Ben Shapiro Admits His Biggest Blind Spot | PBD Podcast #842

0:00You were a hero, and then all of a sudden, you became a villain. I see myself as the same person I always was. Who do you think had the biggest impact of you becoming a villain? Let's say, for example, October 7th somehow, you know, made me a villain. Do you think you have any blind spots? Tucker said MAGA was betrayed. Giant fissures that have emerged inside the conservative movement. They don't trust J.D. because they think J.D. has been compromised. If that's what J.D. Vance gets for all of his loyalty to Tucker Carlson, that would be kind of astonishing. They respect you, but they love him.

0:31I would rather say 100 % of the truth. I believe Daily Wire would have been Shapiro shuts down the next day. When Jeremy and Caleb fired Candace, I thought that they should have publicly explained why they fired Candace. I think that it is evil what Candace Owens has done to Charlie Kirk's family. I've taken a bunch of positions that my audience does not like, including the position that Donald Trump did not win the 2020 election. You had a vaccine position as well. Please ask me about vaccine. For the love of God, there are certain bright lines I will not cross. And one of those bright lines, I will not lie.

0:56I won't do it. I've been labeled alt-right a thousand times wrongly because the alt-right despises me. Oh, Nick Fuentes. Did you ever have him on? Would I ever have him on? I mean, it depends. If he worked, I would... The answer is... So do you think there is a grope problem on the right? A civil war is brewing in the republic... Transgressive politics is always attractive to young people. Whether it's Hassan Piker saying he loves Mao on the left, or whether it's Fuentes saying he loves Hitler on the right. You joke about Hitler, you joke about Hitler. And at a certain point, you're like, am I really joking about Hitler?

1:25Or was he really kind of okay? Piers is trying to pin him down on his beliefs about the Holocaust. And so what Nick does is he immediately launches into a bunch of jokes about the Holocaust. Is everyone smarter for having heard that? I think actually everyone might be stupider for having heard this. Do you think there's a net positive to society with Piers Morgan's show? I've said that he's basically the Jerry Springer of political talk. Here's a five-person panel, and here's Hitler, and here's Air Bud. I would say that mostly what Piers acts like on his show is a slightly foolish child. I mean, come on.

2:12The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever signed. It's right here. You are a one-on-one? My son's right there. I don't think I've ever said this before.

2:28so ben i guess we're doing this yeah why not yeah we're doing this so i know the first time we sat down was in your la studio in 2018 right and then uh that was the podcast we did when i asked i said so who do you think is going to be a president 2022 you know 2020 he said i think joe biden's got a chance of becoming a president yeah and then next time around i came to you we did a podcast in the great city of volca and then we're doing it here part three with the two of us so i appreciate you making the time to come down here. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's a very cool studio, by the way.

2:55Well, thank you. You guys were playing basketball. Much more fun than our studio. Right before, you guys need to know this, Ben asked for tissue because in case he gets emotional, so we brought him some tissue. Adam was here since four o 'clock in the morning waiting for you. He doesn't get here at nine o 'clock, but he wanted to see you. But open question for you to think about. When I talk to kids, when I talk to folks who are in their 30s or 40s, and I'll say, what was your transition of becoming a conservative? Well, I used to be a liberal and all this stuff. I don't know how many of them will tell you.

3:27I watched Ben Shapiro, right? I was watching Ben Shapiro, who was the OG guy on campuses before Crowder or Charlie was Ben. Ben, the first time I watched him on Pierce Morgan a month after Sandy Hook when he talked about, hey, it's not about the semi-automatic weapons. Why don't you take the guns? And you brought him to Constitution. Oh, that went viral, right? Or, hey, the guy that puts his arm on your shoulder and you say, that's mildly inappropriate. The transgender role, Caitlyn Clark, Caitlyn Jenner. And I think that was Dr. Drew. And then the physicist. I'm a mathematician. You are not a biologist.

4:00All these clips that would go. So you were a hero. You were the guy that people looked up to. You were the guy that people would share with others and say, this is why I'm a conservative. Watch this guy. And then all of a sudden, an evolution happened after October 7th, where you went from being the hero to on the conservative side, you became a villain. A little bit to some of the folks. To a certain segment. To a certain segment for sure. Not all of them. You still have a massive following that people follow you. What do you think was that turning point of going being, you know, from the guy that everybody looks up to and shares to all of a sudden, wait a minute.

4:31Is this guy a villain? Is this guy on my side? What do you think happened there? Well, I mean, I think that there's been some underlying fragmentation in the conservative movement that you're seeing reflected all over the place. I'm not sure there's anybody who's now sort of acclaimed as a universal hero inside of conservatism. I agree. It used to be Charlie. It was Charlie. Right. But even Charlie had, you know, people who disagreed with him. Sure. And the truth is that if you went back to 2017, 2018, Tucker was a hero to everybody. If you went back to 2017, 2018, Trump was a hero to everybody.

4:58The reality is that as the sort of tides of politics move, there are moments when a movement starts to crack up or fragment. And it's easier, I will say, for people to be unified in opposition. So when Barack Obama is president, which is when some of this stuff was happening, Sandy Hook was 2013. The shooting was 2012. The appearance on Piers Morgan was 2013. Obama was president. Being in the opposition tends to unify you. Being in power tends to disunify. And so when that happens, then you start to see a bit of a crack up. As far as the sort of 2013, 2023, 2024 of it, I think that there was a lot of roiling inside the conservative movement about sort of what the future of the conservative movement was going to look like because President Trump is a pragmatist.

5:40He doesn't have sort of a set of ideological values for everybody to gather around. He's also sui generis, meaning that his brand encompasses everybody. I can vote for him and Tucker could vote for him. And so what that meant is that he was open to interpretation by everybody. And so all of those politics were sort of roiling under the surface. And after October 7th, when I spoke out obviously very strongly about Israel and Hamas and the position of various parties in the Middle East, when I spoke out about that, I think that some of my detractors saw an opportunity to sort of latch on to my position on that and then to try to make the claim that the predominant feature about me, despite the fact that I've been doing this since the time I was 17 years old, was focus inordinately on Israel.

6:23I think some of that was code for he's Jewish, but it doesn't really matter. I mean, the bottom line is people can think what they want to think. My positions have been exactly the same for about 25 years. I mean, I think the thing that people don't maybe know about my career trajectory, because most of them got acquainted with me in like 2013, I've been in this since 2004. My first book came out in 2004. What was it? Exactly, Brainwash, about liberal bias on college campuses. You know, I wrote a second book in 2005 about how social liberalism was going to destroy America and America would turn into a pornographic society.

6:52I was widely mocked for it at the time. So I've been doing this since I was 17. I'm now 42. That is a very, very long arc. And so, you know, you see times when you're the hero. You see times when you're the villain. You see times when you're unknown, times when you're known. And so I think it's a little bit much to expect that you're always going to be the universal hero in every circumstance. And again, politics is necessarily oppositional. And so when people watch a clip of me on a college campus dealing with a wokester or something, very easy to say, ah, I'm rooting for that guy. But what do you do when you have to take a nuanced or complex position about what America's foreign policy ought to be going forward in the bloodiest region of the world, for example?

7:25Or where do we go from here in terms of our economics? That's a debate that's getting very little coverage but actually is very core to what's happening right now. I'm very much free market oriented. Many of the people who are against me are very much not free market oriented. These are open debates. Tucker does not like the free markets. Okay, tell me more. I mean, by any stretch of the imagination. Actually, my first indicator of serious political disagreement with Tucker, he was on my show in maybe 2018. And he comes on the show, and his book was, I'd say, very negative toward innovation and capitalism in general.

8:01The idea that he had said this on the air, I believe by that point, or he would soon, was that capitalism is just a system put in place by powers that be, and the economy needs to work for us, which to me is left-wing language because when I'm thinking about how the economy works, there are basic realities of human nature. We are acquisitive people. We are creative people. We wish to own the property that we produce. And based on those fundamental truths, you then get property rights in a free market economy. And when you encroach upon those fundamental truths, what you end up with is a form of statism.

8:31So anyway, in that interview, I asked Tucker specifically because he'd written about this in his book about self-driving cars because he had basically said that he was anti-self-driving cars because it would take away trucker jobs. And so I asked him about that. And I said, would you ban self-driving vehicles? And he said, yes. And I was a little surprised by that because obviously I'm of the opinion that self-driving vehicles are one of the great inventions to come along in the last 50 years. I mean, they're incredible. My father is 70. A few months ago, he got hit in a car crash. He'll be fine.

9:00But when he went to get a new car, I told him, you're 70 years old. You should get a Tesla because it's self-driving and it's gonna perceive things on the road, particularly at night that you're not going to be able to proceed. It's amazing. He's much safer now. And the truth is, obviously, self-driving cars, if we all had them, would radically cut down on the amount of motor vehicle death in the United States. Tens of thousands of people die in cars. Okay, so anyway, I said this to Tucker. And I said, on what basis would you ban self-driving cars? And he said, on the basis of safety. And I said, well, Tucker, they're safer than human drivers.

9:29And he said, you asked me on what basis I would ban them, not what's true. and to me i mean that that does not bespeak shall we say a faith in innovation he's he's part of a movement that has arisen on the right that basically says that capitalism empties the soul it's sort of a an almost marxist materialist conception of the universe where economic circumstances are supposedly responsible for your spiritual fulfillment and as a very religious person i don't think that's true i have ancestors who are poor i have i have you know ancestors i'm sure at some point who are rich uh you know people were forming families under a wide variety of circumstances, many of the most impoverished places on earth have high levels of family formation and child rearing.

10:06There are lots of places that live under tyranny, where people are getting married and having children. And there are lots of places, like the United States, where for a long period of time, capitalism was the predominant way of life, and people were getting married and having children. And so the attempt to say that the government's job is to get involved in creating a spiritually fulfilling life for you, and somehow it's a shortcoming of economics if you're not spiritually fulfilled, I think these are category errors. Do you think like the way you said, I've been like this for 25 years and I've been at it since 2004.

10:33It's 21 years, whatever the timeline you said. Do you think Tucker's always been like this or he became like this? You know, I hesitate to speculate about what people, quote unquote, secretly believed. I can only speak to his public statements. So I know that he was not oriented toward capitalism since at least the mid-2010s. As far as his orientation on foreign policy, that seems to have kind of shifted and moved over time in a wide variety of ways. All I know is that right now I think that he is spewing an enormous number of untruths about the state of the world and conspiracy theories about systems that are rigged against you by nefarious powers, most of whom seem in his mind to have conflated with Israel, which, again, I think that is part of the underlying sort of tenor of a certain level of politics on the right.

11:14So let's go to the Israel topic. So when the Israel event happened October 7th, you came out, you had your statements that you made, then the Candace situation took place, and then that went on for a minute. and then Charlie Kirk, which I think we're coming up to the one-year anniversary in about a month or so when we came here like this. Yep. And we all remember where we were there. Do you think the Israel topic is still as big of an issue as it was during October 7th, meaning in the 2020 election that comes around, do you think it'll be one of those topics where people are going to say, hey, are you pro-Israel?

11:52Are you this? Are you that? Or do you think that's not going to play a role? No, I think that it's going to continue to percolate because I think that many of the theories about what Israel is in the world are not actually connected to the reality of what Israel is in the world, which is a fairly small state and by the regional standards, a very small state located in one of the most violent areas of the world with a robust economy and a significant military capacity. And the rumor about Israel, rather, that people have been putting forward is that Israel controls our politics, that everything that's happening from a Moroccan migrant invasion of a Spanish city to how people vote on economics to the boot of the NYPD, all of that is being manipulated by ISIS.

12:33That's just conspiracism. Well, let's do this. So to me, because I think there's three camps. There's those that anything happens, it's Israel. Right. It's like the same as anything happens, it's Trump. Anything happens, it's socialist. Anything. So there's a camp here, right? They lack the ability to reason. Then you got the guys that nothing is Israel's fault. I think both of them have a problem here. Both these camps have a problem. I would say those are not equivalent problems, but sure. I mean, one of those is closer to the truth, and one of them is much further from the truth. Everything is Israel's fault, and nothing is Israel's fault.

13:02If that's a spectrum, I'm not saying nothing is Israel's fault. Obviously, Israel is a country that makes mistakes and does bad things, like any other country. But if you're talking about a spectrum, if I were to say to you, there are two camps. Sure. One says Nigeria is responsible for literally all of our problems, all of them. And one of them says Nigeria is responsible for none of our problems. Both of these are untrue. Okay, these are not equal levels of untruth. I don't know if I'm putting equal, but I'm saying that both of them lack reason for me. They both lack the ability to reason. If you can't sit there and say, this guy's 100 % innocent, he never does anything wrong.

13:33This guy's 100 % guilty, he does everything wrong. I have a hard time hearing you. Both camps, they lose a guy like me. Then I get to a guy in the middle and like, you know what? the fact that they're out there they're fighting the tough guy, the bad guys around them and you have to worry about Iran you have to worry about this small little place these guys have been surviving their entire lives hey, they have the survival, they're a little bit more paranoid than us, they're a little bit more careful of what's going on, imagine if your neighbor wanted to kill you all the time, okay fair that's a good argument, and then the other side is, well they got a hold of politicians and they started, instead of taking the money, everybody's playing a propaganda game, but instead of taking the money and maybe winning the youth over.

