in Tennessee. I know they got 30 wins. I know they're hot. I know they haven't played anybody much.

But they got 30 wins. I like McNee's State to make a run here. By the way, I filled out my bracket. We have an intra-show. bracket going on. I've got a couple like low seeds going. Like, I like New Mexico. I think I have New Mexico in the Sweet 16 as well.

So I've got a few making some runs. Maybe Drake. Again, don't even know Drake's mascot. But my favorite, I'm the most brave of all of you. Actually, James, I think Duke's a four seed, so we'll

be tied on this. I take Auburn. I'm taking Auburn, the furthest. And if for a while We're at it. I'm going to go ahead and give the audience my final four pick. I'm going to put it on Front Street. I have got my final four. Why it's all, it's all blacked out. I got it. Auburn over UNC in one final four and Purdue over Houston in the other final four. I didn't like it. I know very well that's three number ones. But I have Auburn over Purdue in the final. So the four seed winning it all. The SEC champion on a hot run, Auburn Tigers, War Eagle for the national

championship. I like it. So we'll check in on that. We'll check in on that throughout the tournament here on the Wilcane Show. Let's talk about Shohei Otani. Shohei Otani, the greatest player in the world, in baseball, the highest paid player. Well, he deferred so much money. It's hard to know where he lands on this with endorsements, certainly the highest paid player in baseball, is in the middle of a gambling scandal right now. So ESPN reported this week that Shohay Otani's interpreter, he's Japanese, apparently still doesn't speak English, been here for seven years, owes an illegal bookie in California, $4.5 million, his interpreter. But the payments made to the bookie came from accounts of Shohei Otani and some of those wire accounts. So showay Otani wired money

to a bookie in California to allegedly pay the gambling debts of his interpreter. Now, gambling is illegal in California. You can't do it. So you can't just hop on draft kings or something like that. What more, all the legal mechanisms like draft kings or fan do will require upfront payment. You don't go into debt to legal gambling obligations. So you, you run a tab, bookies let you run a tab. And apparently let the allegation, the story is, let Otani's interpreter run a tab up to $4.5 million. Now, Otani's interpreter makes $300,000 a year. Now, I don't know the bookie that would let you run up a $4.5 million tab that is based upon you having a salary of disposable income before taxes of $300,000.

And I don't have many buddies. Now, I don't have many buddies that are as rich as Shohei Otani, who would cover your $4.5 million tab with the bookie. Now, that's the original story, according to ESPN, and the one that Showy Otani's interpreter came out and gave a 90-minute interview suggesting was the case. He fell on the sword and said it was all of his gambling debt. Otani had his back. It's his fault, his problem.

He's the one that broke the gambling law, said he didn't know. Didn't know that, you know, this is illegal, but draft king's not. all that is legal. He also said he never bet on baseball. He said he bet on soccer, NBA, NFL. Now, right after that interview, Otani's camp comes out and goes, not true. None of what he said is true. What we're actually the victims of is a massive theft. Otani's lawyers put out a statement suggesting the interpreter had stole, I guess, four and a half million dollars from Shohei Otani and gambled it away. It wasn't Otani covering gambling debts.

It was money being stolen from Otani. Now here's what's weird. Just hours before that statement was put out about massive theft. The Dodgers who were in South Korea, there's video of Otani and his interpreter in the dugout, cutting it up, laughing, having a good time. They're buddies in real life, not just an interpreter. Not exactly the way you would feel about someone

who just an hour or two later you would accuse of massive theft. Weird dynamic there for someone who's stolen millions of dollars from you. What more, people have pointed out, wire transfers have so many different levels of security. You can't simply go in and wire someone else's from someone else's account to your bookie. All of it doesn't pass the smell test. None of it adds up. Now, you can say yourself, well, who cares? In fact, Young Establishment, James Laverty said that on our pre-show call today. What do I care if Otani was gambling? All of it, by the way, points to Otani.

What do I care? Everyone gambles. I mean, I think it's a decent point, except, I mean, if your name is Pete Rose. You know, if your name's Pete Rose, you might care and be like, why don't I get into the Hall of Fame? You know, they're even saying, well, what if he was, who cares if he's gambling on baseball? I mean, he's best player in baseball. It's not like he's skimming off the top, like in basketball. He's not shaving points.

