12/9/25: Young Voters Flee Trump, Jasmine Crockett Primary, Congress To Bailout Israel, Piers And Fuentes

24:29This is part of the problem. Tallarico is actually trying to intellectualize this way more. Because when you were talking about the standard left liberal thing, because he's trying to go after the new Texas Democrats. So the thing is, Texas, like Houston suburbs, Dallas suburbs, these people are Mitt Romney Republicans. I grew up with them. They're like Christian, but they're, you know, like country club. They're rich, you know, mostly. Now they're Democrats. Well, you know, the Tallarico kind of like, I'm evangelical, but I'm a Democrat. And, you know, yeah, it's very Buttigieg. Exactly. And by the way, who was Buttigieg's core constituency?

25:05Remind me. Right. The upper middle class liberal. Yeah. So that's who he's going after. The thing is, though, is that right now those same people are radicalized as much as like with boomer shitlib memes. So Jasmine Crockett is the logical endpoint of that. They hate Trump. Like there's actually not a lot going on beneath the scenes. So Jasmine Crockett is the logical endpoint for the Texas Democrat because for a lot of the people there, for them, they feel like they live in occupied territory, right? They're like, oh, we have a Republican governor and Dan Patrick and all this other crazy, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn.

25:41We want somebody to stick it to Trump. And so that's why Tallarico, again, to me, he's almost trying to like over-intellectualize the process. She gets it. Stand for nothing. Just be against Trump. And by the way, it's going to work. 100 % she's going to win. 100%. And that's one of those, I mean, I'll eat my words, I guess, if Tallarico does win. But the thing is, she doesn't have a shot now because, at least in my opinion, because what you just talked about, the core swing demos that Tallarico-Crockett, what they're trying to do is just take anti-Trump energy. What I think the lesson of the Zoran Mamdani campaign is, is that you have to take anti-Trump energy and marry it to something else.

26:26And with that, you can win over the Trump voter. That is not happening. Beto O 'Rourke already ground tested the anti-Trump strategy in 2018. Lost Ted Cruz by two points. You will never have that again. Because now there are still enough Latino Republicans who may, like not all of them are going to swing back, right? Even if some of them do. So the margins just don't exist. Like the statewide data is now in and it's very clear. Texas, even with shifting demographics and all of this, you would have to win over a pretty historic number of these traditional Latino voting Republicans. Not happening under Jasmine Crockett.

27:04Definitely not happening under Tolerico. Colin Allred, by the way, he kind of tried the inverse of this, the kind of like football buff guy. Was he in the NFL? I think he was in the NFL. He was a football player. And he's like a centrist. Yeah, but he tried the like, I'm standing up to Trump and I played football, you know, that type of thing. That shit didn't work. Like Beto is as close as they were ever going to get. That was 2018. The shifting demos, like, no, sorry. So let me caveat by saying, Like, neither of these candidates exactly my ideological cup of tea. Like, very, I mean, Tallarico took Mary Maddelson money.

27:42He's tried to shift his position on Israel. We want to talk to him because I want to know more specifics about where he stands. Also, I'm pretty sure he's pro-gambling, so. Yeah, the problem with that, she's taken crypto money. Although I don't actually, I've tried to look. Her record doesn't seem that bad on crypto. I mean, she voted against the Genius Act. Everybody, every Democrat voted against the Genius Act. In any case, she took the crypto money. She's really not, she's really bad on Israel. She's not for Medicare for all, right? So neither of these candidates is like my ideological cup of tea.

28:09I think in the primary, I think you're right. Right now, the poly market odds have her up 51 to 48. So they have it effectively tied in terms of the poly market odds for whatever that is worth. You already see her garnering endorsements from House members. Ayanna Pressley came out and backed her. So that's going to give her some momentum within the Democratic Party. And I just have to tell you, on pure, raw political talent with no ideological balance, the woman is a star. Like, she is a star. And I think the reason why that launch ad was, again, not what I would do. I would want to foreground affordability and specific plans, et cetera.

28:53But why it was very politically clever for her is because it puts on display her greatest strength, which is, again, triggering the right, which in the same way the right loved and still does love the candidates who can trigger the libs. Democrats now are in a place where if you can get Fox News mad at you and you can get Trump coming after you, they're like, yes, that is what we want to see. The other thing it does is it casts her as the main character, right? It puts her at like, Like, I am already at the center of this thing. And so I think she has a lot of strengths. Tallarico, you know, there's something, even though there's a lot that he says that should appeal to me, he has this very, to me, dated style.

29:45Like, part of what was cool about Zoran, obviously the policy is the most important part, but he had this very modern aesthetic. The font, the vertical video, the cuts, the authenticity of it. The, you know, I mean, it just felt very natural to him. Tallarico's launch ad is him standing in the back of a rusted out pickup truck with the church in the background and the Texas flag here and this fake crowd gathered around him. And it feels like 2006. Yeah. And I don't know. There's something about it that to me is just like off putting instantly. and again it's not fair because again this is not about ideological valence or like where he stands on the issues but there's a stylistic uh issue for me with him that i'm having trouble overcoming and i think maybe it is also like lingering pete buddha judge trauma because pete also did the like sort of had a similar stylistic approach similar way of talking also grounding himself like oh i'm the christian so i can speak to the christians and all of this stuff so primary i i also give the edge to Jasmine Crockett.

30:47Look, that is, again, I'm from there. I've seen this movie before. That's like a blue dog Democrat strategy. This shit doesn't work. It's been dead since 2010. There used to be. My congressman. It just feels very consultant-driven. It doesn't work anymore. They don't want this, like, I'm a rancher. It's like, who was the Montana guy? John Tester. Yeah, same shit. All right, guess what? He lost. But he did very well in that state, given the overall politics, because that was authentic. He actually really was a rancher, He lost his finger or something. Ranching eyes. That was authentic to him. Tallarico feels very like, okay, we got the consultants together in a room and you're a young guy, so we need you to make you appear larger and you've got this crowd behind you.

31:30I don't know. It just all feels very, very crafted and inauthentic. Jasmine Crockett's ad obviously is also consultant-driven and crafted and all of that, but it does feel like this is her. Like, she puts herself at the center. She puts herself in the spotlight. She does know how to pick these fights. And so, yeah, I think a lot of Democrats are going to—they already love her, right, because of the way she's picked these fights, and are going to like that aspect of her in this campaign as well. In terms of the general election, like, it's definitely—I would bet on the Republicans. I think it's definitely theirs to lose.

32:10I would not count her out. I feel like there is a just assumption that she's going to perform poorly, that she won't be able to appeal to swing voters, etc. And listen, if there's one thing I've learned from the Trump era, it's that that like charisma and that star power, it overcomes a lot. And she has she has that quality. So, you know, I don't I like I said, I would definitely think the Republicans, it's their seat to lose. They've got a shot at it. But when you have this tremendous reckoning of the Trump era and disgust with what the Republican Party represents and the people who are have swung the hardest against Trump are non-white, non-college voters, of which there are many, many, many of in Texas.

