9/10/25: Dems Call For Gov Shutdown, Rand Paul Shreds JD On Venezuela, UFO Hearing, Tim Dillon Roasts AOC

24:05That's a problem. All right. So, Emily, what do you think about the—so, you know, I've been kind of rolling over this, and I want to give Rand credit because the guy spoke up about the killing of an American citizen who was drone struck by the Obama administration back in 2013 when it was not popular. He brought up due process. By the way, that is by far one of the craziest things that's ever happened because it was basically an extrajudicial killing of a U.S. citizen abroad where they gave him, quote, due process inside of the executive branch without ever bringing it to the judicial system. But he talked about it broadly, and this is something that a lot of libertarians and others have been talking about.

24:44You know, with the original argument, I think what I find most despicable about it is conflating that these cartels are the ones who are killing Americans. Because it's not even true. In the case of Venezuela, that's what is like you are hijacking a legitimate sentiment. 100 ,000 people a year dying from fentanyl. So 99 % – this is from the U.S. government DEA figures. 99 % of all fentanyl that enters the United States comes from Mexico. And originally the precursors come from China, 99%. 90 % of all – I think 93 % of all cocaine which enters the United States is from Colombia, transited via Mexico through the border here into the U.S., which is obviously also tainted with fentanyl.

25:30So the cartels that are responsible for this are the Sinaloa cartel, the, you know, whatever, the New Generation cartel, all of these, whatever, various subgroups and others that exist inside of Mexico. It's one thing to say those are the people. But Trende Aragua? Yeah. I mean, this, we had Juan David Rojas here on the show, and he's like, guys, like, these are engaged in human trafficking, which is a horrible, despicable crime. But, you know, to the extent that they're doing drug dealing, it's street dealing. And to me, I said this to him. It's not an industrial drug. It's not an industrial drug dealing fentanyl.

26:03Which C. Loa and others are. Yeah, they are. They literally are. But we're not doing anything, presumably, about that. It's like this seems cover to me as a regime change operation. Yeah, 100%. We have a$50 million boundary on Maduro's head because he's engaged in drug trafficking. And Hexats did not rule that out. Right. 7 % of all cocaine, not from Colombia and Mexico, transits via all of these other countries, including Venezuela. So this is like, even calling it tertiary is not even fair. And we have this huge U.S. military presence. We have a$50 million bounty on Maduro's head. We struck this speedboat, which allegedly was carrying cocaine, whatever.

26:45We don't even know if any of that is true. Because they will not say. They won't even say. They won't release the evidence. So I'm like, well, you know, for me, and I think Glenn Greenwald brought up a great point. It's like this looks like a Noriega-style regime change operation all over again. And I think it would be a different story if it was about the Mexican drug cartel. By the way, you want to know why they haven't struck the Mexican drug cartels? Because what is it? 50 % of trade, maybe 40 % of trade moves across the U.S.-Mexico border. And they're not going to do anything to jeopardize that because it would destroy the entire U.S.

27:17economy for Mexico and Canada. There's no way U.S. military strikes are going to happen in Mexico and they're not going to shut the border down. Scheinbaum and others, it's never going to happen. And for them, what they allow basically is like, you know, we have all this new cooperation. It's all bullshit if you ask me. But my point is just that the actual cartels that are doing this are facing nothing, like nothing. But then the sideshow with Venezuela, all of a sudden their cartels and their poison, it's like, guys, it's not even true about what's happening here. And this is use of the United States military, regime change literally openly being crowd about by our current Secretary of State.

27:52In Venezuela. In Venezuela, which is like the neocon wet dream. Everything about this stinks to high heaven. And that's taking it out of the first principles due process type stuff. This is because, you know, that's a good argument too. It's like, hey, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepts these ships all day long. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We prosecute people. We have international agreements, et cetera. Why didn't you do that? It's to send a message. It's like, okay, send a message to whom? And send a message for what? To the Maduro government, who then overflew U.S. military sites? And then Trump tells generals, oh, you can go and shoot them down?