14:11They took the money and tried to win over politicians. AIPAC comes up, all these things that come up, right? Right. And then you'll say, well, it's really Bibi. Bibi's the guy we got to get rid of because Bibi is a fanatical. He's a, you know, you heard what Mamdani said about Bibi. If he comes to New York, this is what I'm going to do. And then he realized he can't do any of it. So talk to the reasonable community in the middle. And if you don't mind doing the following, I can't hear these guys. I can't hear anything they're saying. But to the reasonable community in the middle, they're like, Look, yeah, I get along with Jews.

14:41I do business with them. It's easy. They're very good business people. But, you know, I also realize they got certain motives that they're trying to protect. What did Israel do wrong or Bibi do wrong or the Jewish community do wrong on the right? I'm not talking ADL. ADL is a very different game we're talking. I'm talking specifically conservative Jews or Israel or Bibi. What did they do wrong to all of a sudden get blasted on social media by the youth the way that they did the last couple years? Again, I will say that I think that to discuss Israel outside of the context of the broader political kind of environment in which conspiracy theories are rife would be a mistake.

15:16And so to say that Israel is driving, for example, Tucker Carlson to become radically anti-Israel, that Israel did something different October 8th than Israel had done October 6th. And that's what drove Tucker Carlson to where he is or Candace Owens to where she is or something. I just don't think that's true. As far as things that Israel has done wrong, I mean, are we talking internally or externally? because I could name a dozen problems inside of Israel. Give me any direction you want to go. Okay, fine. I mean, internally in Israel, they have obviously major problems, including the fact that they have an entire sector of the population that is also religious that refuses to serve in the army, and that's terrible.

15:46That's an internal Israeli problem. As far as— They refuse to serve in the army? Yes. I mean, this is like a— It's probably the number one issue in Israel, and it explains a lot of sort of the chaos that you see inside the Israeli government and also the reason why Bibi leads a coalition that is very unpopular in Israel but also can't kind of be electorally defeated. And the thing that people should understand about the Bibi of it is that if Bibi did not exist, the Israeli government would be following essentially the same playbook. In fact, the people who are running against him right now in an election that's slated to happen in October are running to his right.

16:15They're running to his right. Yes, that's correct. Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett. There's a perception in American politics that Bibi is a sort of radical right-wing figure. In Israeli politics, Bibi is actually slightly right of center and quite incrementalist in his approach. So one of the big critiques of Bibi has been that he actually has not gone hard enough, for example, in Lebanon, or he didn't go hard enough, believe it or not, in Gaza, because the idea was he should move faster and get fewer Israeli soldiers killed. This is the people further right than Bibi that are not happy with his actions that he took.

16:46Even the people who are campaigning theoretically to his left, people like Naftali Bennett or Gadi Isenka on foreign policy are actually where he is or to the right. because the entire Israeli population has reacted to October 7th by saying we're not going to take a sort of defensive step backward. We're going to lean forward and say, okay, now we're going to preemptively hit threats. We are not going to wait for those to materialize. So stay on that. So what percentage of the population, of the people that are running, are aligned on that topic? On that topic? That we should have reacted even stronger.

17:12In different ways, to Iran, to Lebanon. I would say that there is a coalition that represents is probably 80 % of the population that is somewhere between just barely to Bibi's left all the way to his right. Wow. So there's widespread agreement on foreign policy in Israel. There are a couple of fringes that don't agree. I would say the Arab population of Israel obviously is one, which is about 20 % of the population there. And there's a left-wing party run by Ghanemir Golan. Okay, so those are internal problems in Israel. Then there's sort of how Israel has addressed the world. And I would say that Israel is operating in a mode that when it comes to PR that I think is past its sell-by date.

17:53And that is that they have continued to try to make a moralistic argument with regards to foreign policy that I don't think has a lot of truck in a world in which people are significantly more real politic in their sort of approach. So I've said this openly. I think that the reasons that the United States ought to be allied with Israel, obviously I think that there's moral alignment with a democratic state that is allied with the United States and literally flying planes alongside the United States against common enemies like Iran. But put aside that, the real reason that we ought to be allied with Israel from a sort of real politics standpoint is that Israel is an extraordinarily technologically advanced military power in the region that has oversight and overwatch and a bunch of other areas where terrorist groups percolate, that Israel's intelligence gathering capacity is extraordinarily high.

18:34that Israel acts as what some generals have called a non-floating aircraft carrier for the United States. And again, if you're going to talk about aid to Israel, I've been talking about phasing out aid to Israel for probably 20 years. So that really is not the issue. So because I think that it is good for our allies to be militarily capable on their own. Israel has enough of an economy to support itself. I think in emergency situations, obviously, like post-October 7th, when you have to ramp up your defense because you're on a war on seven fronts. The United States very often will fund our friends and allies.

19:06We did that in Ukraine. I was an advocate, by the way, of funding Ukraine. That's another unpopular position on some parts of the right. You were for funding Ukraine. Absolutely. A hundred percent, because I think the Russians are our enemies and I think the Russians do not have America's interests at heart. Which, by the way, in a weird way today, you're seeing conservatives who would have never defended Zelensky. They're defending Zelensky now because they're realizing Putin was giving different military bases of U.S. to Iran. They were given that intel. And so now that's caused folks to unify against Putin.

19:34Listen, the sort of bizarre willingness to look over or hug Putin for years is bizarre to me. I'm old enough to remember when Mitt Romney was saying that Russia was the number one geopolitical threat to the United States and the right was totally unified about that. And then obviously that sort of went away. And one of the things that I've learned about politics over the course of the last 15, 20 years is just how reactionary everything is. Everything is just bouncing off of something else. And so it's very few people, I would say, in the political sphere have the same principles that they did when they were 17.

20:04I think that if there's something that separates me from other pundits is that people have commentated on politics, if you look at the through line of what I've believed since I was 17 years old, it's basically the same. And as I said before, nobody ever looks at what I say and goes, man, when did he change? When did that happen? I'm the same guy I was in 2013, 2014. That's why when you say, what is it that you did or what made you more unpopular post-October, It's not as though I hadn't said anything I was saying on October 8th that I'd never said before. I mean obviously that's silly. Do you see yourself as a villain right now or do you see yourself as a hero right now?

20:37I mean I hesitate to – I see myself as the same person I always was, speaking truths that I think are important. How people perceive me is of very little relevance to me. Why are you an easy villain for a lot of people on the right right now? Specifically the youth, the young. Why are you an easy villain? I think that there is a tendency to, again, try to blame external actors for the problems in your life. And also there's something fun about the idea that your problems are not your fault. And I will say that if there's one message that I've been perfectly consistent about, and there are many, but this is the number one message.

21:09Most of your problems in your life are solvable by you. This is an unpopular political message. And it varies very strongly from people like Tucker who says that most of the problems in your life are the fault of somebody else and are unsolvable maybe altogether. I think that we're on the same page and but it's becoming an increasingly unpopular message which I think is tragic I think that if there's no one left in American politics who says most of the problems in your life are solvable You live in the freest system in the history of mankind the most prosperous system in the history of mankind And you're sitting there bitching because you don't want to make decisions that will make your life better And that doesn't mean that we can't do things politically that will alleviate some of the roadblocks That will get rid of those obstacles.

21:47I mean that's that's the job of politics but most of your successes or failures in your life, like 97 % of them, are going to be up to your personal decision-making. And so I'll say stuff like that, and it's fascinating. I'll give you like a villain moment, right, that sort of became a villain moment. So one of the things that I said, I was on, I think it was Constantine Kiston's podcast, and we were talking about - They do a great job. Yeah, he's great. The trigonometry guys are really good. And we were talking about affordability in New York. And one of the things I said is, listen, there are things you could do to alleviate housing prices in New York somewhat.

22:16what? Okay, New York is a limited piece of territory that is very, very highly built up. So you're not going to double the housing stock in New York. It's just not going to happen because there's not enough space. And so if the rent is too high there for you, you're a young person, you don't have a job that can pay for the rent. If you want to improve your life, you might think about moving out of New York, which again, I thought is relatively uncontroversial. I've moved many times in my life in pursuit of a job, in pursuit of a better career opportunity. We've considered moves that we didn't make, right?

22:42That was kind of the norm. And I thought that that is how you pursue success, right? If you're not succeeding in a particular situation, look for another situation in which you can succeed. This became uber viral because the idea was that I was telling people that they did not have a right to live where they grew up. And listen, you have a right to live where you grew up, but you don't have a right to not pay rent there, right? You don't have a right to a$200 ,000 salary. Who criticized you? I mean, Tucker was very heavy on this. He played this, but this went very viral online. It was a huge percentage of the right was trying to make the argument.

23:11And then this is where you see a telescope into an issue, this is where I start to say, okay, because I'm wearing a yarmulke, there's something to, you know, the targeting. They tried to telescope, believe it or not, that issue into Israel. So what they tried to do is they did a two-step. The first thing that my opponents did is they lied about what I was saying, obviously. What they said is that I said that you have no right to be where you grew up, which is not what I said. And then they said, but you have a right to be in Israel, right? You have a right of Israel to exist, but you don't have a right for America.

23:39What in the world are you talking about? Is this it? Is this the clip? Yes, it's probably good. Okay, go for it. If you're a young person and you can't afford to live here, then maybe you should not live here. I mean, that is a real thing. I know that we've now grown up in a society that says that you deserve to live where you grew up, but the reality is that the history of America is almost literally the opposite of that. The history of America is you go to a place where there is opportunity. And if the opportunities are limited here and they're not changing, then you really should try to think about other places where you have better opportunities.

24:10If you're a young person and you can't afford to live here, then maybe you should not live here. You can pause it. So that's what you got heat for? Yes. Because what? Because you're asking people to leave where they can't afford to live? Correct. I mean, that's what everybody's family has ever done. I know. But it's stuff like that. So again. So who villainized you? Who was on your side? Who villainized you? Who looked at this and said, what a jerk Ben Shapiro is? Well, I mean, I believe Tucker has used that one a lot. He's also used a clip where I talked about how I think that it's better for people to retire later unless you have like backbreaking labor and you have physical problems.

24:49I've seen that. And that one can be debated. That actually can be debated. Well, what I was speaking about there actually was the idea of sort of life fulfillment. And I wasn't saying that when you – what I was saying is it is actually a bad idea in life to think that you're going to hit 65 and go golfing and be on the beach for the rest of your life. You're going to be happy for the rest of your life. You're not. That's not – like there's no social science data to back that. You need a feeling of – Somebody can twist that and say you want me to live until 75 years old. I've even made the argument even further than you with that one.

25:15And I've said I think we need to raise the social security age from 65 to 72 because we just can't afford it. So that's exactly what I was talking about in that clip. But that's not a popular issue. You'll never win on that position. But the idea is that if this is the stuff that makes me unpopular, quote, unquote, on the right, how many of these people are on the right? I mean this was traditional conservatism. Traditional conservatism was the idea of free market economics, personal responsibility, virtue, and recognizing the shortcomings of the welfare state. These were all traditional conservative opinions.

25:45In fact, when people on the right will say, oh, people today were suggesting – I think it was Dave Smith suggesting that I was on the left. I mean there's not a single position on which I am somehow to Dave Smith's left. I mean that is a bizarre sort of characterization. And so this is why I say I think what's really happening – Where are you at with gay couple men adopting kids? What's your position there? I mean, I think that that is not good. I'm against that. You're against that? Yes. Has that always been the case since 17? Yes. So you're— I literally was on Joe Rogan talking about how I would not attend a gay wedding.

26:14He did an entire episode on it. He couldn't like all of it. You wouldn't attend a gay wedding? Correct. I'm a religious Jew. Okay, so there is a— I would go to—I mean, I have gay friends who have adopted kids or surrogated. I'll go to their house. They're my friends. But do I think that what they did is morally right? No. So I think that – again, one of the things that I also – people have a bit of a tough time sometimes understanding where I'm coming from is that my political stances are not consonant with – that does not obviate me being a decent person to people with whom I disagree. So people say, how could you even be friends with a person like – I'm friends with a lot of people I disagree with it turns out.

26:52I'm not a child. I can be friends with people that I disagree with. I can treat them well. No, no, I'm asking this question because you said they Smith. Also, why are people looking for my moral imprimatur? This is the thing I've never really understood. So people like Joe got very upset at me on one episode. I think it was the second time I was on his show because I said I wouldn't attend a same-sex wedding. And my question to him was, why do you want me at your same-sex wedding? Do you need my moral imprimatur for your lifestyle? I don't need your moral imprimatur for my lifestyle. If you said, I don't respect your marriage, I'd say, okay, and?

27:22can't you be confident in your own choices enough that you don't need my you know I'm not the one who's like stepping in there and telling you you can't do X, Y, or Z my perspective on marriage by the way on gay marriage is that the state has an incentive for people to get married and have children that means there's an additional incentive for heterosexual couples because they get married and have children remember back in the days 20 years ago 30 years ago Charles Barkley had that one commercial I am not a role model I don't know if you remember that or not 30 years ago he's like leave me alone He's not a role model to young kids.

27:52Do you think in the position you're in as an influencer, do you think you are a role model? You should play role model? Yes. Yes. Tell me more. Okay. So I am a married father of five. Okay. Congratulations on your fifth. I appreciate it. I've lived as clean a life as it is possible to live. And I say that with pride because that's a series of decisions. Now, again, I was given the ultimate privilege, which is great parents. That is the ultimate privilege, not white privilege, not economic privilege, the privilege of awesome parents. I grew up in a small house in Burbank, California. It was like 1 ,100 square feet with three younger sisters.

