12/18/25: Trump Says He Is First 'Jewish President', Saagar Weeps Over White House Changes, Piers Morgan Vs Candace Owens

25:01Ballroom update for everybody out there. Let's put this one up here on the screen. New model that was displayed in President in Trump's Oval Office. So you can see the campus. So we've got the West Wing. You know, there you go. You got the iconic White House. Whoa, what is that monstrosity that's sitting there? Oh, that's the ballroom. Do you see how much bigger the ballroom is than the White House? I'm serious. Didn't he have to like get a new architect? Yes. Because the original one was like, I'm not doing this. He was like, I'm not doing this. They actually started beefing. For anybody wondering, the cost may now actually be 400 million.

25:36Let's put that next one up there on the screen. This is an increase, I believe, in about$150 million since the last time that it had previously had been talked about. So, yeah, we're talking about$400 million for the ballroom being privately donated or whatever by these multibillionaires to desecrate the White House campus. And unfortunately, this is a little NIMBY sell for all of you. Right now, unfortunately, the White House campus and a few other things under control of the president do not have to go through any historical preservation or architectural review. They're basically under the total purview of the executive.

26:19The National Historical Preservation actually tried, let's put this up here on the screen, that would have blocked the construction of the ballroom but ended up overruling them and denying the motion in order to do so. So this is shocking. And actually, we need to make sure that this never happens again after we dismantle the ballroom, by the way. After we dismantle the ballroom, we're going to say nobody can ever touch it again. And then it actually needs to go through some architectural review. Now, people may think that this is some pet project and all of that. But the reason why I think it's fun to include in the show is what we learned about through those word clouds and through polling.

26:52This shit resonates in a way that I never thought that it would. And yeah, I think there's a small C conservatism that a lot of people feel where they're like, oh, this is not about you. This is not about, like the White House is literally not about you. And then whenever it comes to the plaques making it, it's not about overtly political. It's just overtly Trump. Like he's like, I am going to make the colonnade. Just like so petty. Right. Because what is, yes, the pettiness, which is a direct expression of Donald Trump. But what those photos that come out of the colonnade, it becomes a place where everyone's photo who's taken there, you know, I have one.

27:30It's not about me. I'm just saying people who have the photos that are taken there. It's about like that was at the White House. But now it's about the Trump House, right, from the Rose Garden to the colonnade to the gold to the Oval Office. He's like, this is about me. And that's what I think is resonating in terms of its takeover across the country. Call me a shit lib and all that. Don't care. Like it's, it's, I don't care whether it's Trump or anybody else. It's a monstrosity, right? Like that's the point that I think a lot of people are resonating with is they can see this as a direct obsession of the president while they feel like they're, you know, the economy is slipping away and that this is your overall priority.

28:09So that's why, you know, I'm pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of people care. A lot of people, people care a hell of a lot more than I thought. Yeah. It's interesting. It's very interesting what breaks through to the normies and really gets, you know, like has its cultural moment. But in terms of the plaques, listen, it's one thing when you see this bullshit from him on Twitter. Right. It's Twitter. Twitter is sort of inherently undignified. Right. We're talking about the White House here. And now you're putting some Twitter-esque or True Social-esque bullshit on an official plaque at the White House.

28:42And it's so in his light. I mean, it sounds and reads like he literally did post it on True Social. And now this is what you're doing to the people's house? Yeah, it's so incredibly petty. It's so small. It's so undignified for the office. And, you know, I think it just makes Americans feel like, what have we come to? What have we come to? That this is what's going on in the White House with our president. that this is the man who is leading, you know, a country that many people see as the greatest on earth and through their like American exceptionalist lens. So yeah, I do think these kind of things too.

29:16And it's very like, it's very visual. It's very visceral, all of that. And it speaks, as you were saying, Sagar, to the fact that like, this is what he's spending his actual time and brain share on. And then meanwhile, he's like rushing through some bullshit speech about the economy because he really doesn't give a shit. And he thinks that everything is fine. Yeah. At least that's the way that comes off. I mean, there's no defense, okay? And this is why it's like, this needs to go, period. Like, we cannot have this. And we need NIMBYism to fully come into effect and be like, nobody gets to touch the White House within an insane architectural review process.