32:51You would expect that Texas would be a place where Democrats would perform much better than they ordinarily perform in the state. So I am not willing to write her off completely for the general election in the way that many others have. I'll make my sock bet right now. I'll use a sock on camera again. I'll do it. you know, I'll do it if she even loses by a point. There's no way. I'm like, I'll say it because the Dem, it just doesn't exist where like her strategy is one that will easily win a primary. By the way, if she were in a closer state, I actually think she would have more of a shot, but the state has fundamentally had a major political transformation over the last, since the last time that a Democrat came close, like the Beto strategy.

33:30It just, it doesn't work anymore. I mean, the margins expanded in 2024. And the idea that you could bank just on, you know, those type of voters to come out for you, I just don't see it. Especially by the way, there's going to be a raucous MAGA primary, which is currently happening with John Cornyn and all of them. So the Republicans are actually going to be a little bit more engaged in this race than normal. It's not just going to be normal, smooth sailing. There is an argument that that's bad, but it does mean that they're going to be paying attention. Paying attention means you come out to vote.

33:58And by the way, I mean, she's a gift, all right? The Republicans, in the way that she triggers the right, yeah, but that is useful to getting people to come out and hate vote against you for everybody who may come out to vote for you. I think she stands for nothing. I mean, look, she's a lightning rod and that's fine, but I think she's genuinely kind of dumb. I've never heard her say a single smart thing. She's a complete narcissist. She has a background of herself on her iPhone. That's insane. Sogret, these people are all narcissists. Yeah, I agree with you. That's a given. That is a given. I don't think it's, Like, I don't see any sign that she's not an intelligent person.

34:32I think she is an intelligent. I think she's very savvy in the way that she's positioned herself. And like I said, like, idealistically - She's maybe intelligent in the way Trump is for gaining attention. That doesn't mean you're a smart person. But what matters? Huh? Yeah, you're talking about politics. Yeah, I'm talking about politics. What matters? Are people voting based on, like, you know, your SAT score? I wish they would. No, they're not. She has star quality. And here's the other thing is, at the Senate level, it matters. the individual candidates matter some. I think what we learned in the off-year elections is that it doesn't matter that much who Democrats.

35:09You can run a Mikey Sherrill. You can run an Abigail Spanberger. You can run, you know, an Afton Bain in Tennessee. You can run, what's the dude's name, Jay Jones, who like, you know, said he wanted to murder his Republican. You can run him and win. I think a lot of this is going to be about the national wins much more than it is going to be about the individual candidates. Now, I'm not going to say the individual candidates in local condition don't matter at all. Of course, they do at the statewide level, at the congressional level. I don't think they really matter all that much, but whatever.

35:41We'll put that aside. But I think the bigger dynamic is going to be what is the national mood. And the wind is, whether it's Jasmine Crockett or James Tallarico or Beto or whoever they put in, the winds are at Democrats' back right now. I'll tell you where she would have a better chance, actually. I think governor, because there's a lot of evidence that voters vote very differently statewide versus national. They vote on a less partisan basis for state offices versus national offices. Like if you look at Kentucky, North Carolina, there's a lot of red states with blue state governors, blue governors.

36:12Exactly. Maryland famously, right? Larry Hogan, but they're not going to vote for him for Senate. People, you know, you got to give them some credit. Like in general, they understand the power of a United States Senate seat. It's going to be very, very difficult. And in the history of the red states, which would elect blue state Democrats, those have all been wiped out post-2010 with very, very limited exceptions. And that type that was successful doesn't look like her. Maybe. I mean, you know, this like raging narcissist triggering thing. It's worked for the Republicans, sure as shit has. Don't get me wrong, but it usually does not work in a state.

36:52Excuse me. It usually does not work in a state of the opposing party. Usually need like, like if you're running in a blue state, I'd be like, oh, you know, there's no question about it. But she doesn't have that Larry Hogan type energy, I guess, that you would need as a Democrat, I think, to win. But listen, it'll be, you know, it'll be a good test. We'll see. Same thing. The sock bet stands. I'll do it if we need to. All right, what margin? What's the margin? I told you 1%. If she loses by less than 1%, so it's like a spread, like, what is it, plus one. All right, we'll give her a plus one spread.

37:25Okay. So if she loses by more than one, I won't. If she loses by less than one, I will eat the sock. And if she wins, I'll eat two. All right, there you go. I'll even spot a couple points to the audience. Welcome to the A Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969.

37:51In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It 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.

38:37What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can 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.

39:14It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He 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. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around.

39:55It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody. There were years, right, where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can, to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of a bitch to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom.

40:30This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

40:43Speaking of Congress, we're going to move to the NDAA. A lot of very important stuff going on here in Washington. Let's put this up here on the screen. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the few Republicans still left in the House of Representatives for the majority, has announced she will not be voting on the NDAA. that, quote, funds our military and is once again filled with America's hard-earned tax dollars used to fund foreign aid and foreign countries' wars. So let's take a look. What's actually in said NDAA? Hmm. Despite promises to end the war in Ukraine, another$400 million for the, quote, Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative for 2026-27, you'll be happy to learn that for Israel, we have the following.

41:25500 million for Israeli missile defense, 80 million for U.S.-Israel anti-tunnel cooperation, 50 million for U.S.-Israel anti-drone technology. We've got another 175 million for the Baltic Security Initiative, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia. You've got a few hundred million there for the government of Iraq, Syrian militias. What's that? Syrian militias? Which militia exactly do you I mean,$100 million to support Middle Eastern countries to increase security along their borders. So, you know, about half a bill there for the Middle East, for the pro-Al Qaeda government over there in Syria. You know, a few cool$100 million for the Israelis, a few cool$100 million for Ukraine.

42:11And so, yeah, pretty much looks exactly the same than it always has been. Zeteo News doing some good breakdown here on the Israel stuff. Let's put that next one up here on the screen. This is amazing, by the way. The U.S. bill would actually fill the Israeli weapons gap caused by embargoes. So other nations that are boycotting Israel and are stopping them from acquiring certain weapons, what the U.S. bill would do is go around and would then buy said weapons and make sure that we deliver it to them. They're going to analyze, make sure we need to spend our government money analyzing, and making sure the Israelis have absolutely everything they need, that they're not impacted by these embargoes from their genocide whatsoever, and then we will make sure to fill the gaps in anything that is not being provided by countries that have more of conscience than we do.

43:01America first indeed. And so actually, you know, what's kind of interesting here, guys, is this could be in trouble because you've got a lot of, you know, the margin right now in the House of Representatives is like two votes. Let's put D3 up here on the screen. This is from Politico. They're talking about what you missed in the NDAA. They also, you'll all be happy to learn, is that they are making sure to waive any of the existing sanctions on Syria. We wouldn't want al-Qaeda to pay a price, now would we, now that they're pro-Israel in Syria. That would be unconscionable. I think we should waive a lot of sanctions, but yeah.