28:24We all shared a bedroom until I was 11, and we had one bathroom for six people. So, again, we weren't economically privileged. We weren't poor, but we were probably like middle-middle class, lower-middle class. What high school did you go to? I went to a Jewish day school, but I was in and out of public school. So I went to public school from first through fourth. In Burbank? In Burbank. So I went to Edison Elementary from K through four. I skipped third. And then I went to a Jewish school, fifth and sixth. and then went back to a public school called Walter Reed Middle School for 7th and 8th.

28:51And then I went to – I was in the IHP program, which was sort of the magnet program. And then I went to a Jewish day school that my parents were on scholarship for 10th, 11th, 12th, 6th, 9th. So I graduated high school when I was 16. And then I went to UCLA for college and then Harvard Law. All of that is predicated in trying to make good decisions. So this is why I put a lot of focus on good decisions because there ain't no substitute for it. And so when I'm speaking to people as a role model, I feel it incumbent on me to try to tell the truth about things even when it's unpopular. And so one of the things that I've noticed about a certain number of people who are critical of me is that if I criticize them, their defense will be these days, well, look at my numbers.

29:34Look at how many clicks I'm getting. I'm more successful than you. That has never been something by – I have never measured morality by popularity. It's just not important. It isn't. I'm glad a lot of people listen to me. I prefer that more people listen to me than fewer. But I'm not going to change any of my moral precepts based on the number of people who listen to me. If it's one person or if it's a million people, I'm going to be saying the same thing. Who do you think has? I mean, again, without directly ascribing motivations, people who definitely have shifted their perspectives and cite their clicks a lot.

30:06Megyn Kelly is the most obvious example. Tucker, I don't know whether it's genuine or whether he's just aiming for clicks, but obviously he's changed a lot of his positions. and he will very frequently cite sort of statistics about his listenership or viewership as defense. Piers Morgan does it, but again, I don't expect anything from Piers because that's what Piers is. Piers is not particularly a political creature. What's funny about Piers being angry at me is that he's angry at me for saying something that he kind of admits is true, right? I've said that he's basically the Jerry Springer of political talk because that's what he is, right?

30:34I mean, it's like, here's a five-person panel and here's Hitler and here's Air Bud and here's a left-winger and here's some crazy homeless hobo screaming from the street and now let's have an open and honest again that's your business model good for you like you can do it downey jr used to do that 30 years exactly i mean like i'm not and then he'll say and then he'll say he respects jerry springer but then he's angry at me for saying that and he'll say that i owe him an appearance on his show which like i don't if i don't want to come on your show i'm not going to come on your show so some people may say well pierce had a position where he was defending israel then all of a sudden i don't know which podcast it was and it's like well i like to hear people's perspective then he changes the position And he's like, well, you know what?

31:10I saw a good argument. This is not fair what Bibi is doing. And so some people may say, you know, he has the ability to see a new argument and adjust his positions. What would you say? I mean, I would say that mostly what Piers acts like on his show is a slightly foolish child who is just discovering the world anew every day. And so what he'll do is he – whatever puts him in sort of the position where he can assume moral superiority in any conversation he'll take. So I don't think there's any consistent through line. Do you think there's a net positive to society with Piers Morgan's show? um it's hard for me to say yes um but i i also don't think that there's a net positive society for most of social media i mean i think i think that uh if i could hit a red button make social media disappear tomorrow i probably would i think it's quite would you really yeah absolutely at great personal cost to myself sure because of what i think it's made people stupid i think nobody reads a book anymore i think people don't have any depth of knowledge on issues about which they speak i think that they go to sources who don't know what the hell they're talking about three quarters of the time.

32:04I think that even those, even those kinds of shows have now been, you know, telescoped down to 30 second segments on YouTube shorts or TikTok. I think the attention span of the public has been radically reduced. And I think people are, are frankly dumber in their engagement with politics than they were, you know, when I was growing up. And I don't think they're particularly smart when I was growing up. So I think it's really gotten bad now. I see. I like the debate. I like seeing the conversation because to me, I think that's a good thing. You know, one thing that made Charlie, and I went to Amfist a few times and I spoke a couple times at Amfist and I would see, he was able to bring guys and talk that he had, one time Dave Smith went against, what's the guy's name, something Hammer?

32:42Josh. Josh Hammer. Guess what? I thought it was great. You know, I thought it was great that he had the courage to bring the guys to do it. And I know one time you went up, the big, this was about a year ago, maybe in December, where you called out Megan Kelly and then that's when everything started after you called out Megan Kelly and that became a, That was about the Candace Owens attacks on Erica and all that. Right, right. I remember that. So in regards to going back to hero, villain, and I want to move on to the next topic. Who would you say had the biggest impact of causing somebody to look at you as a villain?

33:16Let me just give the names and then you tell me. Sure. Is it the exit of Candace, how it happened? Is it October 7th, Israel, you defending Israel? Is it you? Is it Tucker? Is it more the fact that there is no real enemy today on the right because Trump won? Who do you think had the biggest impact of you becoming a villain? Again, I will attribute this to just giant fissures that have emerged inside the conservative movement. But let's put one in there as well. I would put Nick in there as well. I mean, listen, all those people are detractors of mine. Some of them personally hate me, I assume, or have spoken about personally hating me.

33:49I'm sure that that's had an impact. I'm sure there are things that I've said that I could have said better because that's true for everybody. and as far as the Israel of it, I do think that there has been disproportionate focus placed on that issue that is not in consonance with what frankly I even talk about on the show. One of the great lies about my show, and this is where again, I think social media has made people dumber is that the people who don't like me they'll clip from my show as though I only talk about Israel we've actually gone back and we've measured how much I talk about Israel and the answer is very, very, very little very little.

34:21I talked about Israel a lot right after October 7th. And then, you know, by the time we hit, I'd say mid 2024, when sort of the war had been going for a while, we went back to kind of talking about not Israel. And even, you know, on my show today, the amount that I'll talk about Iran, which is very much in the news, might be three or four minutes, right? Out of a 45 minute or an hour long show. Why do you think that is? Is it just because strategically people are burned out or you're burned out? I mean, I think some of both, but I also think that there hasn't been a lot of movement there. I try to cover the news.

34:49And so the sort of stasis that we are going to do, I understand. There's nothing happening. If something big happens, like the MOU breaks, we'll lead with it. Right. But if it's not breaking news, but the implication in sort of the online world is that I do nothing but talk about Israel, which is just on a actual level. What I'm trying to find out is because you've got to realize. I mean, I'd love to hear your theories because, honestly, you know, it's since I've been saying it's been a mystery to me to a certain extent. Because if you say the same thing for 25 years and then the perception of you changes, then I hesitate to say that it's because I said something different because I really didn't.

35:24So then the question becomes what changed? And so I think – by the way, I think that the answer is all of the above obviously. I mean the way that – I thought that when Jeremy and Caleb, who were the decision makers, fired Candace, I thought that they should have publicly explained why they fired Candace. I think that it was – I advocated for that at the time. I think in retrospect, it was a huge mistake not to explain to the public why they had decided to fire Candace. I think they thought it was self-evident, and it turns out there's no such thing as self-evident. So that was a mystery to a lot of people.

35:49They didn't know. Maybe they hadn't been watching her show. One of the things that – another thing that I've learned about politics is that because I'm so in it, because I'm in it like every single day with all the details, I assume a level of knowledge on the part of the audience that I shouldn't assume. I assume that people know that when they see Tucker Carlson, he's changed many of the things and the kinds of things he says since 2020. 20. And people don't know that because they don't engage that level with politics. Most people who are watching politics are not watching your show or my show every episode, right?

36:18They might engage once every three, four episodes. And even then they might engage for 10 minutes on the episode. You have a core of people who are very solid, but that's a fairly small core. Yeah. There's guys that watch the shorts and there's a smaller percentage that watch the whole thing every day. Those are two different audiences. And I wish there was a way of being able to know exactly who it is and do a focus group on your core guys versus that'd be so valuable. This is exactly right. And again, this is one of the things that I think has been really negative about the direction of social media is there has been, and you can see it in everybody's numbers, a movement from the long to the short.

36:49The migration of eyeballs from a two-hour show or a three-hour show or a one-hour show to a 30-second short is very obvious, right? The kind of TikTokification. And politics is very hard to do in a sort of 30-second soundbite. I mean, there are certain issues you can do, right? The ones that are most popular on the right are the the ones you can do in 30 seconds, right? Man is man, woman is woman, right? That's like a unifying thing on the right because you can explain that in one sentence, right? But how do you explain laissez-faire economics versus quote unquote common good conservatism? That's going to require a dissertation, right?

37:21And so you can't do that in 30 seconds. So then it turns into a bunch of sloganeering on either side, right? You have the common good conservatives, so to speak, calling the laissez-faire people a bunch of cruel-hearted libertarians who want to rob you of your soul. And then you have cruel-hearted libertarians saying about the common good conservatives, that they're actually, you know, Francoist fascists. And there's probably a grain of truth to like all of these things to a certain extent. But these are like robust and long debates that typically require somebody to read and know things. And so, you know, the shortening of the attention span is quite a tragedy.

37:51Yeah, I will tell you, like, I remember when running the insurance company, if I went hard after one of my guys in the company and let's just say from stage, I called him out because he had a bad quarter or a bad year or a bad month. I would all of a sudden see, well, you can't call this guy out too much because 50 % of the company sides with him. So you just upset 50 % of the company. You didn't know how much he was loved. They respect you, but they love him. So that was kind of like, okay, I got to be kidding. If I call this guy, no, we're on the same page. If I call this guy, we're on the same page.

38:20So I don't know what it was. By the way, that distinction is a really important one. So when we sort of survey the broader conservative audience, what we very often see is that the conservative audience has high levels of respect for me. but high levels of love, smaller portions of the audience, high levels of love for, say, Candace or for Tucker. Exactly. And I think that that's – By the way, that's a very important point you're making because the respect is there for your brilliance. Right. But I think that a lot of that love is predicated on the idea that Tucker and Candace are, quote-unquote, taking the side of the audience.

38:52They're on my side. And they're on my side because they're telling me that nothing that I do in my own life is my fault. It's everybody else's fault. It's the system's fault. Of course. I mean, this is why every cult movement starts with, I'm on your side. Not with you're on my side. So how do you win that? That's not an easy thing to win. So how do you win? I had kids that came over here the other day from school. And I'm giving them a tour to campus. Guys want to get into media. They're lawyers, all this stuff. So I'm walking with them. I'm like, so tell me, you know, who do you watch right now online?

39:17Oh, Nick Fuentes. Who do you watch right now online? Oh, Tucker. Who do you watch right now online? And they're giving me streamers. Some of the streamers' names came up. I watch what he says because I can't stand him. But I watch what Piker has to say. I watch what this person has to say. I said, who'd you watch two years ago? Oh, it was only Charlie Kirk. Really? Yeah. So you went from Charlie to this. Yes. All right. Who else? Used to be Ben Shapiro, but I don't like the position he took with Israel. These are 17-year-old kids, 18-year-old kids who are 4.5 GPA. So it's not like they're the – So this is – so again, I think one of the tactics that has been played with the Israel thing is if you go back to that model of my thing is to say true things.

39:56And a lot of other people in the space, their idea is I'm on your side. What's a great way to alienate somebody from their audience? Say they're not on your side. They're on a foreign body's side. They're not speaking on behalf of truth. They're not saying things they think are true. They're actually secretly motivated by a dual loyalty or by a loyalty to another party. And it just so happens that party is manipulating all world events. Again, that's a really good way to do it, honestly. Strategically, it's a very smart thing to do. It's dishonest, but it's a smart thing to do. So going back to the like, respect, fear, love.

40:24So you think you're in the respect community. You think Candace and Tucker are in the love and light community? Yes. Got it. Okay. And so the difference there is the love and light community feel like they're on their side. You're not. Correct. You're part of now the mainstream establishment name that, you know. Israel first, all this kind of thing. Israel first, all that kind of thing. Okay. So, okay. So then let me ask you a different question. So let's just say we had the technology to take everyone's, you know, New York Times as this article just came out. I'm sure you saw this. This was a couple of days ago.

40:57And it's the MAGA media machine is fracturing. Okay. And if you go a little bit lower, YouTube views down. This is from early 2025 to today. This is across the board. X views down across the board. Rumble views down across the board. Probably that big drop off is when Dan Bongino took the job. I don't know when it is, but Dan was a part of it. Across the board. Podcast listens down and it's going down and it explains different things. Buy millions. It gives numbers from you. They talk about Johnson. Bongino, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Crowder, Walsh, Candace, Bannon, Fuentes, Shapiro, Poole, and Kirk.

41:32Those are the main names that they're looking at. And then they quote, you know, it seems that everyone in this space is experiencing a drop-off and a views from 2025, Fuentes said, seems as though 2025 was an anomaly either due to organic interest or potentially artificial boosting. Okay, and then a part of it is Charlie Kirk passed away. Candace talked about that. So she went up there and they said Ms. Owens saw her YouTube channel podcast audience surge amid the controversy. She has stoked other conspiracy theories before and end, including falsehoods about the sex of Bridget Macron, et cetera.