29:49I can't handle this. Between that and the data centers, I'm becoming more pro-NIMBY already. Okay, so the thing is, NIMBY gets a knock, and I get it, is that it is often weaponized by the landowner class in San Francisco or the rich people in order to protect their property values. Fine. But the fundamental idea behind NIMBY is people who live somewhere get to control the shit that happens in their neighborhood. And that's true. I mean, it should be the most true for public resource. We're not even talking about private land here. We're talking about public land, like publicly owned, taxpayer-funded land and buildings, which are not just iconic, belong to all of us.

30:28That's the whole purpose. One of the tragedies, unfortunately, for the White House is that people can't really get that close to it anymore. You know, with 9-11 and Boston bombing and all that stuff. I've watched it happen over the years. You used to be able to go up to the fence. Now you can't even get close. And the more that it becomes securitized and people get farther away from it, you don't feel the connection that you deserve, in my opinion. Everybody should be able to go up to the fence, at the very least, and take a picture if they want to or easily be able to get a tour because the history is yours.

30:59It's not theirs. That's the whole point. And I think that's what it inverts. It's very sad, honestly. I was just looking at photos yesterday from the East Wing. I was like, oh my God, I can't believe this is gone. I can't believe it. And it's one of those where they have, I think they don't know what they're playing with. They really believed that they could just do this and nobody would care. And then when those photos started to come out of the demolition and everything, those went very viral. Yeah, and Trump started to realize because he banned photographs being taken. Yeah, because he banned photography of the East Wing.

31:28He kind of started to get like, oh, this doesn't look great. I mean, the other thing, it connects to the story about him exploring a third term because what you really think this guy is building this gigantic ballroom and he intends to just step aside peacefully when his term is over. Doesn't really feel like it, does it? That's right. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated And Black America was at a breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest.

32:08It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

32:53Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits.

33:36He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations. You get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And also, you know, your daughter's incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah. Thank you. That's so beautiful. I can see that got you a little...

34:15Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances, which I had not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of a million, how did that shape your sense of self? I went blank. I hit a bad note, then I couldn't kind of recover. And I built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we had a big meeting this week between Candace Owens and Erica Kirk.

34:56Candace, man, her streams have exploded in popularity. Talk about things that have sort of like broken containment. She has, you know, I mean, she's created this whole true crime mystery series. of the public assassination of her friend, Charlie Kirk, and has been saying very suggestive things about Erica Kirk, very aggressive things about Turning Point USA, etc. There was originally supposed to be, they wanted to do a live stream with her and did it in kind of a shady way where she couldn't make it on that day. And then they were like, oh, she doesn't want to do it. And she said, I'd do it remotely, whatever.

35:33So they scrapped that plan. And Erica Kirk suggested, after her media tour and her town hall and all of that lets you and I have a private meeting. So I'll show you in a minute the Candace Owens show after the Erica Kirk meeting, where she kind of did back down from some of her stuff, and her audience was very not happy about that. But after all of this, she also went on with Piers Morgan, where they argued about some of the conspiracy theories that she has been floating and putting forward on her show. Let me give you a sense of how that went. This is basically, I did watch the whole thing. This is basically kind of emblematic of the entire hour where Piers is basically like, so what do you actually think happened and what evidence do you have for it?

36:18And Candace just is, you know, talking very fast and kind of spinning her wheels all the time. Let's take a listen to F1. I want to get to the reality of what you're actually saying. So when you say that somebody at Turning Point USA, Charlie's company was complicit in his murder who who was I believe that there were multiple people at Turning Point who are as I have said many times my exact words are they are engaged in a cover-up of what happened to Charlie on that day no but who was involved in his murder I I didn't say that they murdered Charlie you said that people at Turning Point were complicit in his murder no I my exact sentence that I said was that there were people at Turning Point who who are engaged in a cover-up.

37:00No, you didn't. Sorry, you didn't. I believe that thoroughly. Candice, you didn't say that. You said literally... I did say that on my entire show. You said there were people at Turning Point complicit in his murder. Okay. That's what you said. When you and I were discussing, that's why I said, let's go back. I was applying the logic of a conspiracy to JFK. I said, okay, JFK, you have people that are complicit. Of course, if you apply that logic, if there is a conspiracy, there's going to be multiple people that are going to be complicit by the time in order for a large stage murder to happen.