28:23Do we want to be in a hot war with Venezuela? Again, over a country which 0 % of fentanyl enters the United States of America from? But that's the problem. Nobody even does enough cursory Google search to look at it. Even the mainstream media, when they cover this, they're not giving you the facts about the fentanyl. They're like, oh, it's Trenda, Aragua. They're like, it's Trenda, Aragua. They're, Aragua. They are involved in drug trafficking. and you're like, well, what kind? I mean, it doesn't take a genius to figure this stuff out. I mean, technically, the drug trafficking is accurate, but to your point about Juan David.

28:50Inside of Venezuela. By the way, I don't give a shit who drills drugs in front of Venezuela. Definitely not to the point of using the U.S. military to do it. Yeah, so, I mean, and you get into these process arguments, and it sounds like from J.D.'s perspective, so when you're talking like J.D. Vance is here, I don't give a shit. that is probably not that difficult to sell definitely to Republican voters. That's, you know, I was going to say, I mean, it's perfectly consistent for many people in the Republican Party who never really changed their mind on, for example, the AUMF. I went back and looked to see what Matt Gaetz has said about this.

29:27And he's tweeting his interview with J.D. Vance and saying, no apologies, American flag emoji, where Vance is saying, if you are engaged in war against the American people, you were at risk of having your entire operation literally blown to bits. By the way, that can be perfectly true. And also not, for example, well, also, for example, not having the Secretary of Defense slash war Pete Hegg said, by the way, I don't have any problem with the Secretary of Defense changing the name to the Department of War because it's much more honest. We've talked about it here on the show. I agree. I totally agree.

29:59But anyway, Anyway, all that is to say, this is like Matt Gaetz was against the authorized use of military force being used in Africa when he was a congressman and all of that for good reason. Now, Pete Hegseth has recently said it's no different than Al-Qaeda. Right. Did you see that from him? He's like no different from Al-Qaeda or the Taliban. If you're in a boat, you're going to get struck. And of course, again, we haven't seen the evidence that this is not a potential mistake, as Rand Paul cited. Maybe it's not. Maybe these were actual narco-terrorists. Maybe let's just say it was Sinaloa.

30:36Let's say it was actually the people who are bringing fentanyl into the United States. The argument from a lot of conservatives who started to rethink the neoconservative policies that got us into quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan is actually that the process is really important because when you start to paper over the process, you give oligarchs essentially power to do regime change wars without democratic buy-in and in ways that end up being, well, let's use the word again, quagmires, because they were not well thought out and they were based on crazy levels of intelligence. I've been reading the Michael Isikoff, David Korn book called Hubris about how he ended up getting to Iraq.

31:22And it's funny that those are the two authors who wrote that book about how we cooked up the intelligence case. But when you then look at how the Trump administration now is connecting Trente Aragua to Cartel of the Suns, to Maduro, and say that Maduro... Oh, it's literally just like Iraq. It's the same shit. It is. It is. Look, no one's claiming here that hundreds of thousands of troops are going to go into Venezuela. Okay, I don't think they're that dumb. Hopefully. But if there is a military strike in Mexico, which I don't necessarily agree with you, won't happen. I could see some type of precision action or whatever.

31:56But if troops die, if American troops die in Mexico. Right. Yeah, people are going to freak out. And they should. What happens then? Well, okay, why do you think that the Mexico thing would happen? I don't, there's, I just don't see. If they were going to do it, they would have done it. The Scheinbaum government has made it entirely clear. Nobody is set in foot on Mexican soil. We have the greatest Trump card of all, literally the card of all time, which is the vast majority of the goods that you rely on. You know, I mean, it could go on forever in terms of the amount of stuff that crosses the U.S.-Mexico border on a daily basis.

32:26Is that really going to be put into jeopardy? That's why I don't think it's even happening. It's not even in the conversation. They beat their drums hard about we're going to go after the cartels. And it's all bullshit. You know, not a single one of those things has materialized. I don't think you're wrong about that. But I think what we're seeing with them building this cartel case, I feel like part of it is that they're trying it with Venezuela and trying to build a case potentially for Mexico. Because I think Hegseth actually, like, they have all these ideas about precision type strikes that they could do in Sinaloa in a way that Sheinbaum, for example, might actually welcome, which she wouldn't right now because this is like about Mexican sovereignty or whatever.