42:11And as she responds, it might be a conspiracy to some people, but it's not to me. I think I do a very good job thorough in what I present to people. We spend a lot of time on research, hours and hours and hours on research. I would disagree with that assessment. and then they come with you. They talk about Blaze website. Anyways, you look at this chart, go a little bit lower to the one that shows everybody's numbers with Bongino on the purple side and Fuentes' rise and fall. Not fall, but decreasing right here. And you kind of see everybody, right? What happened with them, where they are today.

42:39Bannon was high, he's out. So if you were, if we had the ability to take everyone's audience, Candice's audience, yours, Fuentes' Tucker's, domain names, and we put a room of 100 people, take the millions, 100 people in that room. Who's in the room? What do they look like? How old are they? What denomination are they? Where are they from? What's their economic status? You know, you understand the question I'm asking? I mean, it would be a different 100 people for each room. I know it is, but what is your guesstimation of what that audience is that they've captured? Like the broader conservative ecosystem, you mean?

43:17Or are you talking about for each individual host? In some cases, these audiences are almost completely bifurcated. In some cases, you have crossover, right? I understand that, but I don't think they're all the same audience. No, I agree. I think there's a pool that was very large. I think that in off-year elections, obviously, right now, it's sort of like asking how NFL ratings are in the middle of the offseason. I mean, right now, it's not the time when people are – like, when it gets to 27, 28, people will reengage because we'll be in a presidential race, and then people will get back into it.

43:45But and also we came off. I mean, it's a little unfair in the sense that 24 was the single greatest political year in the history of American politics, probably. I mean, it was just psychotic. I mean, you had you had the sitting president of the United States go completely defunct in the middle of a presidential debate, drop out, be replaced in the middle of the campaign. And President Trump make the single greatest political comeback, probably in American history. And combined with with all of that, you had inflation that was raging out of control. You had social issues that were really hot like France.

44:15It was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for ratings. And then you come off of that. It's going to be not as good. I don't know. Maybe I'm not doing a good job asking the question. The question is, what does the audience look like? I used to go to visit. My guys would put conventions in the month of December or January, and I would go to it. One of the guys was 48 % African-American, 28 % Hispanic. and the average age was 42, married with kids. The other guy would go to the average age was 24, young, white. So what I'm trying to ask from you, the other group was— So you're asking for my audience or you're asking for the other people?

44:51Those main names, who do you think is watching? I mean, I can go down to each one. Because it's very important. So, I mean, I would say that our audience is typically millennial. It's males predominantly, probably 70, 30 or 65, 35 male in the – their earning power by the data that we have is they make more than$100 ,000 a year typically. They are more college-educated rather than less. The audience tends to be larger in cities because that's also where more people are. And, yeah, again, that – in terms of – I'm not sure we have a racial or ethnic breakdown. I would say that if I had to speculate for Nick Fuentes, I would say it's a lot of 17 to 24-year-old young white men, which I think he would probably agree with.

45:35If you're talking about Candace Owens, it's a heavily female audience, much more heavily female. What do you think the number is? 80 plus? I don't know. It's probably 70-30, to be fair. I mean, again, this is total speculation. I have no insight into her data. Yes. But Candace's show is very gossipy, and it's largely rooted in sort of gossip and conspiracism. And so I would imagine that she has sort of the same audience breakdown as, you know, gossipy shows in the entertainment sector because her show is really more in the entertainment line than it is, I would say, in the political line even.

46:04Tucker is going to be predominantly older people who watch him on Fox or predominantly younger people who are sort of aligned, you know, Fuentes adjacent, shall we say. So, again – So you think he'll have some of the 17 to 24? Sure. Tucker. Okay. Of course. Got it. Interesting. Which is why I think that he's treated Juventus alternatively warmly and coldly to apparently Nick's great consternation. What would you speculate for Bongino? I think Bongino's audience and my audience are probably fairly similar, although I would say that Dan's audience is probably a little more blue-collared than mine.

46:35How about Walsh and Knowles? So Knowles would be same age range, maybe cut slightly younger, perhaps. and I would say that Walsh is, again, probably more along Bongino's lines in terms of, say, income and educational breakdown. Yeah, and so with this article, when you see something like this, what do you think is going to happen next? I mean, I think that there will be ebbs and flows that go along with the success of a particular political movement. I also think that there is some fun to oppositionality, meaning that it will be interesting to see what happens. There's what's good for America, and then there's what's good for the conservative media landscape.

47:15What's always good for the conservative media landscape is opposition, which is why I think so many people in the conservative media landscape, like Tucker, are pretty openly rooting for Democrats to do well in the upcoming elections. I would prefer to have lower ratings and not have Democrats around the country, but I think that that's a rarity. You've been in it 25 years since 17 watching all of this, like a sport, right? Who have you seen rise, fall, disappear? I've not been in this space that long. So have you seen any guys that were like rock stars, that were killing it, and then boom, they're out?

47:46Sure. I mean, that's happened a few times. I would say a kind of good example, maybe Milo Yiannopoulos. There was a point where Milo was like super hot back in 2015, 2016, and then he had a bit of a scandal with some audio talking about a priest abusing him, I believe, and all that. And then he kind of disappeared and has gone to kind of fringy places. but I think that the new way that the internet works is that nobody fully disappears. Everybody kind of sticks around, right? And say old conservative media stars never die. They just fade away. I mean, you see that with a wide variety of people.

48:18There are people who were very prominent and now they're still kind of prominent. They're just not as prominent as they were. And that happens to everybody. Again, maybe my show is doing better this year than it did last, slightly. Maybe that is the sign that I'm about to explode out. Maybe that's the sign that I'm at a greater. I don't know. I mean, we'll find out. Yeah. It's the beautiful part about free market. If you don't adjust, you don't pivot. But then also the pivoting and adjusting sometimes, does that mean you compromise your morals and values? Right. This is where – and a thing that I said while I was on the stage at TPUSA, for me, I don't watch this like a sport.

48:53The reason I say that is because a sport, in the end, your team wins, your team loses, and then you go about your daily life where actually you have problems. For me, these are real problems that have real solutions or real answers and require serious conversation. And so that requires a higher level of responsibility than simply aiming for the clicks. I mean, there are certain things. Let's say, for example, that October 7th somehow made me a villain among a certain segment of the audience. Well, the obvious thing to do then would have been for me to swivel on my heel and just turn on all my principles and just reverse course.

49:26I didn't do that. Okay, why didn't I do that? The easy solution would have been to do that. And the answer is because for me, that's not how this works. I've taken a bunch of positions. that my audience does not like, including the position that Donald Trump did not win the 2020 election. He did not win the 2020 election. I took the position that January 6th was bad because January 6th was bad. I'm willing to say that stuff and maybe it cost me audience. But this is, again, this is why... You had a vaccine position as well because my guys would typically, when I ask about Ben, so let me tell you, why don't you ask him about the vaccine?

49:54Please ask me about the vaccine. For the love of God, ask me about the vaccine. Seriously, my position on the vaccine from the beginning was that I was following what the data was and what the government was saying about the data and what Pfizer was saying about the data. So I was very pro-vaccine for people who are older and had obesity. Okay, my own children, I did not vaccinate. I was never in favor of children being vaccinated. My company sued the federal government, unlike any of these other assholes, including the people at Fox News, who mandated that many of their employees get the vax.

50:21We never, not only, we did not mandate the vaccine at our company and we sued the federal government to stop a vaccine mandate. So my own personal view on whether you should take the vaccine or not is irrelevant to my public policy view as to whether you should be forced to take the vaccine. Now, there's a tweet that, again, people clip and goes viral every so often from like, I don't know, January of 2021, maybe. And where I said that this means you should take the vaccine, idiots. Okay, what that was, that was a response to a misinterpretation of data that was being put out at the time that suggested that you were safer, that somehow you were less likely to get COVID from not taking the vaccine than from taking the vaccine.

50:59Now, the current data did not suggest that. It was a misinterpretation of the data. So it was a mistake based on the data they presented to you at the time. Correct. And then the data turns out. And you chose to trust the data at the time. Correct. And this is always the, and so, again, this runs. Somebody could question that and say, come on, Ben. I mean, you know it was propaganda. How did you buy into it? We set out to create a shoe that blends comfort, function, and luxury. We had the choice to make it fast. We had the choice to make it cheap. We chose neither. Instead, we chose Tuscaneiro.

51:28We chose true Italian craftsmanship. Each pair touched by 50 skilled hands. We chose patience, spending two years perfecting every detail, and we chose the finest quality at every step. Introducing the Future Looks Bright collection. Not rushed, not disposable, not ordinary. Rather intentional, luxurious, timeless.

51:59Well, I mean, but I didn't know that it was propaganda at the time, and neither did the Trump administration, which was pushing it at the time. I mean, President Trump still says that Operation Warp Speed was one of his great accomplishments. It's always confusing when it's – Well, so again – and by the way, the data tend to show that it did lower death rates among the elderly and the obese. It didn't do much for people who are 40 and healthy, and it had counterproductive effects for people who were young. So could somebody say, well, Ben, that's why I questioned your instinct. You were off on that.

52:22You know, we followed you and you got people to say. Yes, I think that's a great way to put it. I question your instinct. Okay, so here is my view. People's instincts are less reliable over the course of time than the data. I will change my opinion as evidence and data comes in. Okay, the evidence will change and so will my opinion on these things. So I came out very early on, very early on. I said there should not be lockdowns and that we should start tranching people back into the past. This is like April of 2020. of 2020. I said we should not be locking anybody down. Kids should go back to school.

52:55The data that was coming out of Sweden suggested there was not open air transmission and that the virus was not particularly damaging to people who are young. So we should tranche back young people into the workforce, let them all get COVID, develop natural immunity. And then you start tranching people, right? This is the, you're right. It's December, 2020, December 8th, 2020, right? You have to go back to the one. 2020 is what? This is right when Pfizer was announcing that the, and when the administration was announcing that the vaccine not only prevented death, but also prevented transmission, which it turns out was not rooted in data.

53:24They were just lying. Okay. Now you could say, I think the government's lying to me all the time. That is a heuristic. That is stupid. Sometimes the government is lying to you. Okay. Sure. But I can't use the absence of data to just form an opinion, right? The, the, the, the, the, the game online right now that, that I find bewildering and stupid is a game where somebody makes 100 predictions. 99 % of them are outlandish and insane. One of them is outlandish and correct. Everyone forgets the 99 they made that were outlandish and insane and remembers the one that they made that was outlandish and correct and say this person is now a good person to trust going forward on all things because they had a good instinct.

54:06They had a good instinct. Okay, but would you put that money with the money manager? He fails 99 out of 100 times. He was first on all 100, but he was wrong 99 out of 100, but on that one, he did great. Sure, on net, he lost you a shitload of money. But on that one man, he nailed it. Okay, or are you going to go with the person who follows the data and has a pretty steady and solid rate of return and is right, say, 95 out of 100 times? But sometimes on the five, the data, underlying data is wrong and problematic. The instinct in politics is always to go with the outlandish prediction that comes true.

54:37So to take another example, I thought Trump was going to lose the 2016 election. Why did I think Trump was going to lose the 2016 election? Because every piece of data suggested that Trump was going to lose the 2016 election. There are people out there who are saying, no, no, no. I've been checking the law and signs. Trump's for sure going to win. Now, okay, that's fine. You were right. I was wrong. Trump won. Right? And I'm happy he won because then I, you know, voted for him in 2020 and endorsed him in 2020 and campaigned for him in 2024. I'm happy he won. Even though I did not vote in the 2016 election, I was pleased that he beat Hillary Clinton.

55:04When that happened, a lot of people then went to, okay, we can't trust any poll ever again. Now that's a bad heuristic. Okay. So again, there are rules that we ought to approach the world with. That doesn't mean that you're right every single time. It doesn't mean that all polls forever cannot be trusted. And it doesn't mean that your best source, one of the things that happened in sort of the vaccine space is that we went from, we ought to be skeptical of the experts, which I agree with. I agree with. And if I committed a sin there, the sin was not being skeptical enough of the people who were purported to have the expertise.

55:32That's fair. That's fair. Okay, that's fine. And that's a fair critique. And in the future, I will be even more skeptical. Fine. But we went from be skeptical of the experts to be totally unskeptical of morons. People who are total non-experts, people who don't know their ass from their elbow on epidemiology or vaccines. Like, don't listen to that doctor. We should be even more skeptical of the doctor than we would be for Bob down the street who says the measles vaccine is going to kill your kids. And that's just a bad way to approach data. It's a bad way to approach the world. And again, if you don't take this stuff seriously, then it's great.

56:03You can just throw a bunch of bullshit out there and then people glom on to the one piece of, Alex Jones is a great example. It says Atlanta stuff all the time. But one time he said one thing about maybe an airplane would hit the World Trade Center, and that means that he's Nostradamus. And Nostradamus isn't even Nostradamus, right? You see this online all the time. Nostradamus made this prediction. This game is really, really, really dumb. If you've predicted, say, 15 out of the last two recessions, but you hit those two recessions, but you missed 13 times. Yep. There's a guy named Harry Dent that's known for that.