43:36It's funny that this is the one that we choose to do. Look, we can debate sanctions all we want. So they work, they not work. There's a lot of evidence. They mostly don't work. But if you're going to do it, if you're going to waive it, you should waive it for a good reason. And in this case, what are you doing it for? So you can have the pro-Israel al-Qaeda in Syria. Okay. All right. Got it. And like I said, hundreds of millions more here. I love this. Making sure to backfill all of the Spain, Italy, and Germany weapons transfers by buying said weapons. Make sure that Israel has absolutely everything that it needs.

44:09Now, originally, I thought, of course, Ukraine. We're not even going to, I'll get to that money pit here in a second. It'll disappear into the pockets of Zelensky and his cronies. Just, you know, he needs just a few more hundred million to make it all work. But what is amazing to me is I originally had thought, oh, well, you know, Marjorie won't vote for it. So maybe it'll be in trouble. But you informed me this morning, I had forgotten that many hawkish Democrats will probably bail them out because they support the Ukraine, the Israel section too. So it's great to live in a uniparty state. Yeah.

44:43Bipartisanship, still very much. It's alive. Sogert, don't listen to the haters who say there's no bipartisanship in Washington. No, so, I mean, you're losing Marjorie. Thomas Massey, I'm going to assume, probably not going to vote for it either. That means you can only lose one more person. I think that's the math. And so if you did have more Republicans defect, the expectation is that there are a handful of hawkish Dems who would make sure to step up and fill the void. One other thing I provision I did want to mention, because this was, you know, related to a central Donald Trump campaign promise.

45:15Remember, he talked about how he was going to expand access to IVF, blah, blah, blah. Well, Mike Johnson, who is this, you know, ideological Christian zealot, he has removed a provision that would have provided IVF coverage for military active duty members of the military. So that in spite of Trump's pledge to strengthen access to the procedure. So, you know, it's one of the line items here. Of course, this is a Christmas tree type of bill. There's all kinds of stuff put in here. But one of the pieces that got stripped out for religious ideological reasons here, seemingly from the Speaker of the House himself, was this provision that would have provided IVF access for active duty members of the military.

45:53Wow. Yeah. Great. Let's continue here. D4 up on the screen. We wanted to stay on top of this. We had told you before that there are many Republicans who are weighing resignation. Well, now it says that there may be 20 in the next few weeks who will announce that they will not retire, running for the exits before things get worse. It's a terrible job. I think, in my opinion, kind of always has been, especially in the House of Representatives. But especially now and when you're headed into a minority, you're going to be doing nothing. You're just going to have to be Trump's impeachment defense guy.

46:30And that's a great job for Jim Jordan or anybody like that who just loves to go on Fox News and be like, here's what we're going to do to stand up to the radical Democrats today. If you actually care about getting anything done, already being a minority sucks. Being the minority under Trump where 98 % of what's going to happen on the Democrats' investigation of Trump, get ready. You know, it's going to be Benghazi committee all day long. Not a criticism. That's fine. That's what opposition parties do when they take over the House of Representatives. But that's the reason why. And they don't want to take their marching orders.

47:00Well, yeah, that's right. It's always a sign. You always see, like, in years where it's expected that it's going to be a Republican wave, you see a bunch of Democrats retire because they just don't want to deal with being in the minority. They're like, all right, I'm done here. This time, the indication is you've had more Republicans who have retired or outright resigned, like Marjorie Taylor Greene's not serving out the rest of her term. And so that is an indication of where the political winds are heading and the expectation from basically all of them that we're going to be in the minority. So I'm not sure I want to stick around for this.

47:28I mean, one question. First of all, we don't know how many. You know, this says up to 20. Well, up to 20 is a pretty broad range. So how many exactly? The other question is, you know, do others of them take the Marjorie Taylor Greene route and leave before their term ends, triggering more special elections and putting the House majority in jeopardy even before we get to the midterm elections, which again, given the narrow margin and given the way these special elections have been going, is I think certainly very much on the table that Mike Johnson would lose control, majority control of the House even before we get to 2026.

48:07Right, yeah. So it's gonna be interesting. and then I just had to put this in here because, you know, only been saying it for three years. D5, put it up here on the screen. You gotta love this. New York Times, they woke up from their coma. They say, Zelensky's government sabotaged oversight, allowing corruption to fester. Oh, really? And they say, a Times investigation found President Vladimir Zelensky's own administration removed guardrails and, you know, to prevent graft. And they point to this very specific example involving a gas company. but this is the tip of the iceberg. And did you guys cover?

48:42Probably not. Which the head negotiator, literally, we played a side of him last week. The head negotiator for Ukraine's peace deal, he had to resign because of corruption. His own defense guys were corrupt. I think you and I covered that, didn't you? I don't think we did. Because we covered, we did the side, and then the next day, literally resigned. Resigned because of corruption. Can you imagine that? Like, you're negotiating peace, and the next day, you're like, oh, actually, I gotta go, because they got me. I tweeted out the story. They got close Zelensky advisors, business partners, with hundreds of millions in cash and euros in the middle of their apartments when they're being busted.

49:19Zelensky is literally at war with his own independent aid to the extent that there's any independent agency trying to cover. And what do we do? We hand them another 400 million. It's amazing to me. It's amazing to me. Like one of the reasons, look, I get the Europeans, why they're all bought into this. If this war ends, it's a disaster for him. It's a gravy train. This is the only thing propping up the entire Zelensky regime. They have profited to the tune of hundreds of millions. And it's pathetic because at the time when we used to talk about it in 2022 and 2023, when it wasn't popular to point out how corrupt this country was, they said you are a Russian propagandist if you wanted an independent agency to review.

50:02And coincidentally, Segar, one of the greatest government agencies in U.S. history with a special inspector general for Afghanistan. It just issued its final report. And I read it. I've been reading those for 20 years. And its final report detailed the hundreds of billions that we wasted in Afghanistan. And the only reason we even know about so many of that is because of that independent agent. We still wasted it. Now you would think, you know, eventually that we would get an accounting. Now we don't even have the mechanism to account. We're going to rely on some New York Times investigation or whatever Ukrainian opposition will come in and just point out only the Zelensky corruption, not their own, and all this stuff.

50:38Who knows how many billions we've pissed away in this war and how many people died as a result of it, even if you do support Ukraine. And it has a major ongoing impact because part of the deal that is being crafted, which seems like it's not really particularly going that well at this point, the Russians don't like it, the Ukrainians are rejecting the view, whatever. It doesn't seem like that's really coming together, but who knows what's happening behind the scenes. In any case, Part of that is, OK, you're not going to be in NATO, but you get to be in part of the EU. That's right. Well, the EU has guidelines about corruption, anti-corruption.