37:29Do I think someone at Turning Point pulled the trigger? No. Obviously, I don't think someone at Turning Point pulled the trigger. We don't even know who did pull the trigger. Did anybody at Turning Point, in your opinion, know that Charlie Kirk was going to be murdered? There is specifically two people at Turning Point USA, and I have communicated that information to Erica and Justin Strife, that I would not be surprised if they had foreknowledge of Charlie Kirk being assassinated. But do you have any evidence for that? I am not going to name those people, OK, because it's not right for me to name those people until I know for a fact that they did.

38:03Did you give the names to Erica? Yes, I absolutely did. You gave the names to Erica of two employees, current employees at Turning Point, who you believe were involved in the preparation for the murder of Charlie Kirk. Is that what you're saying? I told them that if I were in your shoes, these would be two employees that I would look further into. And what evidence do you have that they had any prior knowledge of the murder? Because I don't have concrete evidence is the reason why I'm not naming them. So I've been responsible. So you've got no evidence, but you're telling the widow that these two people may have been involved in the murder.

38:38So this is basically how it went. You know, there's a lot of talk of Egyptian planes and all the rest, the French Foreign Legion, all of that. Right. And I don't know. This is it actually like it's it feels very frivolous to talk about this, but it actually is really important for a number of reasons. Number one, she's created a lot of problems on the right, for the right. Because after Charlie Kirk was murdered, first of all, I mean, they really were trying to consolidate this power grab. And look, they have a storyline. Tyler Robinson, he has the trans girlfriend. He's radicalized. And then Candace comes in.

39:10And through the opening of the investigation is genuinely a mess, as apparently every investigation Cash Patel is even remotely involved with. Yeah, the brown shooter is still on the loose. I mean, can we talk about that? He had a single lead with the MIT shooter as well. I mean, there's like, and you see these images of FBI agents just like shuffling around in the snow, Dan Boncino. I mean, it's just unbelievable, right? And he's flying around and doing podcasts with his girlfriend, et cetera. So the whole thing was, the investigation was a mess from the start. All sorts of mistakes in the handling.

39:39Said he had a guy, then they didn't have a guy. You had that weirdness with the one guy who stood up right away. You've got questions still about, okay, was, you know, did he really use the rifle they're claiming? And was this really, you know, the type of round that he used? and all sorts of things that would sort of naturally arise in this and then compounded by the fact that you have this totally shambolic joke of an FBI director. So Candace jumps in to fill this void. And so instead of having this like, you know, consistent sort of conservative narrative in the way that conservative media is usually very good at like, here's our line and we're sticking to it.

40:12Instead, she's asking, you know, asking all these questions and the Egyptian planes and like going all in on all of it. And maybe it's Israel. And maybe Egypt's involved. And maybe France is involved. And maybe the administration, maybe Erika Kirkson, maybe TPUSA was directly involved. And so she has just created this absolute mess for the right. And at the same time, I think there's also a lot of jealousy, frankly, that her streams are gigantic. I mean, truly gigantic. She's gained millions. The audience that she has gained off of speculation about the murder of her friend. Yeah. So now you've got this fight between her and Tim Pool, and it also comes at a time when there is just, you can't even keep track of who's mad at whom and who's fighting with whom over all sorts of, like, personality-based, even mostly or not, some of it's policy-based, but most of it is, like, personality-based beefs and grievances that are all coming to the surface.

41:07And she is really, like, a central actor in all of this. Oh, it's crazy. I mean, again, we can't overstate the reach. She's got millions of subscribers on YouTube. She's doing more in single live streams than we'll do in a day, okay? Like, she's big. You can still have concurrently, like, 250 ,000 people concurrently watching her stream. And that is massive. It's gigantic. It's orders of magnitude bigger than most people can pull who are in politics, right? That's something that, like, some big-time streamers might be able to get in a different circumstance. So, yeah, I mean, the right-wing thing, you're definitely correct.