56:32He predicted a recession, and he kept saying it, you know, and saying it. Yeah, or Nouriel Urbini, Dr. Doom, right? That's right. We had him on. He's always, you know. I like Noreal, but always we're five seconds away from complete collapse, right? That's right. Yeah, that's right. So, okay. So that's fair to know that that's your position now. But it's not a position that earns love, right? Love positions tend to be based on that guy has my instincts. That guy is confirming what I always knew, what I always thought. So let me ask you. So you got a salesperson. They'll say facts tell, stories sell, right?

57:05So logic, yes, you can sell a person that's super systematized, structured with logic. You can sell an analytical, technical person with logic, but that's less than 20%. It's not a big percentage. So now we know the youth, not all of them, but they're more emotional and they're more relationship and action oriented. So you got to kind of communicate with them in a different way. So when you're looking at right now with the DSA, the way the DSA is communicating with them or even a Tucker or even a Fuentes, they're able to connect with them emotionally. Right. Because the I'm on your side thing.

57:40I'm on your side. And again, my, you know, the slogan that was famous was facts don't care about your feelings. It turns out the right liked facts don't care about your feelings when it was the left's feelings that were being hurt. Right. When it was my facts don't care about the left's feelings, then it was fine. It turns out that when my facts don't care about some people on the right's feelings, then they get very offended. So how do you overcome that? I mean – Can you? Do you? Or do you just let it – I mean I think the answer is there are certain things that are not overcomable from my perspective because I'm not going to lie.

58:04Now, I think that there are better ways to tell the story. I mean I think that when I say that – What I would say is that the people who pretend to be empathetic to you, to understand your plight, are giving you advice that is going to make you poorer, stupider, and less well-off. And it's not – listen, I have a real problem with untruth. So I do care, obviously, about my listeners. But I'm not going to pretend I care about my listeners the same way I care about my immediate family, for example. I care about people in China. Nobody would question that. But again, I think that very often that's sort of what people are looking for.

58:38And so I would say that my affect very often is considered cold because of that. Because I basically say pretty openly, listen, I care about public policy and I care about you to the extent that I want you to succeed. But your success is dependent on your own decision making. No problem. Do you think you have any blind spots? I have tons of them. What do you think you have? What blind spots do you think you have? I think that dishonesty remains a blind spot. When people are dishonest with me, I think they can get away with it for a while before I figure it out. because truth is such a core value for me, like really a core value for me.

59:12And one of the names that we gave our latest kid is rooted in the Hebrew word for truth. Like, because I care so much about the truth, when people are just purely willing to be dishonest or openly greedy or just venal, corrupt, I'm still taken aback by that. There's sort of a core naivete, I think, that I may never get over because I just, I literally, it does not compute for me. Because my parents raised me in a particular way where honesty was kind of the number one value. And so if anything, my relentless honesty has gotten me in trouble from time to time. It's also done a world of good for me.

59:43And my great hope, and I think the hope of all politics, is that eventually the truth wins out. But the key word there is eventually. Got it. And then how about with business, running a business? What blind spots do you have in running a business? Because the thing is, and I asked this from Jeremy when he was on. I told you off camera how much I enjoy talking to him. And it was very complimentary of you. is being a talent and a business owner operating. I remember one time Glenn Beck was like, man, I realized when I started Blaze, I don't want to operate. Yes. I just want to be talent. What blind spots do you have as the face?

1:00:16We were doing a podcast two months ago and one of the guys on the podcast, Elon, he said, I believe Daily Wire would have been Shapiro shuts down the next day. He said 70, 80 % of Daily Wire has been Shapiro. Now, the debate went to, well, no, Michael Knowles, which I love. I think he's phenomenal. Matt Walsh plays a very important role with his attitude and personality that's attractive. The way he talks, there's something there. His documentaries are huge. Jordan Peterson, I hope he's doing better with the family things that he's going through. You guys got a couple other people there as well.

1:00:45But how would you respond to that? How would you respond to that? I mean, listen, for the vast majority of the early days of the business, I was not an operator of the business. Jeremy and Caleb were the co-CEOs of the business for the entire foundational period of the business from 2015 up until about 2025. and Caleb was still the CEO when Jeremy was moved out. You prefer that, not being in the operational side. I mean, I'm down here in Florida and the business is located up in Nashville. Tennessee, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, on a lifestyle level, absolutely. I'd much rather go and do my show, think about the issues that I actually care about and not have to worry about the marketing strategy or the budgets or how we deal with outstanding lenders or any of that kind of stuff.

1:01:22Like, I don't want to do any of that. Listen, if I'd wanted to do that, I could have. I went to Harvard Law School. I was the executive vice president of a major company when I was 26 years old. Like I can do that if I want to. I really do not want to do that. And so there's always this kind of bizarre divide where I've not been in a managing position. I don't have a management position with the company. I'm on the board. I don't have a management position with the company. When's the last time you had it? I never had it. You never had it? I never had it. I was not president. I was not vice president.

1:01:47I was not executive. I was never executive with the company. That was intentional. I just want to be a talent. Yes. And that doesn't mean I didn't have 30 ,000-foot input. I did. But I was routinely outvoted. We had like a three-man kind of majority in terms of the ownership structure. Do you think that's sustainable long-term? I mean, obviously not. I mean, I think that I needed to get more involved, unfortunately, when the business experience troubles. Obviously, that's why you make a change. If business is experiencing no troubles, you don't make a change. That has nothing to do with my personal love for Jeremy as a human.

1:02:14And one thing that – this is true for politics and it's true for business business. It's business, Sonny. It ain't personal. It's not personal. I can love people. I can like people. That's irrelevant to whether the bottom line is coming in where the bottom line needs to come in or whether the decisions are being made that allow for the possibility of future success. That is not the same thing. And, you know, again, that's true for politics too. I find that a lot of the people who are very angry at me in the political sphere, like, well, I thought we were friends. I thought we were friends. Well, I'm not criticizing you for being, you know, on a friendship level or on a personal level.

1:02:45I'm criticizing the things you're saying publicly because that's literally our job. And so that's true in business and it's true in politics. And politics is closer to business for me than it is to friendship or personal relationship. Where would you score yourself if you're comfortable even talking about this? Because based on what you just said, right, I didn't even think about asking you this. How good would you say you are in building relationships with others in the space? On a personal level, I think that it depends who we are talking about. I would say that – To tell you, Charlie Kirk, ridiculous how the guy was at a relationship.

1:03:19Ridiculous. I'm talking that where, you know what, he was like a unifier. He played that role. I would say good, not great. Good, not great. Good, not great. Okay. Intentional. You don't want to do it. It's not natural. No interest. I'll put it this way. Nobody – it's very funny to say this, but Candace actually said this when she left. I had never had a cross conversation with Candace ever, okay, when she left. Cross means you guys never had a falling out. We never had a bad conversation where we were yelling at each other or really going at each other or anything like that. The same is true for people like Brett Cooper who said publicly this at the time, right?

1:03:53I'm actually, interpersonally, I get along fine with people. In some cases, I get along great with people. But business is business, and friendship is friendship, and they're not quite the same thing. And so what Charlie was really good at was kind of combining the two. So a huge number of people felt that they were Charlie's closest friend. I never said that I was because, again, I was not because that's not – I have an actual family with actually five kids, and I have two sisters who live nearby, and I have my parents and my in-laws who live nearby, and I have actual friends that I go out to dinner with.

1:04:19Do you think it's something you ought to make that adjustment and see yourself as a powerhouse dad? For the sake of the conservative movement, there needs to be more relationships instead of just transactional or just business? I mean, probably. Probably. The answer there is probably yes. Because, again, you asked about blind spots. This is a peculiar blind spot of mine. I don't even understand why you'd want to do that. I don't know about you. The people that I hang out with when I'm not at work, it's a different set of people than when I'm at work. I think that may be unusual. You're assuming everybody's wired like you.

1:04:49They're not. Right, exactly. I'm not saying it blinds by. No, no, listen. Trust me. I've screwed this up many times. So the part I'm bringing to you is I'm wondering what needs to happen next. Because, you know, if you talk to Tucker, like I wonder – you know how Megyn Kelly all of a sudden made a shift? Yes. And you're like – because when something happened to Charlie, I came out and I said the person that I think can unify is Megyn. Because Megyn was kind of like the – She's getting along with everybody. Megan is a very friendship-oriented person. And respect it. And respect it. Everybody's like, that's Megan Kelly.

1:05:24That's Megan Kelly. And Megan is fair. She'll call out Trump, but she'll also come out. And then all of a sudden, it's like, well, if there was two people who were going to be in her ear, you and Tucker, post-Charlie, if she talks to you, goes one direction. If she talks to Tucker, goes a different direction. Do you think she sided with Tucker because Tucker's better at building relationships than you? I think she sided with Tucker because I think that she, for whatever reason, did not want to alienate people who are saying terrible things. And again, this is one area where I think our standards are different.

1:05:54I think that for Megan, a lot of politics seems to be relational. And for me, politics, again, is principle driven. And so the critique that I had of Megan was that she was allowing the personal relationships with some people to trump the truth and basic decency. That was the critique that I leveled at her. I said, like, why? Like, I don't even understand the idea that you can't say that your friend who happens to be a public figure is saying public things, that what they're saying is wrong and bad. Do you ever before calling out somebody that's one of your peers, call them and say, hey, I'm going to say this.

1:06:27You're probably not going to like it, but I'm giving you a warning. Yes. You do that. Yes. Is that common? Yes. Did you do that with Megan before you hit the stage? Yes. So you told her you're going to call her out on her. I said if you ask me questions about Tucker Carlson or about any of these topics, I'm going to have to say what I think. No, no, no. When you went on stage to give the talk, did you tell her – Oh, at TPUSA? No, no, no. But not before TPUSA because we already had this conversation behind the scenes. A couple days ago. I mean it was like two weeks before when she had said it. And then I didn't say anything differently on the stage at TPUSA than I had said right in front of her on stage in front of an audience where, again, like we went there because we have a good relationship or had a good relationship.

1:07:02I mean she openly talks about the fact that I helped restart her career when she was on the outs with the network after she got fired from NBC. And she came to her – none of this is personal animus. None of this is personal animus. That's what I'm saying. But they do. They think this. So Megan will think that it's like I have personal animus for Megan, which is why I'm critical of Megan. Megan is a public figure. It is very difficult in the public figure space. and I don't think it's correct to have a stance in the public figure space that if a public figure is your friend and does something wrong that they are somehow immune to criticism.

1:07:36I think that that is a bad way to do public figuring, shall we say, in the political space. Maybe there's an element of etiquette of how to do it. I mean, I think there is an element. Well, I mean, the element of etiquette that I've applied and I try to apply to literally everyone I've done it here today is I don't attribute motivation. I'm just characterizing your public view and I'm saying what you are doing and saying is wrong. I'm not attributing motivation. I'm not saying you're doing it because you're evil. I might say that what you're doing is evil. I think that it is evil what Candace Owens has done to Charlie Kirk's family.

1:08:07I think it's an evil thing to do. I'm not going to get into why I think she's doing it because I'm not a psychiatrist. No, I get that. But to me, I'm wondering, one of the things that a synergist is very well at is building relationships. and you can have another guy who is brilliant, has read 100 books more than 100 times more. How many books do you think Trump's read in his lifetime? What do you think the numbers? Speculate. Do you think he's finished 1 ,000 books? No. Do you think he's finished 100 books cover to cover? Probably. Maybe, give or take. He's probably an article guy, Wall Street Journal.

1:08:41He's probably that guy. Okay. But my God, he's good at relationships. He is amazing at relationships. That's the point. Again, I feel like I'm in a bit of a different industry than everybody else in this sense. Meaning, what is my job? is my job to, quote-unquote, build relationships toward a political end, right? Charlie was two things, right, at once. And he was good at both of these things. But I think they actually are very difficult to both handle at once, which is what made Charlie unique and also I think was going to lead to some internecine warfare inside the conservative movement, which had already started to happen, obviously.

1:09:12He was very good at being principled speaker on a college campus, which is very similar to what I was doing years before, and he was great at it. And the other thing that he was great at was the sort of relationship building. And what that meant was that very often he was texting two totally conflicting things to two totally different people at the same time. Such as? I mean if you see some of the texts that Candace has been releasing about like what Charlie and Candace were saying about, for example, Daily Wire. I mean Charlie texted with us too and I don't release private texts. But I can say that he was not saying the same thing to everybody at the same time that was entirely identical.

1:09:44And so that's one way that you presumably build relationships is by telling people what they want to hear in a wide variety of circumstances. And again, that's what you do if you're a coalition builder. Charlie was on the one hand a coalition builder. I'm not begrudging him that. That's just a reality. That's what TPUSA was. It was a coalition. But at the same time, if you got into this the way that I did because you're less interested in, quote, unquote, the coalition building than you are in what the coalition is built around, saying true things. Like there are certain hard – maybe there's a blind spot for me.

1:10:12There are certain bright lines I will not cross, and one of those bright lines I will not lie. I won't do it, and I'm not going to lie to – I'm not going to tell people that I agree with their positions when I don't agree with their positions, and I'm not going to hide the ball when someone very publicly takes a stance that I think is wrong just because I happen to be friendly with that person. Usually I'll give them a heads up that that's going to happen, particularly if we're about to be on stage together, which is what happened with Megan. but you know like this kind of bizarre notion that has taken hold that actors in the public space whose job it is to comment on each other's views and to steer a movement in a particular direction that you owe it to somebody before you give a normal basic political critique of their position to call them and explain to them these things that change is nothing I just don't I find that unconvincing and by the way I'm not offended when people do it to me people attack me all the time on a political level.