So how's he effect in the game? So who cares if he's gambling? And maybe that's a legitimate discussion to have he had. But what's not a legitimate discussion to me right now, what's not adding up is somehow it's all the interpreter. And if we get away with this story, it was all the interpreter, Pete Rose should have hired a Spanish interpreter. He should have hired somebody to lay all his betting on.

And Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame. Is a ban of TikTok a victory for the United States or a Trojan horse for censoring Americans? That next with Matt Kibby on The Will Cain Show. Following Fox's initial donation to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund, our generous viewers have answered the call to action across all Fox platforms and have helped raise $7 million. Visit go.com. forward slash TX flood relief to support relief and rebuilding efforts.

Fox News Audio presents Unsolved with James Patterson. Every crime tells the story, but some stories are left unfinished. Somebody knows. Real cases. Real people. Listen and follow now at Foxtruecrime.com. Is TikTok banning TikTok a victory for America over China or is it a Trojan horse for censoring Americans? It's the Will Cain Show streaming live at foxnews.com on the Fox News YouTube channel, the Fox News Facebook page. He is the president and chief community organizer of Free the People and the host of Kibby on Liberty.

And he's on X at M. Kibby, it's Matt Kibby here on the Will Kane show. Whoa, look at you. Hey, well, how's it going? I'm on the road. I'm in Knoxville, Tennessee. He's looking very hipster today. But like a sporty hipster. Got the flat bill hat, but the glasses and the beard perfectly. manicured, all black? I don't know if you're going to send me a song or rob me.

Yeah, I'm just, I just want to sort of add some style to your show. That's, that's what I'm trying to found for sure. You always do. You always do, Kivie. So, listen, before we get into TikTok, I want to start, I want to follow up on a conversation you and I had the last time you appeared on the Will Kane show. So we were talking about illegal immigration. And there was this moment, I believe, where we decided this is a discussion we need to extend a little bit further. Let's watch back. Politicians, and I'll say this about both parties, they want to own and control immigrants coming to our country illegally or legally.

They want to depend on their votes, and one of the ways they do that is to ensure that they sort of own their future. I would love for someone in some party to actually say the old American ethos, if you want to come here and work and follow the rules, we're going to have a rational process by which those people can be vetted and come over either as guest workers or as actual immigrants. Very few people, and almost zero Democrats, believe that today. So, Matt, when I heard that, which I think is an awesome jumping off point for a deeper conversation that I think very few people have, and that is this.

I think the easy thing for us to all say is, you know, give us you're tired, give us your poor, give us your hungry, give us your huddled masses. But also, or, hey, why don't we take the best from across the world and bring them to work here and help advance American interests? And I don't mean to say it's easy because it's, I don't mean to be dismissive. But I think it's easy to say that and then stop thinking about the issue. And I think the part after that is the part we never discuss and that is a bigger part of the issue. And that is, you know, whether not, we bring these people over for education or for work. Do they share American values? Do they buy into our culture? Do they buy into America? Do they stay in America? And I don't know that

we have enough of a discussion about the preservation of the things that are already great about America in pursuit of going out around the world and bringing in what is good about the rest of the world. Well, I think that the interesting thing is on this that most immigrants I know, and it's, it's self-selected. I realize this. It's anecdotal. But most immigrants I know, I'm thinking particularly of a friend of mine, Carlos Luna, who lives in Miami. He is a refugee from Castro, Cuba. He is more American than most born Americans that I know. And maybe it's the university system. Maybe it's the corruption of K-12. But I think, I think in terms of actually bolstering American values, it's telling that the people that work so hard to get here legally, which is almost impossible to do. They really,

really are coming to bolster American values. They embody American values. And, you know, I guess it's an old trope to say, well, we're all immigrants at some point if you go back in our family history. But I think it's absolutely true that we should be welcoming to people that want to work hard and follow the rules. And under the current system, it is virtually impossible to follow the rules. If you want to get here, you're likely to have to do so illegally. And that corrupts the whole system. It creates pathways for the bad guys to get through. And I think, I think we're cutting off our own feet. If we just say shut it down, we have to fix it because we want the good guys, but more