51:10So they're looking at this and like, not so sure. We really want Ukraine, given the track record right now, to be part of the EU. So it has consequences, you know, not only which is significant in terms of where our tax dollars have gone and into whose pockets they have gone in and what little interest our political class has taken in answering that question. But also in terms of what happens in the future, you know, whenever this war is brought to some sort of an ugly conclusion. Yeah, that's right. I mean, look, I don't think I'm not optimistic for a deal. Trump is not focused enough on it. The Russians have their own, you know, they look the Russians like they don't really need this deal.

51:49They're fine. They don't care about killing as many of their people as possible. The only people who need a deal is Ukraine because they're dying and they're losing their territory. Putin basically behind the scenes has said, look, we're going to take this shit one way or the other. You could give it to us or we're going to bleed another 100K. They don't care. Their economy is fine. Their population seems to support the war. I don't get it, but they do. I'm not Russian. I guess they've been convinced of it. The Ukrainians are the ones who are moving in the opposite direction. They've got enough people killing.

52:20They've got enough people been killed, and they're willing to negotiate at least a little bit. And the Europeans are blowing smoke up their ass about how, oh, don't worry, we'll fund you in the interim. And as long as nothing happens, it's good for Ukraine. Because what did I just show everybody in the NDAA? Hundreds of millions are still pouring in, just enough to keep them in the fight, to continue to lose more territory. And so, look, we're going to end up in the same place no matter what. So they think that they're being smart by holding this off. They're being dumb because they're just going to continue to lose their territory.

52:51They refuse to wake up to reality. They demand NATO protection, security guarantees. And Trump wants to give it to him. He's the one who's to blame here. It's been a year now, you know, basically, since he's had an opportunity and nothing is moving in any direction. So if you're pro-Ukraine, you should be mad. And honestly, you should be even more mad because you're like, you said this was gonna end and you just keep pouring money into the conflict, doing nothing and dragging feet. People are dying by hundreds of thousands. Well, and remember the messaging from him. This will be easy to say. Yeah, that's what he said.

53:20I'll do it before I even take office or I'll do it on day one. I mean, that was what he said. And people bought into this brand. oh, he's a great dealmaker. If anyone can get it done, it'd be him, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, and I think people were not really buying in that it was going to be literally handled on day one. But if you look at his polling, this is one of the issues where his rating is the lowest because, you know, it is another major blow to his brand. You're supposed to be the great dealmaker. This was supposed to be so easy for you. And here we are a year in and, And we had some rumblings of, okay, things are coming together.

53:56And look, again, I don't know what's happening behind the scenes. I have no special knowledge. But we haven't heard much about progress being made. And it seems like both sides are balking at the provisions at this point. I doubt. I will be so doubtful. And look, we're about to go into Christmas. Things go on hiatus. The money gets passed. Get a couple hundred million more. Zelensky and his guys get to go to Vienna and Paris and buy some cookies. It's at the point now where it's easier just to put it on the back burner. It's Afghanistan now. We're just going to keep pouring money into this shit.

54:22and it'll get worse and worse and one day it'll blow up and then everyone oh my god how did we all let this happen it's like well it would have been easier to solve this shit in 2022 but everybody said oh i'm gonna i'd rather pay high gas prices for ukraine how'd that work out for you they lost way more territory since that time so thanks uh for you know destroying whatever we keep ranting welcome to the a building i'm hans charles i'm menelik lomoba it's 1969

54:57In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It 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.

55:43What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can 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.

56:19It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He 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. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around.

57:00It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody. There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can, to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of bitches to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather.

57:39Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's talk about this pretty remarkable exchange between Piers Morgan and Nick Fuentes over the course of two hours. I was among the millions that watched all of it. Millions? I think so, yeah. Was it millions? Let's check. That's what Pierce said. He was bragging about it being millions anyway, so I'm taking his word for that. Of course he said that. But, you know. About 2.2 million. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, there were, you know, there are a lot of clips. You guys have probably seen already some of the things that are floating around.

58:16Maybe you have or have not. We'll get to some of the ones that have been clipped out the most. But there was a different exchange where Nick acknowledges that his politics are basically the same, not basically, he says they are the same, as the politics of Israeli Zionists, that he wants the same thing for the US that they want in Israel. And in a certain sense, I thought that was maybe his most accidentally revealing comment. So let me go ahead and play that and we can talk about that on the other side. There's a genocide going on right now. It's not against the Jews. How many Christians are there?

58:51Gaza, it's against whites. How many Christians are there in the world? let me one point some billion we are losing as a civilization of mass migration and here's the difference in israel they have my politics in israel they want to maintain a jewish majority if they had it their way it would only be jewish people they're fighting like hell so the jewish people can have as much territory a jewish state they can be proudly jewish in their own land whereas in america we are being besieged by 10 million illegal immigrants in four years and then whites and Christians are going to be the minority. And that's true in Canada, Australia, all the countries in Europe.

59:29So you could say there's 2 billion people, but what's the proportionality? What is the percentage of people being born that are white? Where's the arrow pointing? Where are we going to be in 50 years? In 50 years, there might be an Israel. In 50 years, there isn't going to be a white Christian. So the reason I think, Sagar, that this is very instructive is because we have all spent a lot of time now thinking about Israeli society. Yes, I agree. In Israeli politics. Thinking about how that is going for Israelis, let alone how that is going for the world. And so Nick is saying here, my project of ethno-nationalism is the same as the Israeli project of ethno-nationalism.

1:00:06So as much as he is critical of them, he actually admires their commitment to an ethno-state with Jewish supremacy. He just wants it to be white people who are on top here, white Christians who are on top here versus Jews as it is in Israel. And I think we can all see very clearly from recent experience what that actually looks like. I mean, in terms of Israeli society, they have major issues. They're suffering, you know, an exodus of especially the sort of like college educated, you know, elites who are leaving the country. You have a massive, you know, issue in terms of like the social welfare state and people who actually want to work and pay in.

1:00:44You have, of course, extraordinary violence, you know, all this language about, oh, we need Israel because it's the only place where Jewish people can be safe. It's quite the contrary. It's probably the place where Jewish people are the least safe. It requires and necessitates an apartheid regime because you're constantly in terror of a demographic replacement and of Arabs and Palestinians becoming the majority. So then you end up doing both violence, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. It leads to mass state violence, like multiple wars on multiple fronts, bombing all of these countries for the greater Israel project so that you can make sure that your ethnostate is demographically secure.

1:01:28Like that is their project. And here Nick is saying, yes, that is what I want for the United States. So that's why I think that that comment to me was so interesting. Not just interesting. That is the fundamental problem for the American Zionist project, because the American Zionist project is that Israel is a defense of Western values. And he is saying, actually, no, it is representative of my vision for an ethno-nationalist American state. And in a lot of ways, he's honest about it, right? He's right. And I think that's part of the problem is we all, at least most of us, with our eyes open, we see that society now for what it is.