41:40I also think your description of true crime was the best one. And that's why, you know, there's been all this discussion lately about Candace's female audience. It's like, well, have you ever looked at the demographics of true crime? Like, come on, guys. Who do you think's watching Nancy Grace or any of these other shows back in the day? This is a longtime kind of female obsession. And then you have Candace, who's the perfect messenger. You can't deny her talent. She's unbelievable, like charismatic, and her ability to convey when she wants to. And she can just, you know, she looks directly into the camera, her fight, like presentation, all of that.

42:13She's very, very powerful. I do think - She'll also just make some shit up. Oh, she'll just go for it. She will just make some shit up. That's what I was about to get to. Or tell you that something came to her in a dream and therefore it must be true. This is what I was about to get to with independent media, like kind of Venezuela yesterday. The phone lines, people were going off the hook on Venezuela. And people who don't know how to do reporting just roll with it. This is not a knock on anti-war because they actually do reporting. But everybody else just says shit. They'll be like, oh, this, this, and this.

42:44guys, like you actually need to learn. Maybe this is just because of the background that we came up in. Facts are things that you can verify. You can't just go off of single sources. Single sources lie to you all the time. I've gotten, you know, I'm not even going to go into it in terms of Venezuela, just in terms of I hear stuff all the time. I don't report it here on the show because you can't. I only ever go and publish something or say something definitively with this is what I've heard, when I've heard it from multiple people or people directly in the room with somebody. And even then, what you need to do is follow up with, like when you're going to make explosive claims, especially around private individuals, you have to make comment.

43:24You have to give them a chance to respond. You have to make sure that their side is presented. This is just from a legal perspective in terms of like defamation law. But beyond that, it's irresponsible. And as we all saw yesterday, you can't just go out and claim off of single sources. Venezuela's war is coming tonight. Like these are deeply consequential. Your words matter. I'll give you an example on Iran. I had the fact that we were going to bomb Iran. I basically had it about three hours before that happened, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure, which is why I never came and did it for breaking points or, and I told all of you behind the scenes, I was like, Hey, I'm, I'm here and it's a done deal, but for midnight hammer, but you can't do that.

44:03And there's a reason. And what I think that a lot, a lot of these people are, you know, playing in is first of all, they're acting like defamation law doesn't exist, which, listen, people, you're all going to find that one out the hard way. Good luck with that one. But second is that it's irresponsible because we all have trust in audiences. You and I both know, if I, you know, I could have thrown caution to the wind and done that video on Iran, would have gotten a lot. I'll give you another one I had, Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. I had that an hour before it was reported. Still only single source, can't do it, okay?

44:34Just can't. And there's, even though I'm sure we could have made a lot of money. We could have gotten scoops and all that stuff. It doesn't matter because the process is a process. You don't throw it out the window. And unfortunately, this is not just Candace. This is like an entire ecosystem is just reporting or wildly speculating, all of these things in public. Candace had trust with a large audience over Israel, fairly, I think, actually. She was one of the people who really was coming out hard about the Israeli government, about Gaza. So she gained that dissident trust that you and I have to a limited extent with also a lot of other people.

45:12And I understand the responsibility that I have to those people. But I think taking advantage of that, not just for the Charlie Kirk thing, but to wildly and ruthlessly just throw that out the window for whatever you personally happen to have as some crusade is really bad. And I see this happen not just with Candace, with so many other people who get addicted to this shit on the internet. Reporting is real. Standards should be real. I'm not saying that there's some law or anything around it outside of defamation law, which does exist, but we do have a responsibility. And I think that's something that watching the TPUSA thing, I mean, again, look, you can ask all the questions you want about 30-06 bullets.

45:52Apparently, everybody's a neck expert now whenever it comes to hunting. I'll leave that to the forensic people at trial. Tyler Robinson's people can present that at trial. I'd love to see what the ballistics experts and all that say, and we'll leave it to a jury of his peers to decide whether that's legitimate. And I'm not saying nobody has a right not to speculate or any of that. But when you ruthlessly and recklessly just speculate as fact and imply, let's say that people are involved in assassins, like this is real life shit. That's where I just think it's so irresponsible. Not to say not to question the FBI, I always question the FBI, always.