importantly, we want the ability to actually stop the bad guys. And if you have this massive flood of people coming in, there's no practical way that our government, with its limited abilities to do anything well, is going to do well on this. So I want to focus on legal immigration. This is the – I agree with you on – I mean, I think we – illegal. Immigration is so absurd and problematic that the fact that we have to debate it publicly is kind of an embarrassment. But legal immigration, that's the part that I don't think gets enough worthy debate. Like you, first of all, I like the idea of America taking the world's

best and brightest and bringing them to America, to make our economy, to make our way of life better. And like you, I have a lot of anecdotal experiences. You know, living in New York, I had friends who were immigrants from South Africa, from Italy, from Ivory Coast. I had friends who were immigrants from almost everywhere. Living back home now in Texas, I have a lot of friends who are immigrants from Mexico or other Central American countries. And I can say to a man, they're all great people, first of all, and very productive members of society. Working, starting businesses. I mean, in some cases, from the bottom up of the economic ladder, right, in New York driving

Ubers and cabs, in Texas, starting, you know, construction businesses, paint, whatever it may be. But I do, and maybe it's even higher up on the economic ladder, Matt, know that some of my friends they don't feel about America. It's not that you have to feel about America the way that I feel about America, but they don't feel as reverential towards America as I would hope someone. who comes here seeking for a better life. You know what I mean? And having that promise delivered in many cases.

So, and a lot of it has to do with our history. It's the big parts, to be honest, our history, our constitution, our form of governance, our customs and our cultures. Those things are the things that actually I feel like many on the higher end of the economic ladder kind of go, like a lot of liberals, those are the bad parts of America. And it makes me wonder like, well, then what do you think the good parts are? You know, I do think if you're coming here, you should love, like, the essence of America. So, like, obviously there's different categories of immigration, and I'm guessing you're probably talking about well-trained, college-educated tech bro type of H-1B visa-type immigrants.

And I would fully expect them to bring some of that, that urbane, lefty, misconceptive. about America. But if you're looking at the southern border, you're looking at people that want to come here. And by the way, the vast majority of them want to come here to earn a living so that their families can survive back home. And because we don't have a guest worker program, because if you do get across, it's difficult to come back, they essentially get trapped in the United States. But if you look at the dynamic happening in many of these countries, I have friends in Honduras, for instance, Honduras has been devastated by drug gangs, which have been enabled by America's war on drugs. So in a lot of ways, we're creating the chaos that is pushing families

to march all the way from Honduras to get to America illegal. That's an insane thing to do with your family unless you're desperate. But I'm thinking about the workers. that want to pick crops and do a lot of the work that young Americans don't want to do anymore. And it's sort of fascinating to me that we've somehow singled out Latino culture is not consistent with American culture and particularly conservative American culture because the values are the same and the ethic of hard work is there. And I think that we should, I just think we should embrace it. I don't see the disconnect.

Yeah, and I don't know what I'm asking for. You know, I mean, immigrants, legal immigrants do have to take, you know, essentially some basic understanding of American governance and civics test that most Americans would fail. You know, most natural-born Americans would fail. And there's no such thing as a loyalty oath, you know, or test. I mean, I mean, there is, but, you know, you're never going to be able to verify how somebody feels. To me, when someone, I guess, all I'm saying, when someone is born here and they're the spoiled child of progress and there's a lot of that,

right? To me, not appreciating who America is, it's ignorant, first of all. You don't have any context globally. I don't know if you haven't traveled or you haven't studied, but compare it to other countries. And you have no context historically beyond geographically. So a lot of it's ignorance, but a lot of it's just spoiled and that's offensive enough, but I don't think we need to import that same mentality and and um i guess i just sort of you would hope the process itself would self select those that are ready to adopt and assimilate and appreciate what this place is but i just i always i walk away someone's like why do you why'd you come here like it's great like isn't that kind of why i always love the thought experiment matt like we took down all

borders across the world all those people think america's terrible free flow immigration right American going to have a net inflow or net outflow? I think we know the answer. Everybody wants to come here. And, you know, maybe they can articulate it. And one thing to appreciate is what happens over generations. I think first generation Latinos that come to this country, they probably fled some socialist hellhole and know explicitly what they came here for.