1:02:09Now, I would say, if you look at the right-left valence for a lot of the criticism of Israel, it comes at a two thing. Number one, from the left, it's almost entirely based on human rights concerns. On the right, a lot of it is about this tiny country. I said before, it violates natural law, a country of 9 million that rules 330 million or at least has a vast amount of influence. But, you know, look, Americans, even people who are skeptical of immigration. Let's talk about the Trump people. Whenever the Trump people overtly make immigration stuff racial, it becomes much less popular. Is that correct?

1:02:42Now, why? Because what do people mean when they say they want immigration restriction or something like that? You point to control over your border. Now, here's the other thing too. If you actually ask people whether they want ethno-nationalist politics, they're like, No, actually. I mean, look, first of all, it's a little fucking ridiculous to hear a guy who admits that his family is Italian and Mexican start talking about heritage American. Like, seriously? Okay, all right? You know, if we want to play this game, my wife's blood goes back to Plymouth Rock, all right? I've got way more heritage American cred than Nick Fuentes does.

1:03:16My kid, even though it's a jeet mongrel, according to the Groypers, has got more heritage American blood, all right? If you guys want blood and soil, like we can do that. Rolling it back to the, I mean, this, it's just - Something you and I both have in common. We both have deep mongrel children. It's so preposterous. Does it not annoy anyone else that only in America they can become so assimilated to be a Italian Mexican espousing ethno-nationals, white politics? You know, again, my wife's ancestors would have been horrified at a Italian post-18th century - Italian Catholic saying that he's a white American.

1:04:00I mean, does this not drive anybody else crazy? All right. Okay. Moving back about the ethno-nationalist part. Yeah. This is the logical conclusion of like Zionist Israel. And that's a nightmare. Yeah. Because Israel has always relied on we are better than everybody else. We are better than these barbarian Muslims who live in Doha. By the way, look, I lived in Qatar, okay? I don't want to live in an Islamic country. It fucking sucks, if you ask me. Completely, completely out of step with most Western values. I don't want that bullshit over here. But they want that to, that's what I'm saying. They want that in their own version to be imported here.

1:04:44That's part of what drives me crazy. They're the most identitarian people in the world. Think about what we have seen in Israel. Like, to associate yourself with their politics, to me at this point, it's honestly wild. Just this week, we didn't even get around to covering it because there's so much psycho shit that they do. Ben Gavir and his acolytes, who are members of the government, their new symbol, their new pin that they're wearing around is yellow. It's meant to look like the hostage ribbon. But if you look closely, it's a noose. It's a noose. The symbol of racial terror, like the national global symbol of racial terror.

1:05:19That's what they're wearing. Why are they wearing that? because they want the right to execute the Palestinian detainees that they are holding, some of whom are children, none of whom ultimately, or very few of whom ultimately even face charges. They're just randomly pulled. If you're military-aged men, you're just assumed to be guilty. So there's that. We all witnessed the right-to-rape protests and the way that the rapists are celebrated in the country. That is a natural extension of the Israeli Jewish supremacist ethno-nationalist project, as is the apartheid, as is the violence, as is the ethnic cleansing, and as is the fact that you are not interested in making peace with your neighbors.

1:06:07All of that violence comes from this one rotten seed of we must do anything we have to do. And it doesn't matter. Nobody else matters. Only we matter. and we will do literally anything to maintain our demographic majority. So let's just be really, like he is telling you those are his politics and that is perfectly in line with everything else that he said. And the reason I appreciated this interview with Pierce is because Nick has been doing, like he just did one with Steven Crowder that was so fucking embarrassing. I'm sorry. It was Steven Crowder. That was - You don't have to say sorry. Humiliating.

1:06:43It was humiliating because from the jump, He's, you know, he's clearly afraid of Nick and his audience and everything's like, now you said some things I don't agree, but I think you were just joking. I think you're taken out of context. Like, let me, you know, let me give you the floor to explain that you're really much more reasonable and moderate, that these bad people want to make you out to be. The Tucker interview, also embarrassing, right? He's been going on this tour and now he's sort of like, can't be denied anymore. so you know everybody's going to talk about him and everybody's going to talk to him and mostly what he's been getting is softballs or they don't have his words directly there so he doesn't have to directly address them now there are parts of this that i would have handled differently but you know pierce like to his car he's good at this type of interview he's not afraid of confrontation he's quick on his feet he had a moment where he like caught he had a couple moments where he caught nick in some you know some things that were like logical inconsistencies that i thought was very clever to do in the moment.

1:07:44He doesn't handle everything the way that I would, but he kind of forced Nick to actually be straightforward about what are your actual views? Are these jokes or are these not jokes? And I think that was at this point where we are with him being uncanceled and him being in the mainstream and having all this influence and all of that. I think that was important to do. So let me go ahead and play one of those moments. So, you know, I had Nick actually called me out for always calling him a Nazi, prefacing with the fact that he's a neo-Nazi every time I talk about him, because I think that is an accurate description of his politics.

1:08:20So one of the clips that Piers played was him saying how great and cool he thinks Hitler is, and he challenges him with that. Let's go ahead and take a listen how that goes. You think Hitler was very fucking cool? Yes, I do. And I'm tired of pretending he's not, to be honest. This is the problem, you see. It's a bit like when you just say, I'm a racist. You're a racist. You think Hitler's cool, but you're not anti-Semitic. If you're a Jewish person watching this, what are they thinking? So there you go. Yes, I think Hitler is cool. I'm tired of pretending he's not. Let me go ahead and play also this moment where Piers challenges him, Nick, with some of the things he said in the past and asks him, well, I mean, aren't you just basically admitting here that you're a racist?

1:09:05And Nick says, yes, he affirms, yes, you could say that. I am a racist. This is F3. Let's take a listen. I'm a new generation of white person. I'm not living around blacks. Sorry. You know, I want white kids and I don't want my white kids bringing home black people to marry. It's racial for me. And call me racist. Oh, very Christian to you. I don't give a fuck. I mean, it couldn't be clearer, really, unless you want to say that's another of your jokes. but you're basically saying, yeah, I'm a racist, aren't you? Yeah, yeah, I'm fine with that. You're fine with saying you're a racist? Totally. I think everybody's racist.

1:09:49I think everybody, if we're being honest, is racist. I think everybody, the only people that aren't racist or pretend not to be are white people to their detriment. There was a funny moment right after that because Nick had taken great offense at Tucker playing for him something he'd said about his dad, which indicated his dad was racist. Oh, Piers, Piers. Did I say, oh, I said Tucker, sorry. Piers played something for Nick that he had said about his dad that indicated his dad was racist. How dare you say my dad is racist? And then here he's like, well, yeah, everybody's racist. And so Piers is like, but wait, your dad, just the one non-racist person?