33:01But what happens when they start turning the screws to the Mexican economy or threatening to turn the screws to the Mexican economy in a much more serious way? But also what worries me most is like what happens if a CIA guy doing anti-narco-terrorism stuff in Sinaloa gets killed? What happens when there is some type of like we've already seen drone action since Trump's come to office on the border. What happens when there's, you know, a Raynosa, some type of drone activity from CIA or DOD or whatever? Do we get pulled into something? That possibility is what does worry me. Definitely. And by the way, all of this is not exactly out of the realm.

33:42And remember, there's some crazy stuff that went down with the U.S. and Columbia back in the 90s. They even made movies about it. Clear and present danger. All right, let's end with some words from Glenn Greenwald, who did a great job of breaking this all down. Let's take a listen. MAGA was supposedly a movement principally of younger people who booked all these wars and said, why do we keep bombing people all over the world? Why don't we keep getting involved in these foreign conflicts? Why don't we focus on our own country that's falling apart instead? And yet it's been amazing for me to watch how easy it is to convince most Trump supporters, not all, but most, to just start cheering for the very words they said they were against.

34:27You just tell them, these are bad guys. I think he's right. I think people should have a lot more scrutiny and not just take people's word for it about fentanyl or any of this. It takes – look, go on ChatGPT. Go on Google. I mean do we just sit here? Are we mindless drones? It's not that difficult. And I did this for all of the – remember any time there was some strike in Yemen or any of this, they all fall apart like this almost every single time. But that's what politics is. And by the way, you also end up killing civilians and enraging their communities against the United States often. That actually happened.

35:00You know, I used to think that was a leftist talking point. I started looking into it. I was like, no, they're actually right. It's true. It's 100 % true. Well, great. And Glenn's in a position to know that because over the last 10 years, he's talked to many people on the right, including both of us, who hopefully will remain consistent on this. But he's talked to many people on the right. I'm probably thinking of Matt Gaetz. We'd have to ask Glenn if that's someone who has in mind who made these cases to him and with him. Right. That's right. On the basis of constitutional law. Very important point.

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36:59Get your friends and grab tickets now at creditunion1amp.com. Let's get to a UFO. Crystal's not here. We can do a UFO. I'm joking. She never holds me up. Mom's away. Yeah, she doesn't hold me up anytime I want to cover this story. There was a big UFO hearing yesterday. Again, I'm very sorry that I could not attend. And one of the major headlines out of it is a new video that was released ostensibly showing a UAP in which a Hellfire missile was fired. And it seems to glance off. Now, I'm going to give you some countervailing evidence. I want to be clear. That shows that it could be a balloon. But I do want to at least give it some credit for the video being released.

37:40Let's go ahead and put it up here on the screen. So you can see here, this is a 2024 incident, allegedly, according to the congressman who released it. And you can see the object moving over. Soon you're actually going to see a hellfire missile come. It glances off and you can see that it continues basically dodging. So that is the alleged evidence that was included there from the congressman. There's a couple of other angles that you can see from it. What's important, though, I think, is not just the video that was released, but actually some of the testimony, including here from U.S. Air Force veteran Dylan Borland, who testified on witnessing a, quote, silent 100-foot equilateral triangle that rapidly ascended to commercial jet level in seconds at Langley Air Force Base.

38:30Let's take a listen. From 2011 to 2013, I was stationed at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, conducting 24-hour operations via manned and unmanned aerial vehicles for Special Operations Forces in the Global War on Terror. During the summer of 2012, my team was on standby for weather, and I returned to my barracks on base, and at approximately 0130, I saw an approximately 100-foot equilateral triangle take off from near the NASA hangar on the base. The craft interfered with my telephone, did not have any sound, and the material it was made of appeared fluid or dynamic. I was under this triangular craft for a few minutes, and then it rapidly ascended to commercial jet level in seconds, displaying zero kinetic disturbance, sound, or wind displacement.

39:15Some years after that experience, I was further exposed to classified information from the UAP Legacy Crash Retrieval Program through a sensitive position I held within a special access program. During this time, intelligence officers approached me in fear for their own careers, citing misconduct within these programs and similar retaliation that I was already enduring at this time. That was followed up also with testimony from George Knapp, who is one of the best journalists on the UFO subject, has been for decades here. And here was some of the testimony that he offered. It's been widely reported and suspected that Lockheed Martin is one of the contractors, the defense contractors, that has held this stuff, stored it away in secrecy, and tried to figure out how it works.