Second generation still hears stories from grandma or mom. Third generation, they become enamored with people like AOC thinking that this democratic socialism thing is a real thing. I think there's two problems. The American education system, which doesn't respect or cherish these values that have made America great in the first place. And this mentality that both parties, but I'll pick on Democrats. because I think they're more guilty of it. They don't want you to come here and work. They want you to come here and be indebted to get plugged into the system.

They're going to put you in a hotel. They're going to start giving you welfare handouts. And they're going to teach you that the only way to make it in America is to get hooked up with the system. I think a better way to think about this is at least make it easier for immigrants that already have family members. They have a place to stay. they have a social network that will allow them to pursue work.

And you can sort of end run around the political gamesmanship and the manipulation. And by the way, the very dangerous process of coming here illegally, all of that is corrupted by politics. But again, I have faith that people that want to work that hard to get here, people that have family members who have already succeeded here, they are going to bolster. or the American ethos. I really believe that. I want to move to this.

I want to move to TikTok. I look forward to having this conversation with you and what your perspective may be because this is really divided people. The bill that passed Congress, the House of Representatives, as those who would champion it said, it's not a ban of TikTok. It's a forced divestiture from bite dance and the CCP of TikTok.

And I think the most, compelling argument they make is actually less about privacy concerns and data collection because there'd be other ways to regulate that. But it's more about content. It's about the algorithm and that the Chinese Communist Party is using pretty nefarious content, an algorithm to push nefarious content that's just not healthy for young people to be so obsessed with. And so it is an overt attempt to control content, to censor. But the argument is, against someone who doesn't enjoy a First Amendment right, which is the Chinese Communist Party, which is bite dance, which is foreign corporation. I think that's a legitimate argument to make. We wouldn't allow the CCP to start flying flyers over Dallas and Tennessee and just drop in propaganda all over us.

So why do we let them do it through the phone? But then there are others a lot of really impressive people, like Joe Lonsdale, one of the founders of the University of Austin, others who've said, Vivek Ramaswamy, who've said, no, Elon Musk, this is the first step in Congress stepping in and regulating content, not just on TikTok, but other social media platforms and inevitably X because it's the black sheep in the whole equation. So I think it's telling to know that we just went through a period revealed by the X files where we discovered that the U.S. government, there was just a Supreme Court hearing on this a couple days ago, but we now know that our government, particularly the national security agencies, were intimidating and jaw-boning and otherwise pushing their preferred narratives

and censoring Americans on American platforms. And this essentially is the accusation made against the Chinese government. And if divestiture actually happens. And bite dance has said that it's not going to happen if this bill passes, we'll see if it happens or not. It's going to be divested precisely to one of these companies that is already censoring Americans, is already basically in the pocket of the national security agencies.

So I'm struggling to appreciate the unique threat of TikTok, particularly in a country where supposedly we believe that parents should take some responsibility for what their children consume and, and, and these toxic aspects of TikTok, and we should include other social media in there as well, because I don't think it's unique to TikTok. Let's have parents take some responsibility.

I don't like deferring to the federal government when it comes to raising kids. I also don't like deferring to the federal government when it comes to what is appropriate speech. And we can get into it if you want, but there is some blank check language in that legislation that absolutely means that Elon Musk, who's already been accused of being influenced by foreign interests,

that's enough to give the next president a blank check. Yeah. As in any law, as in any conversation, honestly, the words carry all the weights, right? And it's like, well, so as any foreign, I can't remember the exact language of the bill, but it's like a percentage of foreign ownership. Well, what is foreign ownership? Does Elon Musk qualify as foreign ownership? I think he has U.S. citizen status at this point, so no, but if you have a foreign investor

over what percentage, I think it's 20%, they said, or something like that. But you get into these definitions, and I don't know about a blank check, but I do feel like there's enough trap doors for the government to use to say you're subject to censorship. And then you make the philosophical argument, not the First Amendment, which is interesting, because the First Amendment is predicated on the philosophical virtue of free speech. And the idea is more speech is better and and who are we to decide what is bad speech and um i mean in that if that's what we're going to do the philosophical embrace of free speech then we're going to embrace not just americans we're going to embrace chinese propaganda we're going to invade

embrace nefarious stuff and instead of outsourcing our protection to the government to your point we have to take some personal ownership parents whatever of guiding us towards the right speech? All of these nefarious actors that are trying to influence the American conversation, they're everywhere. And you can just take a quick look at war propaganda, trying to figure out what's really going on in Israel versus Palestine, what's really going on in Russia versus Ukraine. So much of it is propaganda.