1:10:22I thought that the whole dad thing was kind of weird because whatever. But my point is just like, look. I think it was clever because it got him sort of angry. Yeah, that's fair. And frazzled off the jump. Now, listen, to be clear, Knicks fans think he did a fantastic job. He thinks Pierce was owned. They think it's so based that he was like, yes, Hitler's cool. And yes, I'm a racist. And all of that. Like, they're totally happy with his performance. To me, I think it's very useful to have this new interview where he says overtly, yes, Hitler's cool. Yes, I'm a racist. I support the politics of, you know, apartheid Israel.

1:10:55That's what I want for the United States. Okay, good. Like, good. People need to know. Yeah, I agree. Exactly where you are. And not do this, like, playing cute and coy and like, oh, I want to work with the left. and I'm really reasonable. And no, I've been so mischaracterized. Well, even in Trump criticism, you know, I mean, look, it's been very effective very recently. He is very, look, he's smart. Like, let's give credit where it is due. He's a very calculated person. Like when he does his normal guy interviews with, I don't know, like Bradley Martin or something like that, he'll sit and he'll very cogently explain the problems with US support for Israel and, you know, stuff that has broad-based support.

1:11:31But this stuff is also important to couch. I mean, look, you know, the Gripers are correct in that, and quote, he did a good job. He very accurately represented himself, you know, very accurately. If you knew anything about him, this is exactly what it is. And I'm not going to sit here in pearl clutch. I'm pretty confident enough in American politics and more to say, I don't think most people are cool with that. I just don't. And, like, that's the part where, look, this kind of begets, like, media responsibility for couching in everything. What, this is an important, by the way, why are we even paying attention beyond, like, this is a thing.

1:12:04Because the thing is, and again, this is, in my opinion, kind of reminding back, I think the last time we talked about Fuentes, I ultimately blame much of the, quote, liberal Zionist or right-wing Zionist project for this bullshit. Because they are the ones who try to defend ethno-nationalist Israel, who murders women and children, in the language of American interests and of liberal Western values, which a lot of Americans believe in. And they kind of broke that open and that criticism window where ultimately it really was like Nick and a few others who were willing to say, no, this is bullshit.

1:12:41And like, that's the vacuum that was ultimately filled. And so, and, and, you know, look, even now with the pro Israel, right, everyone is basically saying the same shit about Muslims, you know, this like rampant, like low IQ Islamophobia as literally, by the way, go read that Charlie Kirk letter to Netanyahu. He even says there, and there was a whole poll-tested strategy. They're like, we need to attack Islam to move away from people attacking. But this is what these Zionists never understand. Guys, if you openly normalize talking generically about cultures and moving away from talking about people as individuals, or openly talking about people as a race, and specifically openly normalize like grouping people in together.

1:13:28Historically, that's always been really bad for Jews, right? But they seem to think that it's not going to blow back on them. He's only taking it to a very logical conclusion. And so that's why his Israel comment combined with the race, it's like, yeah, that is the project. I mean, look at America. Like in general, broadly, what we mostly have come to terms with, again, even coming to immigration, I know you disagree, but there are a lot of people who still voted for Trump on the immigration agenda. I, again, think it was about control. And one of the things, I mean, even in this whole race thing, whenever he talks about, I think he literally said at one point, race is not skin deep, right?

1:14:06Which, okay, I mean, yeah, if you believe that, I mean, that's fine, I guess. You know, not a lot of good evidence, actually, whenever it comes to U.S. culture. Look, I don't love the race IQ discourse. I don't think there's a lot of really good that comes from it. But if you want to look at educational attainment by race and all that, you would be amazed at the difference, let's say, in the term white. White is a meaningless term. The income gap between a quote-unquote French heritage American compared to an Italian American or a Serbian or Caucasian American from the Caucasus is almost a difference between white and black.

1:14:46You can also do that in terms of Asian. My point is like Laotian versus Japanese. or Indian. Now, I don't want to go down this whole road, but my point on that is that if it was just not skin deep, then that wouldn't be the case because their skin color or their race would determine it. I think a lot of it is cultural. And in fact, that is value-based and it transcends, right? In fact, it's kind of an inspirational story. If you ask me, you know, we've, uh, I read this piece, it was in Killett years ago, actually talking about the black Americans and, the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance and Caribbean black Americans versus some of the legacy of Jim Crow South and why exactly there were educational differences in income.

1:15:33Yeah, it's all culture. Turns out, and you can't even say, oh, guys, genetically they're the same. They're both descendants of a slavery-based island system. So actually it's all cultural based. I think that's kind of cool. Very inspirational actually. But nobody, and again, I think entertaining this is dangerous, but I guess at this point, like, we have to talk differences, you know, and all this. And so, look, and by the way, you know, I don't think people want to go down this whole road of, you know, they're talking about the Somali fraud thing. I'm like, okay, you want to talk about fraud?

1:16:03Like, you want to talk about fraud? Like, we can, right? Let's discuss Rick Scott. Yeah. How about that? Okay, but let's also look at, I'll say it, the Hasidic Jewish culture, right? Well, guess what? Go into New York City. You can look at landlords and all people. Racists do this all the time who are anti-Semitic. Do I think that's because they're inherently Jewish? No, I think that ultra-insular communities of any sort often can use their different network effects in order to pull off fraud. I mean, Nick, coming from an Italian background, this is something that's said very much about the Italians, you know, the mob and the way that that all worked.

1:16:36I mean, yeah, it's a very common phenomenon, especially with immigrant communities, especially if there is, you know, especially actually if there's some sort of discrimination against that community and that makes them even more tighter knit and they're looking out for one, you know. Don't let my own people off the hook. I'm not a racist. I don't believe in all this. A lot of Indians commit fraud. A lot of them. You know why? In India, it's a non-rules-based system where corruption and graft is rife culturally. It's a huge problem over there. And so they come over here and some of them who use the same practice.

1:17:05Does that mean all Indians are corrupt, love it? No. In fact, is it inherent to our brown condition? Right. Or is it a legacy of the institutions and all? Now, I'm fine with that. We can talk about that shit all day long. but let's not all pearl clutch over it. And let's definitely not make it some sort of like skin color. My point is, it's America. We should all be treated as individuals. I'm happy to discuss culture all day long from Somalis to Hasidic Jews to anybody else. We can talk all day long about merit. That's ultimately why I think a merit-based, individual-based system and evaluating everyone as ultimately as the U.S.

1:17:41Constitution inherently at its best wanted us to look at is fundamentally why I think the American project is still sounding good. We have tried his vision before. It was called the Jim Crow South. Beyond openly just being a place where people were lynched or whatever. They'll love that one. They're always talking about how the lynchings weren't always that bad. It's amazing. If you never delved into Southern. I didn't even know about that. Oh, man. Southern revanchism is a whole other. Well, and there's, I mean, for me, I think the culture piece, like I give that some credence. I also think material conditions are incredibly important even when, you know, that was one of the things that was frustrating me when Piers and Nick were going back and forth on like crime statistics is you have to talk about material conditions to get a complete picture there as well.