39:58I have confirmed on the record that Robert Bigelow and a trusted colleague from OSAP met with and negotiated with senior executives at Lockheed Martin and hammered out a deal wherein Bigelow's company, Bass, would receive a quantity of unusual material that had been stashed away and protected at a facility in California. That material was not made here. That has long been part of some of the UFO communities reporting is basically that defense contractors are used as cutouts so that you can have plausible deniability. It also goes to the fact the Pentagon can't pass an audit because nobody knows where some of this black money and all this other stuff goes.

40:38I do want to give some credit to some of the people who are saying that this video is not actually showing a UFO. Now, again, I will let you make up your mind for yourself. But this actually comes from a guy who I very much respect, Joe Mergia, UFO Joe. Let's put it up here on the screen. And so what he says is that from one of the – basically he looked into it. They talk about the Hellfire missile. What he says specifically is that, quote, Contact occurred with a missile passing through. The apparent deflection was a guidance system searching for a laser spot again, causing control surfaces to thrash.

41:12The three trailing objects align better with debris or internal components ignited by electrical damage rather than missile fragments. Artifacts are possible but unlikely. Let's go to the next part here. And they say the overall conclusion is that the evidence is most consistent with a slow-moving or stationary balloon carrying an electrical payload struck by a hellfire that failed to detonate. Anomalies arise from fuse mechanics, et cetera. I will let others determine the facts, but that was some of the original kind of, quote, debunking that I saw on it. You can make up your minds for yourself in terms of what it comes from.

41:45It was Representative Eric Burleson, by the way, who is the person who revealed it. And it's one of those where it was presented as received from a whistleblower, according to him. But the circumstances are a bit weird. He said he received it without any metadata or any of that. And he says independent review is ongoing. So I do think it's important to at least present the fact that some analysts and others are saying that it could have been a balloon, which they say about all of them. And so, you know, I want to be totally fair about that's part of the reason independent review is very important, part of the reason throwing it to the experts, et cetera, and actually taking this stuff seriously.

42:19But nonetheless, it was great to see George Knapp and some of the others there recounting some of their experiences. I do think some of us are still getting very fed up with the fact that it's still so slow moving. I attended the first UFO hearing, what, two years ago at this point? This is the third of the task force, right? Yeah, this is the third one. But I'm saying the very first one with Dave Grush, right? I was there. I was in the room. I thought it was a big moment. I thought something was coming. And then the NDAA continues to not have some of the UFO disclosure pieces, even though it's been pushed by members of the overall U.S.

42:49Senate. So we rely on Anna Paulina Luna or other people are making extraordinary accusations. I'm very willing to believe, but we've got to see more evidence. We've got to see more stuff come from the government. An interesting disagreement playing out on X right now between UFO Joe and Lou Elizondo, who on News Nation last night made a very interesting argument, which is that the Hellfire missile UFO is evidence of, quote, technology that is making our premier missile system completely useless. And if you're wondering why, in relation to what Sagar just described about the NDAA, why are our members of Congress, and even remember Marco Rubio as a senator.

43:25Yeah, he was an OG. That's right. Why are mainstream members of Congress interested in getting answers to questions like these? Well, it's because they're seeing videos and hearing analysis from people like Lou, who worked at the Pentagon. Right. You can debate Elizondo, whatever. But saying this is evidence of technology that's making our premier missile system completely useless. Now, UFO Joe disagrees. He says, early on, I agreed right now. I do not. I retain the right to change my mind. Did Lou present any analysis or mention anybody who has done analysis besides the stuff shared on here by us?

43:54But that gets to what Sagar was just saying, which is that years into this third task force meeting, the bombshells are highly disputed. You know, it's not like this bombshell dropped yesterday and everybody was like when that New York Times story originally dropped back in what, 2017? Oh, yeah. 2017. That's why I'm here. It all broke into the, yep. That's the only reason. That's what got me in. Yeah, but we haven't had another moment like that, really. It's been a while. Dave Grosh was very important, I think, as well. That's true, that's true. I just got to see more. And credit to Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp and all these guys.