46:28But like, I'm not some great big defender of TPUSA. I'm not going to speak at America Fest. I don't really care what happens to them, to be honest with you. It's just like, there are people's lives here who are at stake and who work in the organization. But more importantly, it's about the trust that we have. Because you and I report on a lot of controversial and conspiratorial stuff. And I know the audience that that can attract. but I will never take them down a road unless I really not just believe it, but have it confirmed. And so you have a lot of trust with people out there over issues like Epstein.

47:04It'd be a lot easier if I could just be like, yep, Epstein 100 % worked for Israel. I mean, kind of, right? And I'll get you the evidence for that, but I didn't say it six months ago. I didn't have the evidence. I didn't have the emails, right, with Ryan. It would have been easier. It would have made a shitload more money if I just said, yeah, 100%. But we don't do that here, right? And even though it would be a lot easier if we could. So I know this is long-winded, but that's kind of my biggest disappointment, not just with Candace, but with this entire ecosystem around just Charlie Kirk. Because it's like, he was a real human being.

47:34There were other human beings involved. There's a personal tragedy, a political project, also people working over at TPUSA. And then there's also the element of just, you have a lot of trust with other people. So put Brigitte McCrone and all this other shit aside, to just flip back and forth on whether they were involved or pulling the trigger or any of that, we've just come a long way past Kash Patel screwed something up. And how many times, we've talked here about the Kash to screw up, about Kash blocking Joe Kent, looking into a foreign connection to the assassination. I have no problem talking about that.

48:08It's when we start to get into the realm of transponders, Egyptian planes, French Foreign Legion, all that. You're like, I'm sorry, this is just, I mean, look, it doesn't check out, period. It really just does not check out. Even the Egyptian claim, unfortunately for me, actually went and checked what we're talking about here. I'm like, this is so spurious. And so like, uh, this is so spurious to even just be 100 % sure that it's Egyptian, but then to, to draw that even further to Israel and all that, we cannot do that with any real level of responsibility. And it's only, you know, we all have trust and, and the background to be able to go and actually check those things and to make sure that we contextualize the facts without just throwing stuff out there.

48:48The tip line, for example, how, do you know how many unreported tips that I have? A lot of them are true or they end up true. As I just told all of you that I have, I don't report them because you can't do it without any sort of background. It's irresponsible to the craft and also to, to trust. And I've seen not just her do that, but a lot of other people do it. And unfortunately, you know, now it's this titillating true crime murder mystery, which has gone so far beyond what just happened to Charlie Kirk. I mean, it's on steroids to make it bipartisan here. Yeah, I mean, liberals really got excited about Russiagate, and it became like a true crime thing for them, right?

49:27And every night they tune into Rachel Maddow, what's the next shoe that's going to drop, who's the next character in this grand scheme and mystery? And like with this murder of Charlie Kirk, there were kernels of truth. there was Trump campaign and Russia connection. Like that was a real thing. And what Candace has to work with is yes, the FBI did screw this up. Yes, there are parts of this that continue to be weird, right? I don't think it's crazy for people to listen to the doctor saying like, oh, we had a neck of steel and that's what I would be like. 100%. What are you talking about? That sounds ridiculous.

50:02That's fine, right? But yes, she, and I don't even want to focus just on her. We live in this like post-truth environment. And so much from the president of the United States, who just says whatever the hell he feels like saying, bearing no relationship to reality, to Elon Musk buying Twitter and the way he has his own like, he also is like Trump in just complete reality distortion and that's part of what he does. Now we've got all of this AI slop in the mix where it's increasingly different and difficult to tell fact from fiction. And you've also had a sort of like conspiracy realignment into the right.

50:42Like that was part of actually RFK Jr. coming into the right, helped to bring like the people who used to be like hippie vaccine, anti-vaxxers into the right as well. And so you've had this shift in coalitions where you have a disproportionate number of people are really open to this stuff. And you've had Stop the Steal to prime with this. You had all kinds of crazy COVID conspiracies that prime for this as well. and so this is kind of the logical end point which is why you know when I see Tim Poole and these other people like getting so exercised about I'm like you know like you you've done this shit too you may not have gone quite as wild with the Egyptian planes and Brigitte Macron has a dick or whatever but you were happy to play in these waters when it was good for you and when it was serving you and now you she's taken it that next level and you're pissed that she's sort of winning in this like conspiracy off but even for her there's a limit.