1:11:10I've never once said, why didn't you text me first? That is not a thing that kills me. But I think that's your personality. I don't think it bothers you a second. It does not bother me one iota. And I believe you that I don't think it bothers you a second. I don't give any shits about it. Because that's your personality. And also because, again, I am not looking for love here. What's your long-term vision? What is your long-term vision? I mean, my long-term vision. Yeah, what's your long-term vision? My long-term vision is to continue to grow Daily Wire to the point where with its plethora of visions, because again, there are major disagreements inside our company, right?

1:11:38I mean like I disagree with Knowles. I disagree with Walsh. We disagree with each other. Like this happens all the time. To continue to grow the company, to take on larger projects, to push points of view that I think are within the conservative Overton window and that are true, and to try to grow our constituency. Now, this is why I think I'm going to take your critique well. I think you're right. I think I need to spend more time on the interpersonal of it because that's just not the kind of person I am. I think that I'm a weird introvert extrovert. If you give me a choice between I can go to a dinner party with a bunch of politicos and I can spend time with my family at home, that is not even a question.

1:12:10I've minimized travel because of it. There's very little in life that I would like to do less than go to a political dinner party in Washington, D.C. I despise it, but maybe I need to do that. Do you see yourself as – when I'm saying vision long-term, is your vision long-term purely as a capitalist running a business as that? Do you have any aspirations doing anything with politics? I know you've addressed this many things. Like running for office or something? I think I'd be a horrible political candidate, so probably not. I mean, I could see a circumstance in which I would feel compelled to do it, but I would hate it beyond measure because it involves all the things that we're talking about, saying different things to different audiences, going out and trying to get donors to give money to you.

1:12:51All those aspects don't appeal to me in the slightest. And so I would despise that. And frankly, I don't think that I'd be incredibly good at it. I think I'd be great on a debate stage and pretty much everything. I'd give a good stump speech and that'd be pretty much it, right? Like in terms of I'm good in a photo line, I suppose, you know, like, but, you know, as far as kind of the, the kind of, you know, aspects of politics, the kind of pressing of the flesh and the, and the back room dealings and all of that kind of stuff. When you pray, when you talk to, you know, when you're praying, do you think, do you see the relationship as a responsibility that God is using you at a time where you're living in a country that's going through a very interesting time that you got the DSA that's making a ton of momentum.

1:13:36You got communism that in a way is making a comeback. You got the Republican side that's a little bit fractured, although MAGA has got$410 million put up in their campaign and the other side doesn't have anything. Democrats are really going through it. The DNC right now stands for do not contribute because, you know, a lot of these rich don't want to give. I'm sure you saw that article, but do you see yourself that God is using you as a vessel? Is that at all a way you see it or no? I mean, I think that God uses everybody as a vessel. No, specifically you. It's different. It's not everybody because you're a heavyweight.

1:14:04Specifically me. So I have prayed every day since I was about 13 years old. So there's, when you're Orthodox, you say a silent prayer called the Amida because Omed means to stand, so you're standing when you say this prayer, or the Shimon Aser. At the very end, there's kind of a section. So Jewish prayer is very programmatic, so it's all kind of written out and it's in a book and you say it. But there's a section where you can kind of insert your own prayer at the very end of Shimon Esrae. And the thing that I've said every day since I was 13 is, God, let me fulfill my potential in every way. That's what I'm here to do.

1:14:36So, you know, I'm grateful to God that I have the opportunity to speak to so many people. I take it very seriously. And that's probably why I take the truth very seriously. Now, if the idea, you know, and this, I see the argument, the argument being, okay, well, if there's a balance between maximizing audience and saying 80 % of the truth versus having a smaller audience saying 100 % of the truth. What do you do? For me, I would rather say 100 % of the truth in the hope that, again, because I'm not running for office. This is why I would hate running for office because I don't think that you can probably win saying 100 % of the truth.

1:15:06I think that there's a lot of futzing and a lot of fibbing and a lot of gamesmanship. It's not something that I would particularly like. When was the last time you spoke to Tucker? uh probably at charlie's memorial service what was the exchange like uh so that day i was on fox that morning because i was at the memorial service uh and got a call from the vp's office that he he asked me to to be in the box the luxury box that was next door to the president's luxury box and so obviously when the vp asked you to do something like that you do it uh so i was there. Tucker was there. He was friendly.

1:15:43He was fine. And we talked about him hunting. We talked a little bit about kind of Charlie. He's a phenomenal one-on-one. He's tremendous. Phenomenal relationship. Tremendous. Tremendous one-on-one. Excellent one-on-one. Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm sure you saw the tweet that they posted. I think Marjorie Taylor Greene posted at first with a picture of them at the house in Maine. And it was, I think it was Joe Kent. Thomas Massey. Thomas Massey, Joe Kent, MTG. And some respective spouses, yeah. Right. And then Tucker said, MAGA was betrayed. We all were. It's time for a new path forward. More tomorrow night, 6 p.m.

1:16:26What do you think we're going to get with Tucker next? You know. He's talking about a political party. I think it's very unlikely that he's going to launch a full-scale political party. Uh, the, the, the reason that I think that's unlikely is because, uh, he, that requires a certain amount of time and effort that I don't think that Tucker is probably willing to put into it. And third parties have a pretty negative history in the country in terms of electoral success. I think what he's probably going to launch is some sort of, you know, call it DSA light for the right. and sort of an internal, you know, horseshoe right movement that tries to nominate, say, primary candidates in particular districts and it tries to sound off in loud ways in the primaries, that would be the smartest thing for him to do for sure.

1:17:11Not that I want to give him advice. Do you think there's any chance that he runs? Because they're saying right now that they feel J.D. Vance has been compromised. I think this is very, very unlikely. That he runs. I think it's extremely unlikely. Apparently they're saying they went there to convince him to run because they think it was supposed to be J.D. and now they don't trust J.D. because they think J.D. has been compromised with the Iran war and all that stuff. First of all, if that's what J.D. Vance gets for all of his loyalty to Tucker Carlson, that would be kind of astonishing. I mean, come on.

1:17:44I mean, the fact is the vice president obviously has a very close relationship with Tucker Carlson. That's his prerogative. His son used to work for him, right? Yeah, Buckley was in his office. I mean, I have nothing against Buckley. I've heard he's a nice guy. So, yeah, that relationship is obviously quite close. I'd be quite shocked if Tucker were to turn around and then stab J.D. Wright in the back that way. I think that would be bizarre. Did you read the book Regime Change? I didn't. I saw some of the excerpts of it. It's actually pretty interesting. Yeah, it looked like it was well-reported.

1:18:11Yeah, it was actually very interesting. Jonathan's a good reporter. Yeah. I know a lot of people are pissed when I say stuff like that. Jonathan happens to be a good reporter. It was actually, I couldn't put it down because you heard so many stories of one point when Trump was trying to get a message across to Maduro. Apparently they used Tucker to try to find a way to get there because Tucker had an in with Maduro and that. Yeah, I mean, again, like, do I think these are good ideas? I think these are very not good ideas. And I've said that openly to the vice president's team. Not to the vice president himself because, you know, the vice president and I, you know, we're not like texting buddies.

1:18:41But people on his team, I've said this openly. I mean, again, everything that I've said privately, I've also said publicly. and vice versa. And so when I say to the vice president that I think that a bad way to build a coalition is to build it around 6 % of the American body politic, which is precisely where the polls have Tucker Carlson's kind of peculiar viewpoints. It's a move, I suppose. I don't think it's a wise move. I think I know the logic that's sort of driving it, which is he's hoping to duplicate President Trump's coalition. But President Trump, the biggest mistake you can make in politics and electoral politics is assuming you can just pick up the other guy's coalition.

1:19:13It doesn't work that way. You got to build your own. Trump's coalition is unique because Trump is unique. Some would say he is doing that. Not successfully. Well, whether it's successful or not. He's definitely trying to do that. So, you know, he is, you know, when they say the leading indicator, lagging indicator, some of the positions he's taken, how he went up against Trump, and you know, it's Trump's bad. And at first he started kind of slow. And he was like, I never said anything about Trump. All I'm saying is this. And then now it's very in the open. Yes. That he's no longer holding it. He's no longer holding back.

1:19:41So he's probably the biggest conservative that's going after the guy he helped to say the promises weren't kept. So again, I think that's incredibly – like tactically, it's very smart. The reality is that if you're going to launch a political movement, launching it in opposition to the current party is quite successful. It's a very successful strategy. Trump did it in 2016, right? Trump ran against the Republican Party and then he ran against the Democrats. Barack Obama in 2008 basically ran against the Democratic Party and then he ran against the Republicans. Yep. I think that's what the DSA is doing now.

1:20:11They're running against the Democratic Party. Like running against whatever is status quo is always a highly lucrative political strategy. So, again, I don't think it's stupid what Tucker is doing. I think that that picture is kind of hilarious because Tucker is sitting there like Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate. And obviously they stole the chandelier from Gaston's pub in Beauty and the Beast. But, again, this sort of blue-collar cosplay from somebody as silver spoon as Tucker I always find amusing. But apparently people like it. Devil's Advocate, great movie. What, Beauty and the Beast? Have you seen Devil's Advocate?

1:20:40Oh, devil's advocate. It is. Of course I've seen it. Yeah. That's why the reference, yeah. So, so, 2028, who do you like? You got Vance, you got Rubio, you got some outsiders. I mean, listen, I think, I think it is very unlikely that Vance does not become the nominee. I think it's very unlikely. I mean, he's, unless the president withdraws his tacit endorsement of J.D. and he's the vice president, the notion that somebody is going to run from the outside and, you know, be able to overtake J.D. in the primaries, I think that's, that's probably a pipe dream. Again, I have nothing against J.D. Vance on a personal level.

1:21:12I disagree with some of the political stances that he's taken. I encourage him to take different political stances, openly and privately. He disagrees with me a lot of the time. That's his prerogative, right? It's a free country. The biggest thing about J.D. is I don't think winning the primaries, I think he's going to have some real trouble in the general. And I think that that is because if you look at Donald Trump's election in 2024, the right likes to tell ourselves that Donald Trump won this broad sweeping election in 2024. That was not a broad sweeping victory. That was a fairly narrow victory by historical standards.

1:21:40He won the swing states by a relatively limited number of votes, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. He pulled out Arizona, he pulled out Georgia, and he pulled out North Carolina. Okay, please name the group that J.D. Vance will overperform with versus Donald Trump. I do not think there is a single group that you can name in American politics with which he will overperform Trump. And if you're building a different coalition, I could have a theory of the case. for example, with Marco Rubio, that he would lose certain Trump voters in certain areas, but gain voters for himself in other areas. So to take an obvious example, I think he could outperform Trump with Hispanics.

1:22:15I think that Rubio could easily outperform Trump with women. Is J.D. Vance going to outperform Trump with Hispanics? No way. Is he going to outperform Trump with women? I don't think so. Is he going to outperform Trump with blue-collar voters, which is sort of his bread and butter? I don't think it's possible to outperform Trump with blue-collar voters. Independence? Libertarians? I think there are two libertarians in all of America. Libertarianism is the biggest myth in American politics. It's just - You don't think some of these libertarians would get behind J.D.? You don't think the Dave Smiths, you don't think some of these guys, you don't think Rogan would get behind J.D.?

1:22:45I think that it is far less likely that Rogan would get behind J.D. than that he gets behind the Democrat as long as it's not Gavin Newsom. You think a Theo Vaughn wouldn't side with a - No, I think Theo Vaughn would. I think that that, but I'm not sure that that's - Theo Vaughn already went for Trump, is sort of my point. You're going for a base that you already got. And so if you're going to expand your voting base, you need to expand it. So you got Theo that's a little bit against Trump's position right now. This is also the difficulty for J.D., right? Because J.D. is both running against Trump and running with Trump.

1:23:20That's an unenviable political position for him. And so— Is there any outsider that you think about? Is there anybody that's an outsider that stands a chance? In a general or in a primary? Primary. Primary first. In a primary, I find it very difficult to believe that somebody is going to overtake J.D. Really? Yeah, I think J.D. is a prohibitive favorite. You buy any of those stories that Rubio may not even run? Yes. You believe that? Yes. Why do you believe that? Because I think that the Secretary of State, again, he may well run, but I think it is unlikely in my own personal perspective because if you look at his political history, he's a pretty risk-averse politician.

1:23:52So if you're Marco and you're looking at sort of the gaming out what the next few years look like for you, here are your choices. You run against J.D., you lose, you're done. You run against J.D., you win. It's a rough election cycle anyway because the president's riding in the 30s and the country's in the mood for quote-unquote something new, and you lose. You're done. You don't run. J.D. may pick you as his VP candidate. J.D. loses, you're next. J.D. does not pick you, and J.D. loses, you're also next. So if you're sort of doing a prisoner's dilemma here, you know, a game theory prisoner's dilemma, I think that the prisoner's dilemma suggests that Rubio will probably not run out of risk aversion.

1:24:31That would be a shame if that happens. I mean, I agree. I would like to see an open and robust debate on the stage between all of these various positions where people are actually held to account for their positions because I prefer clarity. Calci's got DeSantis third. Who do they have next? Is there anybody else after DeSantis? DeSantis all the way down at 4.6, right? Yeah, 4.6. And Donald Trump here is not running. Tucker, three and a half. Right. And then back to Trump who constitutionally cannot run. He's so funny. He says, I'm here to announce my – Two weeks ago. He's so funny. So, okay. So DeSantis, no chance.