44:30They're the ones who are at the vanguard. They're pushing the conversation. They're singularly focused. Responsibly. They're getting it responsibly. That's why I include all of the information. You can make up your mind for yourself. I think more scrutiny, pressure on the Democratic and Republican establishment to get this stuff out there is just so vitally important if you want to get to the truth. Because at this point, you have congresswomen and others, people making major accusations or allegations, which I'm totally willing to believe. But we have to see more evidence in the future. That's the number one important thing.

45:04So, yeah, call your congressman. Tell them to our senator. Get them to make sure the NDAA is going to have that. Watch it to them, right? You know, to the UA. It's like so low on their priority list that if even 20 people call about it, maybe they'll do something. You never know. You truly never know. All right, let's get to the Tim Dillon segment that we put off yesterday because we talked too much. Luckily, Emily and I still did talk a lot, but luckily we still do have a few minutes here that we can go over it. Let's go ahead and play this. It's Tim Dillon and Joe Rogan talking about AOC and J.D.

45:36Vance, quote, not having it for president. Let's take a listen. Now, why is AOC shutting her mouth about Israel? Because AOC's donors are big Israeli tech people. She's been silenced and she's trying to run for president too. Really? Yeah. She'll struggle. She's not going to win. She's a goofball. She'll be making mojitos. She's a goofball. She doesn't have it. She's a goof. But here's the reality. She's shutting her mouth about Israel. Is AOC out there about Israel? No. No. because she's a fraud. But the smelly, gross, anarcho-communists in Brooklyn, to their credit, know she's a fraud. They know she's a fraud.

46:22In between their, you know, whatever, open mic nights and whatever, they figured out - Poetry slams. Poetry slams and dog walking. They figured out that this bitch is a fraud. Big time. Yeah, I don't think she was when she first started. She wasn't, but she got, She was probably, she's realized she's ambitious. She likes nice bags. She likes nice bags. That's what it is. She's ambitious. She wants to be the president. You realize that job can get you hundreds of millions of dollars. Look at what happened. Can you get up who her donors are, Jimmy? These Israeli tech people. It's kind of interesting because this actually just kind of came out.

46:58Israeli startup entrepreneurs played roles in the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She pulled out of an event commemorating Rabin. Some concluded that AOC doesn't like Israelis, but two were instrumental in the lawmaker's early career. That's where it gets weird. They find you when you're young. They find you when you're making mojitos. They find you when you're young and promising like J.D. Well, that's the thing. J.D.'s going to have to, if he wants to be the president, he's going to have to say, Peter Thiel is Satan, and here's why that's good.

47:35jd has to get out there and go wouldn't you rather know who satan is and be friends with him and have dinner with him than have it be like who's satan right so he's got to get out there and say i happen to be friends with satan and i want that to be misunderstood i want it to be destigmatized right if satan could go on the milk boys maybe they could straighten it out that's right the dog boys that was good so what do you what do you think of tim's and i mean we got to be a little look i'm on the business of defending AOC, but I wouldn't say that she shut her mouth about Israel. I mean, she said genocide, right?

48:08The one thing that we've hit her for here on the show with Ryan is about her vote to fund the Iron Dome. She had this whole convoluted explanation of, oh, I support defensive act. Yeah, exactly. Look, I mean, the part about how she was legit in the beginning and has become a tool of democratic establishment, I think it's totally fair. I don't think it's totally fair to say it's about Israel, though, per se. That's my only thing. I mean, I don't think he's wrong. I don't think she could be president either, specifically for those types of reasons. It's just she did basically get co-opted. And remember, she wanted to be the oversight chairman, and she played ball.

48:42She shut her mouth about all kinds of stuff. They still wouldn't give it to her. Played ball with Pelosi, Pelosi's entire tenure. Those are all fair criticisms of AOC. as is, I mean, basically, if at any point in your career you have, you rely on donors from the American donor class, you are going to end up coming into contact with people who have close ties to Israel. That's just how it works. Well, Mack points out the worst thing she did at the DNC was saying that Kamala was working tirelessly for C-Smart. That's pretty fair because - That was insane. Well, you know, now maybe the Israel thing is making sense to me because when it came Yeah, she put out the words, but she actively worked for Kamala to get elected and gave her cover on Gaza, which she did not have to do, right?