1:18:25And Piers, because he doesn't, you know, he doesn't really have an opposite or like an alternative ideological frame. So he doesn't have a lot of grounding to come into those discussions. Like he doesn't have, for example, a class-based frame to apply, or even, you know, you would bring more of a cultural frame to it to apply like he doesn't have it. But in any case, putting that aside, You know, I think there's another dynamic here. First of all, most of what Nick says about black people, about immigrants, most of this has not been a problem for the Republican Party. You know, most of this is pretty mainstream in terms of the Republican Party.

1:19:01You can just ask Stephen Miller and look at what the president says about Somali, about Somalis, not even Somali, like Somali U.S. citizens, Somali Americans, to see the way that this racial lens has become the dominant lens of Republican politics. And it's ironic because, you know, in a lot of ways, they position themselves as pushing back on the racial lens or the identity lens that came from liberals and the left. You know, that's what wokeism is, right? It's a racial lens, but from a left wing perspective. And now they have applied their own. And I mean, this has always existed in Republicans.

1:19:42This is not like new, but now it's, I think, more front and center than it's ever been before. and with more overt power in the person of Stephen Miller and others within the White House, just look at the way the DHS account posts, where they have this very explicitly racial lens. That's how you end up with the refugee program shut down, except for Afrikaners coming out of South Africa, right? Whites, literal whites only refugee policy. But where Nick comes in from their opprobrium is when he applies it to Jewish people as well. And so, you know, that's why, like you say, okay, you blame liberals.

1:20:16Look, I think there's a lot of blame to go around for the flirtation. No, no, not liberals, for the right-wing Zionist movement. Right-wing Zionist, okay. They're trying to, they're trying to have it both ways. They're trying to say, denaturalize and deport all Somalis because we don't like Ilhan Omar. Right, but also - But if you do the same, if all Jews, if you conflate for Israel, you're an anti-Semite. And you should be - You can't have them. And you should literally be criminalized. Right, exactly. And locked up, and that should be made actually illegal, yes. No, I blame the right-wing Zionist for his rise, 100%.

1:20:42And I agree with that. And then to zoom out more broadly, you know, I don't think any of us should be surprised that radical politics is ascendant, that it's more overt. You know, it's a product of certainly like Internet culture, but also just a product of the fact that the neoliberal project has run its course. It has failed to deliver on its promises. People are slipping in their living standards. They're living less. I mean, their life expectancy is literally shrinking like the most basic metric of how society could do. So from a more macro perspective, you know, that's where I sort of pin this phenomenon.

1:21:13But I also feel like, you know, Nick in this interview, he's very confident. He's like, young people agree with me and I'm winning. I'm winning the argument. I don't see a lot of evidence for that. In fact, look, I don't know. This poll is who knows how accurate this is. Many people don't even know who Nick Fuentes is. But his favorability among the American population right now is 6%. Okay, if you put a random person's name in there, you're likely to get more than that. And interestingly, though, actually, if you dig into the cross tabs, the place where he has his greatest support, of course, young men.

1:21:50But if you break it down by racial groups, it's actually black people and then Latinos and then white people, only 3 percent favorability. So it's like 12 percent. And so, you know, I think the I think the Israel criticism reads to a lot of people as like anti-establishment. and also reads if you don't listen to him all the time and you don't hear him saying or you think he's just joking when he says like, no, I am actually a racist and I actually don't wanna be around black people and I cross the street when I see them and I don't wanna live in their neighborhoods and I don't want my kids to bury them.

1:22:24Like if you aren't paying enough attention to hear all of those things, it may also read as like concern for equal rights and concern for humanity because that is one of the dominant frames with which people view Israel. So anyway, I thought that polling was interesting even as I take it with a grain of salt. And this is not to dismiss him because I think a lot of the discourse right now about, oh, it's all bots and it's all inorganic and foreign influence and whatever. Like there may be some of that, but he genuinely has a devoted following. You can see them IRL. They turn up at events all the time.

1:23:00They watch his interviews religiously. They post his content. Like, this is clearly a fan base that exists and is very influential and incredibly impactful with young, especially with young Republican colleges. To say it is a bot thing is ludicrous. It's literally not true. Look, he is a very popular person, okay? He's popular. Now, I think to say he's the most influential amongst young men is a little Twitter-brained, in my opinion. I think Ben Shapiro is actually far more influential. I wish that were not the case, to be clear. I don't agree at this. At this point, he's fallen off. He's fallen off.

1:23:37I think he was, but I think he's fallen off very hard. I totally disagree. Go look at his view count. It's not just his view. He still has one of the most popular podcasts in the U.S. It's a top 10 political podcast. He has many more downloads, even in ours. I wish this were not the case. But also, I think his audience is older. See, look, there's not a ton of them. His numbers, listen, his numbers, I mean, Tim Pool was talking about this, like all conservative influencers outside of the griper lane and outside, like Candace is doing very well, Tucker's doing well, Nick is doing very well, but the pro-Israel Republican commentators, they're all falling off.

1:24:07Yeah, that's a YouTube thing. But if you look at the podcast charts, the Matt Walsh's of the world, the Charlie Kirk show was huge before this. It was a top 10 ban in war room. This is not just old people. To deny that they do not have a big audience really whitewashes that there is a whole ... Again, this is just Twitter brain. There is an SEC-style Republican out there who listens to the Ben Shapiro show every day. But they're older. I mean, look at the polling with young Republicans on Israel. Yes, but that's not just Nick Fuentes. That's just organic. I'm not saying it's only Nick Fuentes, but I think Ben has lost a lot of whatever purchase he had with young people, which I'm not convinced that he ever had a lot of purchase with young men or women.

1:24:50No, he was popular. But whatever purchase he had with young people, I think has been severely eroded by the fact that Israel is so central to him and that that has become, for the young right, that has become a real litmus test. Look, I don't disagree, but again, I wouldn't take Twitter virality exactly to the bank. Like, Megyn Kelly is the number one conservative podcaster right now. Ben Shapiro is number, yeah, number two. Like, look - But again, podcast listeners tend to be older than YouTube or Twitter. That's not what our data creates, really. Our data shows them. I mean, they're much more in our YouTube demographic.

1:25:28I don't know, okay, exactly, 100%. I would have to look. But again, I would not take it all the way as like, this is the number one. Now, look, let's give him credit. He is literally banned on most podcast platforms. So if he was able to compete fairly, maybe he would be as big. But I also think there's an element of people who live on Twitter too much, like take this much more to the bank. To be fair, that has a Republican elite problem because a lot of Republican elites are only on Twitter. so it can be very influential at that level. But there's still a lot of like normal frat dudes out there who are not supposedly necessarily into Nick Fuentes.