1:25:05You think this is a Rubio, JD thing? Listen, a lot can happen. It's still early. But, again, if I were going to put my money on it, if I were in the Cal Street markets, I'd put my money on Vance. Have you guys ever had him on? Have you ever sat down with him at Daily Wire? So, again, the last time I talked with the vice president was at Charlie's Memorial. I've been invited many times. I mean, he's been on with a bunch of our other hosts. I don't know if it's reticence or, you know, if it's just failure of scheduling. But we've invited him on many times. So you would like to have him on? You'd like to have him on?

1:25:35Of course. Okay. And he's not done it yet? No. Why do you think? I mean, you know, perhaps he suspects that I might ask him a tough question or two about his run. Huh. Interesting. Interesting. And then on the left, who do you think will be on the left? Primary. You think AOC is a real thing? Yeah, I think she's a real thing. I think she's going to have some difficulty with the black voting base in the Democratic Party. I think one of the mistakes that – Black voting base? Yeah. She does not outperform – like most other DSA candidates because she's basically a DSA. Sure. Far-left progressive candidates do not tend to do very well with the black voting base of the Democratic primary.

1:26:12Why is that? I think that's because black Democrats are kind of traditional Democrats, meaning they want bigger government, but they definitely are not interested in abolish the police, abolish ICE, open borders, trans the kids. Like, I don't think that black voters are typically very much invested in that. I mean, you saw this in South Carolina, right? Bernie ran. He won New Hampshire. He did well in – he won in Iowa. And then he got to South Carolina. The entire party mobilized, and you had a dead man as the nominee in 2020 because James Clyburn stepped up and said, like, guys, we represent almost 60 percent of the primary voting electorate in South Carolina.

1:26:44Black voters come on out and vote for Joe. So I think that that's going to be a problem for AOC. The rejiggering of the schedule is going to be kind of interesting because they've now moved South Carolina up, which gives a disproportionate weight in the process, obviously. It goes, I think, South Carolina and then Nevada. So they're eliminating Iowa and New Hampshire as their first couple of states. They just did that? Yeah, they just did this. Why did they do that? I think because they understand that the black voting base is so vital for the Democratic Party. They want it to have sort of an outsized impact in the early states before you get – because Iowa and New Hampshire, those are states that are kind of up for grabs.

1:27:15but kind of not. And also they're very small electoral college states. And so, you know, when you look at the sort of way that the calendar is constructed, if you want to know why Kamala Harris is still sniffing out 2028, that's the reason. She's figuring that she will outperform in South Carolina. She's a black candidate. People voted for her before. Why not actually like go and make that run in South Carolina? Because she's almost guaranteed to win South Carolina unless there's a candidate like, say, a Wes Moore or something who comes out of Maryland and is similar to competitive with the black vote.

1:27:46Do you think Newsom is done done? I don't think he's done done, but I think that peaking too early is a real thing. I mean, there have been a number of candidates. If you go back to 2012, I think it was like Tim Pawlenty was one of the early candidates. People, ah, Tim Pawlenty will be a thing. Scott Walker was a guy. Right, Scott Walker was a big thing, right? You remember in the Democratic Party, Kamala Harris was a thing in 2020, right? She flamed out. So I think that when you start to get all the headlines this early, it's very difficult to sustain that momentum for that amount of time. The thing for AOC is that AOC is going to lock about one-third of the Democratic Party voting base if she decides to run.

1:28:16That takes one-third basically off the table, minimum. So it's an automatic VP position if she wanted it. You need her as a VP. Maybe. I mean, so first of all, I don't think VPs tend to matter very much in terms of general elections. People didn't vote for Trump because J.D. was the VP, and they didn't vote. You don't think he won because of Pence? Pence is the GOAT. You don't think Pence is the reason why Trump won in 16? I do not think that Pence is the reason why Trump runs 16. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I think J.D. played a good role when he talked to – He did a great job with Walls, for sure.

1:28:48When he did the debate and he went – I thought he did very good. But the reality is that, again, Trump, I think, could have picked anybody out of a lineup and probably won that election with the same number. 2024 was a magical year. It was wild. It was wild. Okay, so another article from Politico a couple days ago. GOP staffers say the party has a groiper problem. So a groiper problem, you know, we're talking about Fuentes. So polling shows that the overwhelming majority of young conservatives reject anti-Semitic views, though their support for Israel has dropped significantly from their prior generations.

1:29:17They also are more skeptical of military intervention than forebears. The oldest members of the Gen Z cohort were toddlers on 9-11, grew up in an era of multi-decade, multi-trillion dollar wars and found themselves unable to afford homes as they reached adulthood. Many come of their mistrust of GOP orthodoxy, honestly. So do you think there is a growing problem on the right? I mean, obviously, Nick has built himself a nice-sized audience, and I think that a lot of these sort of edgy, half-comedy, half-not-comedy stuff that he's doing has traffic. I mean, transgressive politics is always attractive to young people, whether it's Hasan Piker saying he loves Mao on the left or whether it's Fuentes saying he loves Hitler on the right.

1:29:57Kind of violating the rules is always sexy to people, and so it kind of bespeaks authenticity or bespeaks humor or whatever it is. So, yeah, I think that there's a legitimate issue with people who believe some of the things. And because at a certain point, and you see this with the DSA left, the same way you're seeing with the Gruyper right, is it's all joking until it's not joking, right? Like, you joke about Hitler, you joke about Hitler. And at a certain point, you're like, am I really joking about Hitler or was he really kind of okay? Like, was he really kind of an OG or was he not, right?

1:30:27You think he's joking? No, I don't think that Fuentes is joking. I think that he likes to use humor as a cover for the fact that he is not joking, actually. I think that his belief system is – I'll grant him the courtesy of sincerity. I think he's sincere in his belief systems. I think he's wrong. I think much of what he says is quite morally terrible, but I think that he comes by it honestly. You work with him. I did not. Did he work – what was the relationship with you guys back in the days? Because I know he came on. I asked him the question. He has this whole weird villain origin story that he's come up with with regard to his rise and Daily Wire and all this.

1:31:02I'll be honest with you. I don't remember pretty much any of this because this was not important to me at any point in my life. So this is like – the only thing I remember is that Cassie Dillon, now Cassie Akiva, was friends with Fuentes, I believe, and she texted me a debate that Fuentes had done. I think he was at BU at the time on immigration, and it was – and he did a tremendous job because Nick is a smart guy. Like he's – again, I think what he believes is quite terrible, but he has an IQ. you. And so I had Daily Wire cover that debate because it was an immigration debate. And then I don't know if I was following him on Twitter or what the story was.

1:31:41Some tweet of his came up where he was basically accusing anybody who is pro-Israel of dual loyalty. And I said, that's an anti-Semitic trope, that everybody who supports Israel is loyal to the state of Israel over the United States or is more loyal or as loyal to Israel as to the United States. and he uses that I guess now as sort of like and that's when I decided that I had to go don the dark cape and it's like well first of all that's oddly illogical I struggle to find a position that I think is evil where if somebody called me that thing I'd become more of it so I've been labeled alt-right a thousand times wrongly because the alt-right despises me and hates me and a significant portion of my death threats come from the alt-right at no point have I said okay well the left called me alt-right so I'm going to do it right the left the left like if my critique of Nick was back whenever it was when I tweeted that that he was engaging in anti-semitism and his response was Hitler was an OG number one was I wrong and number two why would that drive you to that I'm confused right there there's literally no political position that that I find despicable that you could force me to take simply out of oppositionality like that's not that's a weird thing that's a very weird thing so again I think that that, you know, from my perspective, I don't, that's literally all I recall of any of this.

1:32:56You know, you'll have to ask Cassie about it because Cassie probably recalls more. But the idea that he was ever like an intern with us or he was slated for a job with us or that he was going to, none of that's true. How much of what you're seeing his recreation as he's going through the space, right? Hero. And then first guy that kind of went up against Israel and a lot of people followed his lead. And then now he's like, well, I'm going to vote Democrat. No, we got to vote Republican. What do you think he's solving for? I had him on here. I actually enjoy talking to the guy. He's a smart guy, like you said.

1:33:25This is not somebody that's not smart. Yeah. And he's funny. He's entertaining. He's got the talent. Of course. He's a super, he's a very funny broadcaster for sure. Again, lots of people I disagree with and think are terrible, are funny at their jobs. So what is he gaming for? He's gaming for personal loyalty. One of the great tragedies of my political life is the recognition that people don't follow ideas, they follow people. it makes me very sad because I'm not a kind of person who wants that right I mean this guy and goes back to blind spots yeah I've always thought that I'm grateful for my position because I get to espouse ideas that I care about but the idea that people are like Ben Shapiro stands or they love Ben Shapiro this has never been a motivating factor for me nor do I think that like if I say something wrong I'm fine with people calling me out on it and also like when people come up to me they say I love you but I disagree with a lot of what you say like cool like that's that's like I'm glad that you, I'm glad.

1:34:12I prefer you agree with everything I say and not love me as much. Meaning like I actually care about the positions. I think for Nick, when you're trying to build a movement, which is clearly what he's tried to do, the unpredictability and the loyalty tests of it, like I'm going left, no, I'm going right, no, I'm going this way, no, I'm going that way. Follow me around. Like that is all part of the game. I think that's true for Tucker too. I think it's true for a lot of these people. Like the more you can get people to buy into mutually contradictory assertions in loyalty to you, the more loyal they are.

1:34:35I'm very internally coherent in my politics. So I'm never going to ask you to buy into two propositions that contradict one another and prove your loyalty to me by doing so. Are you surprised that him and Tucker are not more united? Well, I mean I think that that's a business thing. Meaning I think that Tucker largely probably agrees with Fuentes and I think Fuentes would probably think that too. I think that Fuentes was sort of taken aback by the fact that he went there and Tucker treated him really well and basically hugged him on his show. and the next thing you know, Tucker was sort of disassociating from him because he realized that it was bad business to be associated with Fuentes.

1:35:09So, you know, that whole kind of two-step is... You think deep down inside, Tucker admires Nick for him to be a little bit more free, to say whatever he wants to say and doesn't give a shit about making money. It's just kind of like saying whatever's on his mind? Well, I mean, I think that to a certain extent, Tucker thinks that Fuentes is going to drink his milkshake. So you think Fuentes is eventually going to come inside with him? That Tucker thinks Nick is going to join Tucker? No, the opposite. I think that Tucker is deeply afraid that Nick is going to drink his milkshake, that he's going to take his audience.

1:35:40I got it. That he sees him in a competitive space, and that's why he's constantly doing the, like, I'm patting you on the head. No, I don't want to see you again. I'm going to pat you on the head. No, you're a gay little FBI fat. You can't do that to Nick. Nick is not that guy. I tend to agree, by the way. No, Nick is not that guy. There's some guys that are, you know, they have the street-thug gangster side to them that they understand that part. They don't need flattery. I don't think Nick's part of the flattery camp. I think that may work with certain people. I don't think that's going to work.

1:36:05I tend to agree with that. Yeah. Okay, so what role do you think he's going to play in 28? Not much. I mean I think he'll play a role insofar as the GOP refuses to distance itself from people. I think he'll be used as a weapon for sure. I mean this is how politics works, right? I mean like Hassan Piker campaigning with the Democrats is a weapon for Republicans. Sure. And refusal to disavow people or to say that you don't want the supportive people who openly stan Hitler. I don't think that ends well for people, typically speaking. And I think that the mistake, again, that the vice president is making with the Tucker of it or with the – he'll condemn Fuentes.

1:36:41He won't condemn Tucker. I think that's a very difficult line to draw to a certain extent. Backfired when he criticized Fuentes. Yes. And so I think that – Do you remember what he said? What? Eat shit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he sort of had to. But the problem is that you can't play that game and then be like – That was a bad move on the VP, honestly. Well, I mean if you're going to do it, do it, man. What I mean by that is if you're going to condemn Fuentes, then condemn everybody who holds that point of view. I'll do that. You're not the VP. I understand, but I don't – You're in the game. But again, I don't think that that's the audience he needs to – okay, so let me construct an alternative J.D.

1:37:16Vance for you. Here's the alternative J.D. Vance that I would recommend the vice president pursue. So if I were J.D. Vance and I were somebody who has a blue-collar appeal because I go back to Appalachia and all of that, here is where I would not be aiming. I would not be aiming at the Fuentes Tucker Catholic integralist crowd. That's not where I would be aiming because that's a very small percentage of the population. I would be the version of J.D. Vance that you saw on stage with Tim Walls. Politically moderate, kind of avuncular, kind, a person who loves his wife and kids. I'd put them in all my pictures.

1:37:46I'd be talking in friendly terms about what I plan to do for you. I would be significantly less kind of acerbic and dyspeptic about my politics, the sort of kind of sour face that you see on JD sometimes. And I would be attempting to reach out to, he could do better with women than Trump, it's possible, but he needs to actually like make that move. He could do better with, say, college educated than Trump. Trump did not do well with college educated. JD is a Yale Law School graduate who's very smart. He could be reaching out to that crowd by making kind of more intellectual appeals. Instead, he's sort of trying to drive home the blue collar-ness of him.