51:33So let me, I'll skip ahead to the, basically the Piers Morgan thing. It's like, they get into the Brigitte Macron penis thing. If you're interested in that, she does make one point that Sagar kind of referenced about like, hey, Piers, you're going to, you, you know, now that it's safe for you to say things are bad in Gaza, you're able to say it. And, you know, I was saying this from the beginning, I would add that Candace herself was extremely pro-Israel until basically October 7th. So she also is kind of a newcomer to really seeing the truth of Israel and what they've been up to. But in any case, I think she is correct in that, that that did help gain her a lot of trust and gained a lot of people, a lot of trust who were there and have been sounding the alarm about what is actually going on in Gaza.

52:17But in any case, back to her right after this Erica Kirk meeting and the risks and dangers even for her is after this meeting, she goes and does her show and she promises like, oh, I'm going to tell you guys everything that happened, and I'm going to expose what this meeting was all about. And first of all, she gives very little detail about what actually happened in the meeting. Second of all, she really seems to kind of back off some of her harder-line positions vis-a-vis TPUSA in particular. Let's go and play F4. This was right towards the top of her show just after the Erica Kirk meeting. You guys were telling me not to drink water, so I didn't drink water.

52:55Well, I brought my own water, but I didn't drink that Water 2. It was a lot. There's a lot going on. Okay. And the conversation started with Justin Strife very sensibly saying, what are we looking to accomplish here? Like, what is the actual aim of this conversation? And he was pretty clear. And Erica was very clear that they were sort of most upset with what I obviously a bit of a fever pitch when I tweeted that it was a godforsaken company and people should not give money to it. And I have to own that. That's aggressive. That is actually aggressive in the retrospect. I was very frustrated and I don't know.

53:37I just, I felt like we weren't getting any answers and there were so many lies. And then I was getting attacked for asking all meaningful questions that was within their capacity to answer. And I told you, I, I definitely, my problem in life is that I can rise to anger very quickly. After this, you can hear, okay, that was too far, et cetera. And then, you know, I watched most of the rest of her show, and she doesn't really get into much more about what was actually said in this meeting, et cetera. So Yashar Ali, who's been watching the Canada show and really been tracking the growth of it and what it has meant, et cetera, he did analysis of the comments on this stream, and we can put some of them up on the screen here.

54:16And he said they were overwhelmingly negative. Tens of thousands of comments. He said 74 % of them were negative. The dominant emotional occurrence of the comments were betrayal and disillusionment, suspicion, paranoia, and conspiracy thinking, anger and hostility, confusion, and cognitive dissonance. He says, here's some of the comments. I think this private meeting is going to cost Candace a lot. The best part of this episode is the comments as they validate my deflation. If they are still gathering evidence three months later, why did they destroy the crime scene within days of the incident?

54:49which is expressing skepticism about some of what Candace said. Game over. Erica got what she wanted. All the hard work and credibility to get truth and justice for Charlie got shot. Pun intended. Sad day. Very sad day. Disappointed. Wish Candace didn't take Erica's bait by doing this. And so, listen, I do actually think the Piers Morgan debate may have helped to bring some of her audience back because then she gets to be in the position of the supposed brave truth teller against the, you know, stick in the mud journalist. I mean, Pierce himself is like a tabloid sensationalist, but whatever. Put that aside for the moment.

55:22I do think that kind of like helped her maybe bring her audience back along. But, you know, if they start to waver on, oh, Candace has been compromised. Candace got the call. Candace is no longer telling us the truth. Guess what? Someone else is going to pop in and fill that void because there's an audience to be had. They're all there. Unfortunately, my YouTube algorithm keeps pushing me to this type of shit. There's an entire ecosystem of orbiters who are just grifting off of this. And, you know, I mean, look, I'm not for censorship and all that. It's fine for all of this to exist. I just think at the Candace level, because it's about, if we compare the trust and people like her who have been doing this now for years, and you gain this real connection with your audience, like when you disabuse that, or in this case, what you're like admitting that you were mad or something and that's why you went kind of far.