49:27And you and I were there. We were at the DNC. You remember all those activists. We met some of them. They were treated horribly. They were kicked out. It's still pretty crazy in retrospect to have experienced that. Ryan and I interviewed a couple of them on the street who literally were kicked out, not joking. It's a great memory of mine, by the way. Just you and Ryan with microphones following the hippies around the DNC. We had a good time. It was a blast. Maybe we'll do it again. But the point is just that that's a fair criticism. But to say that she's been bought off or whatever, I'm not entirely sure that is accurate.

50:00On the J.D. point, though, here's what's interesting. J.D. had dinner with Tim very recently by Tim's own admission. And Tim seems to be truly, like, captured by the Palantir teal. He spent a long time going off on the Antichrist. lecture. He's like, why do you need four lectures? One wasn't, it was good. It was funny. I guess I've just, I'm curious for him. I'm like, so what? Like, who is the good politician? You know, he said some nice things about Marjorie Taylor Greene, which, you know, I mean, okay. I mean, I like some of the things MTG says. Definitely. I think she's very courageous in standing up on Israel and a few other issues, but you know, going with presidential material, I guess I, The reason why I thought it was important to cover is like where does this podcast thing go?

50:45Yeah. Right? Trump was the perfect vehicle for them because he's entertaining, fun to talk to, good stories. You could project whatever you want onto him even though he's literally been the president before. And you can be like, no, but he's different this time around. But where does it go from here? Like to me it just seems like pretty nihilistic. But I really have no idea. Well, yeah, this question of who has it or who doesn't is the reason we're asking it in a way that's not like, Like, oh, Al Gore is very charming. Yeah, right. Is because we've entered a new chapter in media history, which is if you're in Gen Z, you grew up expecting politics to look like reality television through no fault of your own.

51:24but because politics started to merge with iPhone, smartphone and social media in a way that it's hard if you're younger to trust people who don't come across well on the popular mediums and smartphone world. So if you can't have a normal conversation, it used to be the sit down at a bar test. Right. But now it's more like sit down on an Instagram live, which, by the way, AOC does a lot of Instagram lives and others don't. But that's just because there's something about speaking contemporary or speaking in real time in a way that feels authentic to people. I think that's really what Tim Dillon is talking about with Marjorie Taylor Greene or Thomas Massey is another example.

52:08Massey had success on Theo Vaughn. Like that's gotten tons and tons of views. I think the reason is to sound authentic right now, you have to absolutely flame the donor class. You have to be willing in ways that Gavin Newsom is not, in ways that Hakeem Jeffries or these other guys are not. And that's a lesson for AOC, too. Yeah, 100%. That's how she used Instagram and X successfully to take a seat away from Joe Crowley when nobody thought it was possible. Zora Mamdani did the exact same thing. And it's just about leveraging those mediums in a way that resonates. And that's what I think Tim is saying when he's like, can JD do that?

52:48Well, no, and I think part of the reason why is Trump is the Republican establishment. So how can you be against the Republican establishment? You can't be anti-establishment and speak out against the person who's literally a cop. Peter Thiel is now the Republican establishment. Well, I think the Thiel thing is a proxy for whenever he was on Theo Vaughn's podcast and J.D. gave it, he was like, well, I take money from a lot of people. Theo came out and he was like, yeah, I just thought that was like some typical political bullshit. And I was like, yeah, I mean, it is kind of a problem. I do get you don't want to talk badly or whatever about friends or people who've donated to you, but it makes you look bad.

53:21And look, personal loyalty and all that stuff is important, and it is hard. I can even speak from experience. You have to cover people who you literally personally know. It's weird. But at a certain point, you have a higher and better calling to your job and to say kind of what you think. That seems to be the issue, and part of the reason I think Republicans are really going to struggle post-Trump Because you can't say anything that's bad about Trump if he's still alive. It's not possible in the age of the cult. Well, maybe especially if he's not still alive and he's a martyr. Right, yeah. Well, I don't know what's harder.