1:38:24But the blue-collar voters are likely to vote for J.D. anyway. That's your home base. So, again, I think that there is a way that he could be running, and he's choosing not to run that way. I think that's a foolish strategy. What's more likely to happen, a sit-down with you and Tucker or a sit-down with you and Nick? I mean, neither is particularly likely, I would imagine. Tucker I've offered a thousand times, you know, open invite. Nick is a bit of a different story. And the reason that Nick is a bit of a different story is because Nick's entire mode, and listen, I admire it. I even sometimes get a bizarre kick out of it.

1:39:00But Nick's entire mode is he's a comedian. Nick is a comedian masquerading as a political pundit. He has political views, but in essence, he's a comedian. And you can't really have an honest political conversation with a comedian. It'd be more like interviewing Dave Chappelle or something, but like Nazi Dave Chappelle. Meaning, what does Nick believe? What does he not believe? I don't know. I mean, it depends on what's funny at the moment. And so trying to – So you don't think he has core beliefs? No. I mean I do think that he has core beliefs, but I think that one of the tactics that he uses to avoid being pinned down on his core beliefs is diffusing with humor.

1:39:31And I think that when you try to pin him down with that, then the idea is that you're an uncool person for even asking him to be pinned down on that sort of thing. And so there's no sort of honest conversation that can be had about like what are your core beliefs and are they right or are they wrong? Because that's not what he does. I think when he's asked a tough question, then he immediately reverts to the sort of 17-year-old humor that – listen, people can find it transgressively funny. I on occasion find it transgressively funny. But that is not an honest conversation about his politics or his principles, and I don't think that that's probably in the offing.

1:39:58I think he's different when he's on the mic and on the screen talking, him and the camera like this, versus 101. It's a very different 101. Listen, also, obviously, his incentive structure, if we were to sit down together, would be to get the own Shapiro moment, right, and then blow it up all over the internet, clearly. Would you ever have him on? Would I ever have him on? I mean it depends – if he were – I would – the answer is no I think. But the reason I'm hesitating is because if he ever – if I got the impression that he were willing to have like an actual serious sit-down conversation without all of the – now I'm just going to call you a Jew for the shits and giggles of it so that the audience goes crazy.

1:40:33Like I'm just – I'm not interested in that. Why not? Why am I not interested in having on somebody who just calls me a Jew for the shits and giggles of it because I think that's stupid. I actually don't think he'll do that. I actually don't think he'll do that. So, I mean, listen, if you could convince me of that, then I would do it. I don't think he would do that. Or the, you know. I think it would be a real good debate. And it would be a good conversation. And I think a lot of the youth would sit there and say, good for Ben for having him on. It would be what a lot of people would never see coming.

1:41:03And I think you would be more surprised on how he is one-on-one. By the way, just so you know. I mean, again, I'm not saying. From the day he's been on my podcast. I'm sure he's a very nice guy in the one-on-one. From the day he was here with me, the interview, till today, him and I haven't spoken at all. Yeah. So it's not like it's a conversation or anything like that. I just think it would be a good conversation to have. And, you know, selfishly, I would also like to see you and Tucker sitting down. You on his or him on yours. I know that's not happening. I've offered Tucker that about a thousand times.

1:41:27I have seen that. And I really doubt that's going to happen. Again, I think that there's a misalignment of incentives. I think that, you know, Nick, let's put it this way. Nick does not want to be pinned down on his ideological beliefs with data. or with counter argument that is serious. And so his incentive structure very strongly would be to sort of do the Piers Morgan interview, right? Like if you watch Nick's interview with Piers Morgan, again, I found it amusing too, because Nick's really good at that game. But Piers is trying to pin him down on his beliefs about the Holocaust. And so what Nick does, he immediately launches into a bunch of jokes about the Holocaust.

1:41:59Well, again, those jokes may be transgressively funny, but that doesn't actually get to the root of the issue. Is everyone smarter for having heard that? I think actually everyone might be stupider for having heard this. Yeah. That's the hard part, right? A certain level of debate requires a level of sincere revelation of your interior beliefs and willing to defend them. If what you're going to do is run away to comedy or to humor or to insult, then that's not worthwhile. It doesn't advance the ball. You know, there's a difference with comedy and there's a difference with rage-baiting comments that you know it's going to get under your skin.

1:42:32I think if, like, when I was at AmFist and somebody asked me a question, why won't you sit down with Nick? I said, I'm not comfortable with him saying the N-word all the time. And I said it from stage. I'm like, I just want you to be respectful. You know, I listened to hip-hop for many years and maybe a little bit too much when I was a kid, but I chose to change and I went a different direction in my life. And then we had a very respectful conversation together. Crowder is funny. Crowder is one of the most talented guys. I know you guys had something that happened many years ago, but I think Crowder is super talented.

1:43:00Of course he is. And he's funny as shit like this stuff they used to do back in the days. You're like, who is this guy? You would watch him. You would say, super brilliant, but he's also able to do this. Again, I think it is important for me to say at this point that at no point – so what's funny is that there's been this conflation. I'm just going to make this point because you're not making it, but I know how the internet works. I'm not saying that anybody should take away Nick Quintz's microphone or anyone else's microphone. Whether I choose to be on a podcast with somebody or not choose to be on a podcast, that is an aspect of free speech the same as it is whether I want to or whether I don't want to.

1:43:30So again, I think there are circumstances under which I would do something like that, but I'd have to believe certain things about how he would approach the thing in order to mean that I would think it's worthwhile. Now, other people might think it's worthwhile, right? But they're not made. So, you know. I think it's a way to get in front of the youth that right now is not getting a platform because they're listening to him more than you. So I think sitting down with you, you would get in front of his audience. And if you feel your argument is more logical, his audience is going to say, you know what?

1:43:57He's actually got a good point. So that would be the biggest thing. That is definitely the strongest steel manned argument in favor. Yeah. Even if it's a 5 % that's reasonable, that's willing to shift. Right, and the strongest steel man's argument against is that it's a setup. That's the strongest steel man's argument. Yeah, but if it's on your territory, there's no risk. You're controlling the territory. I mean, I don't think that's true because, again, I'm honest enough to – I would not slice and dice it, right? And anything that we taped, we'd put out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. Listen, I mean I came to your territory, so I've seen how you guys do things.

1:44:25I mean we're so kind with our interviews, as you know, that like we'll say that if somebody says something they feel they didn't articulate properly in the moment, we'll say like go back and articulate it better. We want people to present the best form of their argument. Yeah. Last thing before we wrap up. Florida. Both you and I live in Florida. I wonder how you feel about this. Byron Donalds. Capable. Talented. I've had him on. I like him. Running for governor. Doesn't want to do primary. We held a debate here locally with Paul Renner, with Jay Collins, and James Fishback. And I had no clue who Renner was.

1:44:58By the time it was on, I'm like, this guy is impressive. I don't know if you know Renner, the Speaker of the House of the State of Florida. He did very good during the debate. and Byron Donald said, if anybody hits double digits, I'll do the debate. Now he's not sitting out doing a debate with anybody. And the Florida GOP is ran by Evan, I don't know what his name is, Evan or if I say him correctly, I think his name is, I won't say properly, I'm not trying to disrespect anybody here, but they don't think there needs to be a debate on the primary side. Where do you stand with this? You know, again, President Trump did this too.

1:45:30So my view is... President Trump was already a president. Well, no, actually, even during the first round debates in 2015, 2016, there came a point where he was up front and he was like, I'm not going to participate. Oh, but he did a couple of them. He did a couple of them. Yeah, yeah. Listen, would I like to see a debate between the gubernatorial candidates? Sure. Do I think that it's incumbent on Byron Donalds to do it when he's the prohibitive frontrunner? No. And again, I think that, you know, like, am I going to— The Senate disagrees with you. I know. I know the governor disagrees with me.

1:45:57Sure. I mean, but just as a – there's sort of like what I would like to see in the best of all possible worlds. Sure, why not? I mean, everybody's running for governor. I'd like to see their opinions. Am I going to rip on the guy who's probably going to – who's going to win anyway? I mean, like if people are – Not rip on him. Not rip on him. No, no, but I mean am I going to say that he's doing something morally deficient and not debating James Fishback or something? Again, if the public feels that way, they won't vote for him. You know what my feedback on that is? the more you avoid that sit down, the more credibility you give Fishback.

1:46:29You know what it would be like to say something like, you're scared. That audience, you know the whole flip of you're scared. This is the other thing. I think that everybody is way too online. Okay, so everybody... Way too what? Online. Online, yeah. Okay, so I think that right now, Fishback in the polls is what, 8%, 7 %? I think Collins is at 14. I don't know what the numbers are. I think Collins is at 12, 13, 14, depending on which polls you're looking at. and then fish back on some is eight, some is 12. Okay, so – They're way behind. It's not even called – They're way the hell behind. Sure.

1:46:58So like the idea that like, oh my god, we need – we must hear from the guy who can't draw one-tenth of the Republican primary vote. So they're both throwing at 12 if you use this. Florida, I don't know what – Right, and I think this is true on the online – in the online debate sphere too. So I think this is applicable to a lot of the prior conversation. There is this dumb thing that has happened. Call it the Marty McFly in Back to the Future 2 thing, which is like, come on, McFly, you chicken? If you won't debate this person, it's because you're chicken. It's like, what if I think that the debate is stupid and a waste of time?

1:47:27I mean, that's possible, too. Yeah, but these are, you think, debate with Paul Collins, who's a lieutenant governor, and Fishback. I don't know. I don't know if it's stupid. I think there's a difference. You can make the argument and say, I don't want to sit down with Piers Morgan. Okay, great. I don't want to go on Nick Fulness. I get it. Tucker, I don't want to talk to Ben Shapiro. We've invited Tucker many times. He has no desire to do it. No problem. Exactly. By the way, I said that about Tucker. If Tucker doesn't want to come on my show, that's his right. He does not have to. When it comes down to a debate of winning over the GOP, this position is unattractive.

1:47:57And I think it's a – It's a fair critique. And it ain't going to bother him one ounce on his way to becoming governor. I agree. I don't think it's going to make a difference on that part. So this goes back to maybe your blind spot is idealism and how much you would like to see people talk together. And now I'm being the pragmatist and saying like, well, he's going to win anyway. That's why these conversations are good. This is why these conversations are good. But yeah, Ben, great having you on. Is there anything you want to share with you? Anything you guys are working on right now, project-wise?

1:48:22We have tons of stuff that's coming. So I'm really excited about what's coming. So we have a movie that we've already announced called Run, Hide, Fight Infidels, which is just a banger. That's coming out at the beginning of September. And the essential premise of it is college campus where an ISIS cell decides to take over the college campus. And it is a full-on 1980s-style Red Dawn toy soldiers kind of shoot-em-up starring Jonathan Majors. This is Jonathan Majors' movie. When does it come out? That comes out, I believe, September 16th. Oh, nice. It's a month from now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we are pumped about it.

1:48:57The movie's so – it's fun. It's great. And it's making a pretty – Are you in it at all? Do you have a – No, no, no. It's an actual movie. Okay. All right. My view of movies is that the people at Daily Wire typically – there's some exceptions. Should not be in them. I'm a horrible actor. We have another movie that I can't announce yet, but that is likely to come out by Black Friday. That is a probably most star-studded conservative movie ever made. So that's likely to come out, most anti-communist film ever made for sure, on Black Friday. So we're moving toward that. We have another film that's in production.

1:49:28We have a major host who we cannot announce contractually, but will be joining us next year. We're in heavy negotiations with another major host who I hope we'll get into business in the near future. All of that stuff that's just coming in the next six months. Plus, of course, we have a Matt Walsh documentary that's in production for next year. A couple of other documentaries. Yeah, they're phenomenal. We have a project from Michael Moles that's coming. We have some religious content coming for Christmas. So it's like a plethora of content. Between now and next year. That's good. That's a big pipeline.

1:50:00This was the main consideration when we rebuilt the business is that we had to have a pipeline. We had to have a pipeline. So the main failing of our business, this is a whole different conversation, but the main failing of our business between, say, end of 2024 and now is that there was no pipeline. The pipeline was totally dry. And you got to provide people with content they actually want to see, or you're going to start losing audience and losing subscribers. And so that was the thing that we had to cure. We had to clean up a bunch of business issues in order to make that happen, which is why I've seen some of the headlines that you've seen.

1:50:31And I am more confident about the status of our company going forward than probably I've been maybe since the inception of the company because of the exciting and awesome pipeline of projects that are coming. Honestly, some of the stuff is going to blow people's socks off. It's really, really good. It's good. It's high quality. It's going to surprise people, and it kind of kicks ass. We're pumped about it. Well, looking forward to checking all of them out. So is the website dailywire.com? Yep. Okay, if you want to learn more, guys, go to dailywire.com. Ben, great having you on. Thank you so much.

1:50:59Really enjoyed it, definitely. Take care. When we set out to create a shoe that blends comfort, function, and luxury, we had the choice to make it fast. We had the choice to make it cheap. We chose neither. Instead, we chose Tuscany. We chose true Italian craftsmanship. Each pair touched by 50 skilled hands. We chose patience, spending two years perfecting every detail, and we chose the finest quality at every step. Introducing the Future Looks Bright collection. Not rushed, not disposable, not ordinary. Rather intentional, luxurious, timeless.

1:51:47Thank you.