56:16I'm sorry, like you have a responsibility. I've been mad plenty of times. It doesn't mean you violate or try not to violate your own personal ethics. So this is kind of an independent media problem. Also, you were talking about the RFK and all that for bringing conspiracy thinking. I actually don't think it's RFK. I think it was all Stop the Steal. I think Stop the Steal unleashed a love. Because think about it, at that time, what happened with Stop the Steal? was Trump would not hear it from anybody else except for people who would just tell him whatever he wanted to hear. Sidney Powell knows.

56:48That ultimately is what truly engendered trust between Donald Trump and some of the people around him. You had to be willing to say this election was stolen. It also transitioned to the base where many Republican Fox News commentators and others who knew that this was not true either had to endorse it, wink at it, or whatever. That just allowed this space to open where, of course, anybody is just going to take it as far as humanly possible. You could try and wink at it like Josh Hawley or any others, but at the end of the day, they had to say the election was stolen by Venezuelan dominions. That was like original sin, kind of ground zero, that opened up this entire kind of space and ultimately led people to just bring— that's what led people to live truly in a so-called post-truth environment.

57:35Now, to your point, it's not like that isn't a bipartisan phenomenon also. in its own right when we think about Russiagate and other things. Both have their own types of conspiracies. I also think that there's a big class element where at the end of the day, Russiagate, which was definitely equally bullshit, was kind of an elite version of what that looks like. Whereas now when you're dealing with lower class and lower IQ people who are shifting into the Republican coalition, especially as things move around in terms of who votes in which direction, it's going to look a lot more like this. It won't be all as dressed up.

58:10And, you know, liberal elite conspiracies have, they have academics involved and everything is trussed up and it's made to be more respectable. Lower IQ movements are going to look a lot more like this. And so this is a consequence of some of the shifting class dynamics that are here. So in Richard Hanani's, you know, low human capital theory, I think he's totally vindicated. I think this is actually what it looks like. I mean, I think there's a lot of, like, liberal moms who watch Candace, too, though. I mean, I think she really, I don't know that this is just, like, a right-wingers-watching phenomenon.

58:45You know, and again, Yasha's been the one who's tracking this. Like, it's pretty mainstream because it's fun, because it's entertaining. I think there's an element. Because she's entertaining. But, you know, what you see is, like you said, you'll have people who will wink at it, and they're going to get outflanked by the people who will actually say it. and then the minute that they don't say the thing the audience wants, then there'll be someone else who will come in and who will say. Or the other thing that happens is you ride that conspiracy as far as it goes and then people get bored and they move on to whatever the next thing is and you're kind of left to the side.

59:17Now with Candace, I think Candace is very talented. Oh, she'll be around. And she's been able to, she had her whole Brigitte Macron thing. She's done, this isn't her first moment in the sun, But this is the height of her popularity and her sort of celebrity in terms of American culture. And, you know, I don't know. I don't know if it's if this is the peak, but I think it's becoming increasingly difficult to sustain as the conspiracies get more ridiculous, more elaborate, more countries and players involved. and now you're having to deal with the reality of like whatever actually happened in that meeting with Erica Kirk, whether they had lawyers there and were like, hey, listen, here's the facts.

1:00:01If you keep saying this shit, then we're gonna have a problem. Definitely could see that too. I mean, and maybe she doesn't have an issue with that. Maybe she would like the publicity of getting sued. She's still the rich. She doesn't care. It bothered her that, you know, the Macrons are suing her over her like whole Brigitte-Macron transvestigation thing. I mean, we'll see though, because like no matter how much money you have, like at the end of the day, the court system will catch up with you. so we'll see alright thank you guys so much for watching it was fun to end I think on that note happy holidays Merry Christmas Happy Hanukkah etc to everybody who is out there we're going to miss you all and thank you for the greatest gift of all which is the ability to do this job which is from all of you so thank you thank you all very much and we'll see you all very soon

1:00:58Black history lives in our stories, our culture, and the conversations we still have in today. This Black History Month, the podcast I didn't know, maybe you didn't either, digs into the moments, perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook. Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan. Bruh had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. Listen to I Didn't Know. Maybe you didn't either. From the Black Effect Podcast Network, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts. I didn't know.

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