1:26:02Let's say they're listening to Tucker Carlson right now, who is one of the bigger, younger audiences. Candace is up here. Yeah, but they're all, they're like Nick Fuentes adjacent. You know what I mean? I mean, I think it is fair. I'm just talking about in terms of - Candace? Yes, in terms of the Israel criticism. that is the dividing line right yeah candace is an israel critic tucker is an israel critic right nick is an israel critic right and so yes that they have more strength with younger audiences that's my point okay that's my point right right and the shapiro's and the tim pools and steven crowder's of the world have fallen off because in the same way this is a litmus test with um democrats overall and i not even just young democrats over you know it is a i think a litmus test with young Republicans.

1:26:52And I do think that that is a big part of why Nick Fuentes has seen such a rise right now, because he's taken the ideology that is a Senate in the Republican, the racialist ideology that is a Senate in the Republican Party and has been flirted with by all these people. And he's saying it outright. So that's number one. So he comes across as a truth teller. Number two, it has been disallowed to have any sort of Trump criticism. And so the only place you would get that previously was like, you know, outside of yourself and Emily, like there's a few other voices basically that exist on this channel alone.

1:27:23But outside of that, if you're going to get someone on the right, it's going to be Fuentes and then to a lesser degree, Tucker and Candace. So that there was like a market opening there as well. And then, yeah, I think Israel has just become such as an incredibly central dividing line. But in any case, to bring this back around to the interview with peers, I thought peers did a serviceable job. I appreciate just the, you know, direct getting on the record of, yes, I'm a racist. Yes, I'm a misogynist. Yes, I like Hitler. Like having all of those things said on the record now. Okay, all right. We know what you are.

1:27:59We can deal with this. You're not doing this hide the ball thing anymore. I appreciate that. And to me, affirmatively affiliating yourself with the ethno-nationalist politics of Israel is very useful because we can all see what that means and where it leads. We don't have to imagine. We can see it right now in real time. Is that what you want? Is that what you want? It's not what I want. A lot of Republican critics of Israel, a lot of them are horrified by their, they don't want to live in that society. That's what they, they don't want right to, I mean, literally, it is funny. You know, if you think, if it's like, what is the logical conclusion of ethno-nationalism?

1:28:35Like, rewind the clock here, go back 100 years. You basically saw the same level of like breaking out rapists or whatever down in the South. Yes. This shit repeats itself. Because when you dehumanize people, This is the natural that's the natural extension. And especially when you have this like demographic project where it is an existential threat. If some other group starts having babies and they're otherized, then it's it leads inevitably to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, violence, genocide. Like that is the track that Israel has always been on since its founding because of its core ethno-nationalist Jewish supremacist ideology.

1:29:12And especially since they tried to like kick the people off their land and, you know, set up shop in a place that. It came to head in the war. It came to head in the war. And saying that is actually, again, it's one of the more revealing things of all of this. Just the final thing to tie up. When I was saying about influence, what I meant is not the Israel thing. Yeah. What I meant was, look, I could be deeply naive. I do not think the vast majority of young Republicans are overt. I think that race is not skin deep. I just don't think so. I mean, this is based on my own experience. Now, listen, there's a shitload of Gropers out there.

1:29:44Don't get me wrong. They're 100%. And the irony culture, but in general - And they're very engaged. They're super engaged. Which makes them punch above their weight. That's what I meant about the Twitter thing where like, yeah, you can get a lot of interactions, but that doesn't mean, I mean, look, I know, Every time I meet somebody who watches the show, not on Twitter, barely politically engaged, they're like, yeah, I listen to the show, love the show, you know, something like that. I'm going about my daily business. That's kind of what I meant by Shapiro, Tucker, Candace, all these people. Like, they have a much more, I think, normal audience.

1:30:12Now, to the extent that the normal audience exists and why Nick is appealing is Nick speaks very eloquently about being a young man, disaffected young white man in America. I sympathize with that. I talk about it here too, right? Not just white part, but - Disaffected. Disaffected part. Young Mexican-American man. Yeah, disaffected young man. He speaks very eloquently about what that's like. He speaks eloquently about what he thinks is like too feminized of a cult. Now he takes it pretty far. Yeah, he says women shouldn't have a right to vote. But he is very obviously, just like with Israel thing and taking it to full-blown anti-Semitism, he takes something with a real gripe, you know, in society and you take it full on.

1:30:53But he speaks, you know, he's capable, when he wants to of speaking about that. He also, he's very witty. He gets funny. And he has some very scathing criticism of Trump. All the ingredients for broad appeal are all there. This is just being honest, you know, from a purely like analytical perspective. And then the grand opening of Trump mega sycophancy in right-wing media, unable to critique, Israel sycophancy from the Ben Shapiro's alone created this storm. And the funny part is they are just like him. Like the way they talk about Somalis is the way he talks about Jews. 100%. You're just like, you can't, you're not going to win.

1:31:28And he also talks about some holy stuff that way, by the way. Yeah, so they're in agreement on that one. He's the logical conclusion in many ways of the way that they want to defend their own Israel politics. 100%. And he's saying, actually, I'm the real representative of Israel. I kind of agree with that. And so it's all just a question now of which way we want to go. So to the extent that this is an important interview at all, it's because there are people, I think a lot of right-wingers who are grappling with the, What does it mean to be an anti-Israel Republican? What does it mean to be anti-Israel and not a leftist?

1:32:00And they have difficulty in their options of the Ben Shapiro or the Fuentes and all that. And it's like, you guys, you know, you don't have to pick either. Maybe operationally you kind of do. And then similarly on the left, people are like, oh, can we make, you know, common cause or whatever? Because he's, what did he say? He's like, we want to work together or something. And it's like, you know, like they don't want to work with you, right? Or at least they probably shouldn't. They shouldn't. If they want to win, you know, right? It's really a question about like political effective coalitions and like what it means for this.

1:32:33And so, yeah, that's my final like tie a bow here is I think Nick is a creation of the right-wing Zionist movement. I think broadly also it's a representation of why we need better spaces for people to actually talk about all of those issues, which we do here on this show all the time. And there's a reason that the fringes become popular in moments like this. And it's because there's no mainstream legitimacy. And then you have a revolutionary like Trump gets elected on their backs and then basically becomes more – that makes you lose even less faith in the political system. So I get it. And it's not an excuse at all.

1:33:10I guess it's more of a – it's a real leadership question, really, if you're a Republican especially, to be able to find some way to talk about this eloquently. and I haven't seen a single person really be able to do it now. It's kind of tragic, actually, because I think this is just gonna keep rolling. Yep. Rolling. All right. Yep. Long-winded. We'll see everybody. It'll be a great Counterpoint show for tomorrow. Thank you for bearing with my voice. I'm sure it was grating for some of you. Tried my best. We'll see you all on Thursday.

1:34:15I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Black 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.

1:34:57I didn't know. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So no, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.