53:50I actually think if he's not alive, it's much harder. Or sorry, if he's alive, it is much harder. It's harder. Because he can literally sit there from a lot of time and destroy you if he wants to. He's never going to leave the political stage. Whereas Democrats, they have no sacred cows anymore. Kamala's done. Her book excerpt just came out, and she's trashing Biden. Right? It's over. You know, that all the Obama, Kamala, Biden worship, et cetera, this is permission to say, I wish more of them would. Go weapons free. Flame them. You need to. That's what people want to see. Exactly. That's what people want to see.

54:19And this is the question about, I actually thought J.D. did fine in that Theo Vaughn interview, but the problem is the clips, right? If there's a clip that comes out of you, it doesn't matter if the two hours, I mean, it does matter if the two hours is great, but it can be sort of offset. Yeah, but you have to be on all the time. Yeah, exactly. And that means you have to be now. That means you have to be basically like doing reality TV honesty at all time. And that's what politicians need to get used to is saying stuff like, listen, I'm just friends with Peter Thiel. Right. That's right. That's the way you have to handle it.

54:46But all that is to say, we're also in a transition period right now. So there are still people, boomers, whomever voting, probably some elder millennials, for example, who grew up in a different time than Zoomers and are deeply uncomfortable with voting based on who's good on a podcast and don't like Mom Donnie. And don't, you know, Mom Donnie's playing at what he's amazing polling levels for the politics that he brings to the table. But he's still under like 50 percent. Yeah. People, somebody asked me, they're like, do you think politics will ever go back to normal? And I was like, I don't. I really don't know.

55:18Yeah, I agree. Because look, we did try it under Biden. A lot of people were like, exhale a fresh air. Let's gut Biden in there. He's normal. But it was a disaster because normal is bad. I've been trying to tell people that my entire political career. Normal is actually way worse than not normal. We need to be very, very not normal. To the extent Trump is bad is because he's too normal. Actually, he's too normal of a normal Republican. Acting like George W. Bush while he's in office, but just with mean tweets or whatever. So what comes next? I don't know. I mean, I could see an easy return to, I could see a fighter under Gavin who rhetorically is just like Trump, rhetorically a fighter, policy level like very similar.

55:58Yeah. Yeah, I could see that happen easily. I mean, I believe he's one of the top pollers. The alternative is a Trump-style figure who comes in and just knocks everything over. I hope for the latter. Or a Bernie-style figure, by the way. Maybe. I'm not sure if that's even possible anymore. I would like, I'd like to think so. I'm not sure. But Bernie is actually really good in new media, which people like he crushed Theoban because he's generally honest and he doesn't cover for donors. I just think he's one of one. I don't see anybody else. Same with Trump. I do not see. And that's why I was like, maybe we'll go back to normal because nobody is as talented as he is.

56:29I think that's an absolute possibility. Right. And again, like it'll always be a tug of war between the Marjorie Taylor Greene's and now the Marjorie Taylor Greene's and maybe like the Ilhan Omar's on the left. And then the traditional politicians, even if the presidency kind of goes back to normal and Washington feels like it's 1999 again, if that happens, there'll still be a tug of war in the background between the new media stars and the old ones. Well, in a way, it's still downstream of our circumstance. We can't go back to 1999 politics because it's not 1999. 1999 was a great year. It sure was.

57:02The S &P 500 was booming. No 9-11. We had the early days. The optimism, man, I mean, I was so young. I wish I could have been an adult in the year 1999 with my Nokia phone. I mean, I've just been cruising. Dude, a beeper maybe? What a world to live in and to think about the – what a world to live in and to think about where things could go. And then it just all comes crashing down with dot com and 911. I guess that was part of the point. That was part of the price that you pay for that moment. But it must have been awesome to live through. I'm genuinely envious of the adults. You and I shared the exact same theory.

57:37I think it's possible that civilization peaked in 1999 or 2000. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, 100%, I think that. In America specifically, the peak of the American empire was 1999. All right, there you go. We've given you all of our thoughts. Emily, thank you very much for having me on your show. I appreciate it. No, it's wonderful. But we haven't given you all of our thoughts because we will still give you more thoughts. We're doing the AMA. Don't worry. Yeah, don't worry. Stick around for that. Thank you guys so much for watching. I'll be on tomorrow with Crystal. We'll see you then.

58:23We'll see you next time.

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