I think it's a learning process for people that are actually on social media, trying to discern the truth. But the philosophical argument is that all messages, nefarious, otherwise, true, not true, part of the conversation where we're trying to figure out the truth of things, I have more faith in the crowd than I do in the people that would dictate that narrative from the top down because they absolutely have an agenda. And even if they were angels, which they're not, they would not possibly be able to know right from wrong. And again, just to go back to lockdowns and lab leaks and the appropriate response

to COVID, the government got everything wrong. And everything that they were pushing from the top down could have been debunked and corrected by by those dissident scientists, those dissident health care professionals, those dissident economists. And they wouldn't let it happen. So I think top down is always dangerous. Bottom up is always better. And we, as free people have a responsibility to figure out what's true and what's not. And by the way, about the blank check thing, that the blank check is not the language itself. The blank check is that the president himself has the discretion to determine whether or not that language applies to somebody.

So you're talking about a blank check on executive authority, which will absolutely be implied, imposed in partisan ways. You made a really compelling argument to me that I think it's just about one me over to your side. I try, you know, I think you describe yourself still as a libertarian. The thing is, Matt, like, I've kind of walked away from that a little bit because I think it's too ideologically stringent, and I think, you know, practicality in reality is where you've got to find some middle grounds at some point.

So how about this? How would you apply that same? Texas passed a law requiring people to sign up with their name. You know, I think they have to upload their driver's license for porn sites, porn hub, and so forth. And the purpose of the law is to ensure that minors don't look at this stuff. Pretty laudable goal, by the way, right? I mean, in our day, Matt, if you went to the 7-Eleven and you wanted to buy a hustler, he asked for your ID. Now every 15-year-old can, you know, get the world of pornography and it corrupts your brain.

It's bad for you, you know. And good luck as a parent trying to regulate. I mean, you have to as a parent, but good luck. So Texas has done that to try to regulate speech or put a regulation on the age of people looking at porn. Would you be opposed to that kind of law as well? There's actually federal legislation. I forget the name of it that does essentially the same thing, but not just for porn for any content that's deemed harmful for children. And the problem with it is you're talking about a government-controlled and dictated database of our children.

And there's practical problems with that. The main one being is that the government is grossly incompetent when it comes to data security. The bigger problem going back to China for just a second is that you're talking about the infrastructure of a social credit system. Now, the people that pass legislation in Texas would totally deny that. They certainly didn't have that in mind. But if you're getting to a point where people are collecting, the government is collecting your data to determine whether or not you can safely go from one website to another, just imagine the abuse of power that's there. So I always look at this in practical terms as a libertarian. One is, can the government have the wisdom, the knowledge to do these things in a way that doesn't have unintended consequences that undermine what they're actually trying to do?

I think the answer is almost always no. But more importantly, can you actually trust them with that much power? And Lord Acton told us, and I think it's universally true that power corrupts, absolutely power corrupts absolutely. And I really think that the Internet should be the Wild West. And I think that there are social protocols, and I think there's technological solutions that have to come with parents and technologists working to figure out ways without the government's involvement

to protect kids from the bad stuff they'll see online. We've got to do the same thing with the bad stuff that kids will get exposed to in the analog world, right? And it's in many ways no different. But if we defer to government, if we outsource that responsibility to government, they're going to abuse it. Really good stuff. I'm going to have to go noodle on this for a while, Matt. I think I'm with you.

I got a noodle on this for a little while. But I appreciate that about you making me think. Matt Kibby, the president and chief community organizer, Free the People. He also hosts Kibby on Liberty, and you find him on X at Matt Kibby. All right, man, go enjoy Tennessee. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

all right that's going to do it for us today here on the will cane show it's time to go watch some march madness i will see you again tomorrow let's do that quiz who knows what mascots of seeds 10 through 13 in the march madness tournament tomorrow on the sports exclusive episode of the will cane show i'll see you next time Listen ad-free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts and Amazon Prime members, you can listen to this show, ad-free on the Amazon music app. Hey, I'm Trey Gowdy host of the Trey Gatti podcast.

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